MAN I did not want this to turn into my old livejournal, which I diligently and angstily kept for a number of years, but, as I have learned, I cannot escape myself and so I am both taking a poll and going to use bullet points.
A) PUBLIC POLL: Rachel and tattoo. Reasonable? Rational? Would not happen until many months later, not until I'm home definitely. Also would perhaps be a reward for some thing like getting the hell in shape. Considering. Inside of my wrist. Important message. Very tempting. Pros: Badassery? Cons: Pain and more pain. Also, losing all rights to making fun of my brother's tattoo. Also, it's a tattoo. Do tattoos get you laid? I have no idea.
B) The number of inside jokes we have here is quickly skyrocketing and the levels of absurdity are peaking. We've been here all of a month and a week - things are looking bad in terms of my normalcy. I'm just warning you, if I shout "IT'S ME MISTER ROCHESTER" there's a reason. I have quite the repertoire of faces at this point. Adding to the current collection of Roller Coaster, Creepy Genie, Chinese Dragon, and Mysterious. Which could also be the names of types of weed.
C) Realizations: Much of study abroad is learning to cope with my chin. Or rather, chins. Because we take a lot of photographs and I don't have time to compose myself. EXCEPT for today, we went to the the Field On A Mountain and all photos are incredible in that spot, which I'm fairly sure is now my favorite place in the entire world.
This entry is pretty much nonsense, I know, but I haven't got any homework again and Schwaebs feels so damn normal nowadays. Our classes switched - no more Terada-san, but now I have Walter, the graying Irishman with the bluest eyes I've ever seen, and of course Tomstable and Robinson. 11 p.m. is way past my bedtime, considering Annie just shouted "Surprise" though she's been sitting in the next chair over for about an hour now and I got frightened.
TSCHUSS OUT.
07 February 2008
04 February 2008
berlinified, berlinized, berlinization.
First and foremost, good god is it good to be back here in Schwaebs. Maybe it was the 9 hour train ride from Hannover, maybe it was 10 solid days of traveling, but I've never been so glad to be back in small-town po-dunk Germany since, well, ever. I slept until 2:45 this afternoon, half from train-lag, half from a mere unwillingness to get out of bed, half because of the dreams I was having were too intriguing to leave (Miss Hornet talking with the Media Board Chair while a random African I met here was selling drugs in the living room and I was scrambling to the playground outside). That's three halves, I know. WHATEVS.
SO BERLIN. I love Berlin. I always have. There's the name, most of all, which is just so completely badass - when I went in summer 05 with Matthew, I remember just chanting the name in my head. There's the Brandenburg Tor within sight of the Olive On A Stick TV Tower, which is also completely badass. There's the incredible fact that the biggest wars of the 20th century went down in Berlin - WWI, WW2, and the Cold War - and that the place is continually picking itself up and moving on - you can't contend with the truth of Hitler, of him hiding in his bunker underground, eating chocolate cake and hopped up on speed, poisoning his dog before ramming a gun into his mouth while the Soviets banged down his door. That's not supposed to sound heroic, if it does. It's just incredible to stand on the very spot where it all occurred, just a patch of ground. The whole attitude of Berlin is so incredibly complex and intense - and the nightlife is jumping, as I found out the hard way on my 21st birthday.
I am not cool. Let's just get that out there. I am awkward and uncomfortable in most party situations, and my 21st was no exception. Fortunately, Johanna and Jamie were there with 2 other Prague girls to shove drinks in my face and tell me to start having fun as it was my birthday. Which I did - we were on a pub crawl, dragged from what was supposed to be 4 bars and a nightclub, but I only made it to Bar #3 before collapsing in a bathroom until some Angel of Light rescued me and put me in a cab. But before that fantastic catastrophe, we made friends with Spaniards who couldn't speak a word of English but kissed us all when we left, I put in a request for 'Someone Great' and danced by my lonesome, an Australian bought me a Jagerbomb, had Jager poured down our throats under a train bridge, and did I mention Johanna and Jamie were there? When I erupted back into the hostel room, miraculously alive and semi-coherent, our sober compadre Tommy took notes on our drunken shenanigans, and the best and truest quote of the night was this: "It was great. I do not remember 75% of it."
So happy birthday to me. I thought Turning 20 In A Toga could never be topped (that also ended with a very public pass-out), but hey, 22 will have a lot to live up to.
My birthday was typical of our misadventures last week. The Baltic Sea is not so exciting in the dark, as we found out after trekking up to a lighthouse (appropriately with a pale green light beckoning us onwards) and screaming at the wind. Potsdam is probably gorgeous in the summertime, but, on the Tuesday we went, it was bleak and deserted and closed. We did waltz through Charlottenburg, a castle in the city limits of Berlin, and of course the Berlin Zoo is always a good time, regardless of the weather (plus Knut the polar bear is a complete photo whore). The Pergamon still has lots of giant stuff in it, and Unter Den Linden is still a little too long of a walk. And the Brandenburg Tor - still the greatest monument on earth. And misadventures are still adventures, or at least that's the attitude I'm straining to maintain - straining because I still read the WHCL emails, still obsess about what's happening at Hamilton and think irrationally and erratically, still feel split between three hills - the one leading from my dorm in Germany, the one where my house is in Tulsa, and, of course, Hamilton.
I DID, HOWEVER, SEE IRON & WINE IN A CHURCH WHILE HAVING MANY BEERS. That's just a fact!
SO BERLIN. I love Berlin. I always have. There's the name, most of all, which is just so completely badass - when I went in summer 05 with Matthew, I remember just chanting the name in my head. There's the Brandenburg Tor within sight of the Olive On A Stick TV Tower, which is also completely badass. There's the incredible fact that the biggest wars of the 20th century went down in Berlin - WWI, WW2, and the Cold War - and that the place is continually picking itself up and moving on - you can't contend with the truth of Hitler, of him hiding in his bunker underground, eating chocolate cake and hopped up on speed, poisoning his dog before ramming a gun into his mouth while the Soviets banged down his door. That's not supposed to sound heroic, if it does. It's just incredible to stand on the very spot where it all occurred, just a patch of ground. The whole attitude of Berlin is so incredibly complex and intense - and the nightlife is jumping, as I found out the hard way on my 21st birthday.
I am not cool. Let's just get that out there. I am awkward and uncomfortable in most party situations, and my 21st was no exception. Fortunately, Johanna and Jamie were there with 2 other Prague girls to shove drinks in my face and tell me to start having fun as it was my birthday. Which I did - we were on a pub crawl, dragged from what was supposed to be 4 bars and a nightclub, but I only made it to Bar #3 before collapsing in a bathroom until some Angel of Light rescued me and put me in a cab. But before that fantastic catastrophe, we made friends with Spaniards who couldn't speak a word of English but kissed us all when we left, I put in a request for 'Someone Great' and danced by my lonesome, an Australian bought me a Jagerbomb, had Jager poured down our throats under a train bridge, and did I mention Johanna and Jamie were there? When I erupted back into the hostel room, miraculously alive and semi-coherent, our sober compadre Tommy took notes on our drunken shenanigans, and the best and truest quote of the night was this: "It was great. I do not remember 75% of it."
So happy birthday to me. I thought Turning 20 In A Toga could never be topped (that also ended with a very public pass-out), but hey, 22 will have a lot to live up to.
My birthday was typical of our misadventures last week. The Baltic Sea is not so exciting in the dark, as we found out after trekking up to a lighthouse (appropriately with a pale green light beckoning us onwards) and screaming at the wind. Potsdam is probably gorgeous in the summertime, but, on the Tuesday we went, it was bleak and deserted and closed. We did waltz through Charlottenburg, a castle in the city limits of Berlin, and of course the Berlin Zoo is always a good time, regardless of the weather (plus Knut the polar bear is a complete photo whore). The Pergamon still has lots of giant stuff in it, and Unter Den Linden is still a little too long of a walk. And the Brandenburg Tor - still the greatest monument on earth. And misadventures are still adventures, or at least that's the attitude I'm straining to maintain - straining because I still read the WHCL emails, still obsess about what's happening at Hamilton and think irrationally and erratically, still feel split between three hills - the one leading from my dorm in Germany, the one where my house is in Tulsa, and, of course, Hamilton.
I DID, HOWEVER, SEE IRON & WINE IN A CHURCH WHILE HAVING MANY BEERS. That's just a fact!
25 January 2008
sometimes i just wanna dance.
Well, babies, today was our last day of January classes here at Ye Olde Goethe Institut, and I didn't go because last night was the farewell Goethe party and I passed out at 1 a.m. after wolfing down two hefty Nutella sandwiches and hallucinating that I was in Major 211 with cold, stolen General Tso's all over my fingers. But more on that in a moment.
Ich habe Angst fuer naechstes Monat - only a little fear, but still, this month's class was so fantastic, I can't imagine it could be topped. I haven't enjoyed going to school as much as I did these past three weeks since probably 1st grade, when we had mandatory "drawing time" and Mr. Oliphant taught us about crustaceans. Our professor, Frau Lukasch, was consistently a riot, completely easy to understand (though the classes are 100% auf Deutsch). Namely, it was the people, so here's an inventory of some of the choicer characters (an idea I lifted off Rob - good writers steal, right?):
Terada-san, my table mate, 61, Japanese. Whacks people at random moments, including me, frequently. Often gets out of his seat to whack someone else. Completely Japanese. Sets new records on the scale of awesome and insane.
Pawel, Russian, probably only 30something but imbued with enough Russian Melancholy to double that. Always talking about how awful Russia is. Has beautiful handwriting, which I found out today when he gave us all Russian gifts and letters explaining them (no vodka for me, but I do have a sick Russian goblet now). Could have been a fishmonger in a past life.
Darko, 25, Bosnian. Sat directly in front of me, and I consequently memorized the back of his head. Eyes that dart around constantly and terrible eyesight - held his textbook an inch from his face. Borrowed my German copy of "The Little Prince" and read it twice-through (I'm on page 11). Always wore blue. The embodiment of Bosnia's war-torn past.
Bernardo, 19 maybe, Brazilian. One of the contingency of Brazilians that made all the Goethe-partys complete shitshows. Enjoys dancing with me. Often hungover.
Ana, 18, Venezualan and Adnan, 20something or maybe 30s?, Saudi Arabia. Unlikely pals, but they've both been here for at least three months. A stoner and a doctor, respectively.
Reira, 19, Japanese. Hair that stood up on its own. Could be mistaken for a 12 year old. Gets drunk on half a glass of wine. Fantastically crooked teeth, incomprehensible accent, flawless grammar. Fan of dancing, even when sober. One of those people I wanted to shrink and keep in my pocket.
There were others, of course - Lin and Jing, the mandatory adorable Chinese girls, Jin from Korea who hardly ever spoke, my Vietanamese table mate Le, and the 3 other Central Abroad students. Everyone's off to their respective homelands now - February classes start in a week, and I've got a train-riding tour of Germany and a 21st birthday to have before then. And there will be much drinking and dancing, I assure you.
It's pretty surprising how much this whole experience has resembled college. Last night, at the farewell Goethe Party, we pre-gamed with a bottle of coconut rum and by the time Daft Punk came on, I was a well-oiled dance machine. They may be horribly noisy and probably dangerously insane, but the Brazilians sure know how to get down. I'd had a hankering (OH YES, A HANKERING) for a dance party since Tuesday, when we rode back from Rothenberg and I was listening to The Knife, pretending I was in the Keehn FacApt with the strobe light blinking, and I think I got all my dancing demons out for now, but they are certainly there within me. Afterwards, we went on a drunk hunt for food - the equivalent of a 3 a.m. Diner run - and though we failed, it was still familiar and fantastic. Sang the entirety of Paul Simon's "Graceland" en route, ended the night lying on the dormitory stoop, the same way I once lay on the steps of Root Hall as a wee Freshman, concentrating on making the lights stay still.
Rachel's Soon-to-be-Patented Dance Theory: Dancing is one of those true tests of friendship - right up there with farting and cigarette karma. If you can dance around somebody, just hopping about like an idiot and not caring how stupid or sweaty you look - that's when you know it's solid. Being drunk helps, of course, but I've been jumping on furniture and getting my boogie on since I was a youngun in an Oklahoma living room - one of those deep and simple and very real things that matter, somehow.
I embark on the Grand German Tour tomorrow, so this blogalog will be neglected for a week or so - but I shall return, mos def, with absurd anecdotes and epiphanies and photographs galore.
Ich habe Angst fuer naechstes Monat - only a little fear, but still, this month's class was so fantastic, I can't imagine it could be topped. I haven't enjoyed going to school as much as I did these past three weeks since probably 1st grade, when we had mandatory "drawing time" and Mr. Oliphant taught us about crustaceans. Our professor, Frau Lukasch, was consistently a riot, completely easy to understand (though the classes are 100% auf Deutsch). Namely, it was the people, so here's an inventory of some of the choicer characters (an idea I lifted off Rob - good writers steal, right?):
Terada-san, my table mate, 61, Japanese. Whacks people at random moments, including me, frequently. Often gets out of his seat to whack someone else. Completely Japanese. Sets new records on the scale of awesome and insane.
Pawel, Russian, probably only 30something but imbued with enough Russian Melancholy to double that. Always talking about how awful Russia is. Has beautiful handwriting, which I found out today when he gave us all Russian gifts and letters explaining them (no vodka for me, but I do have a sick Russian goblet now). Could have been a fishmonger in a past life.
Darko, 25, Bosnian. Sat directly in front of me, and I consequently memorized the back of his head. Eyes that dart around constantly and terrible eyesight - held his textbook an inch from his face. Borrowed my German copy of "The Little Prince" and read it twice-through (I'm on page 11). Always wore blue. The embodiment of Bosnia's war-torn past.
Bernardo, 19 maybe, Brazilian. One of the contingency of Brazilians that made all the Goethe-partys complete shitshows. Enjoys dancing with me. Often hungover.
Ana, 18, Venezualan and Adnan, 20something or maybe 30s?, Saudi Arabia. Unlikely pals, but they've both been here for at least three months. A stoner and a doctor, respectively.
Reira, 19, Japanese. Hair that stood up on its own. Could be mistaken for a 12 year old. Gets drunk on half a glass of wine. Fantastically crooked teeth, incomprehensible accent, flawless grammar. Fan of dancing, even when sober. One of those people I wanted to shrink and keep in my pocket.
There were others, of course - Lin and Jing, the mandatory adorable Chinese girls, Jin from Korea who hardly ever spoke, my Vietanamese table mate Le, and the 3 other Central Abroad students. Everyone's off to their respective homelands now - February classes start in a week, and I've got a train-riding tour of Germany and a 21st birthday to have before then. And there will be much drinking and dancing, I assure you.
It's pretty surprising how much this whole experience has resembled college. Last night, at the farewell Goethe Party, we pre-gamed with a bottle of coconut rum and by the time Daft Punk came on, I was a well-oiled dance machine. They may be horribly noisy and probably dangerously insane, but the Brazilians sure know how to get down. I'd had a hankering (OH YES, A HANKERING) for a dance party since Tuesday, when we rode back from Rothenberg and I was listening to The Knife, pretending I was in the Keehn FacApt with the strobe light blinking, and I think I got all my dancing demons out for now, but they are certainly there within me. Afterwards, we went on a drunk hunt for food - the equivalent of a 3 a.m. Diner run - and though we failed, it was still familiar and fantastic. Sang the entirety of Paul Simon's "Graceland" en route, ended the night lying on the dormitory stoop, the same way I once lay on the steps of Root Hall as a wee Freshman, concentrating on making the lights stay still.
Rachel's Soon-to-be-Patented Dance Theory: Dancing is one of those true tests of friendship - right up there with farting and cigarette karma. If you can dance around somebody, just hopping about like an idiot and not caring how stupid or sweaty you look - that's when you know it's solid. Being drunk helps, of course, but I've been jumping on furniture and getting my boogie on since I was a youngun in an Oklahoma living room - one of those deep and simple and very real things that matter, somehow.
I embark on the Grand German Tour tomorrow, so this blogalog will be neglected for a week or so - but I shall return, mos def, with absurd anecdotes and epiphanies and photographs galore.
21 January 2008
quatsch!
There's an incredible, inexplicable amount of pressure and stress that comes along with going abroad for six months. I'm constantly aware of the passage of time, and it's always been a bad habit of mine to write lists and schedules solely so I could ignore them (I did that in class today). Right now I'm justifying the fact that I'm supposed to go to the local art museum in half an hour but I'm not going to, sitting here instead listening to Califone and writing, maybe taking a Kaffeestunde afterwards to spend some time with my written journal. Besides, I'm here for another month, and a solitary wander through a museum ist besser als ein Umfahrung mit einen grossen Gruppen.
OH THAT'S RIGHT I SPEAK GERMAN NOW.
If I were better with formulas and logical thought-processes, I'd totally take a Linguistics course, because honestly, languages make no sense. Today we learned the German form of "had had" - as in "If I had had more time, I would have posted earlier." Look at that sentence - FIVE verbs. The mathematics of grammar will never cease to astound me. Nor will my unfailing ability to think like a 5 year old - "What do dragons eat?" asks the teacher, as we're discussing fairytale vocabulary. My first thought: "PINEAPPLES." Or today, with sport words - "What animals do we use when we go riding?" "UNICORNS."
This weekend was also hysterical - on Saturday, Annie and I bought a "Pretty Weekend" train ticket, which lets you ride as many damned trains as you want for an entire day, all over Germany, but, as we had no map and no real plan, we ended up half an hour outside of France. We saw a lot of train stations but not much else, unless you count the charming town of Schwaigern, which is actually just a field.
Then, on Sunday, I volunteered to help a local university student out with her thesis project about redefining the national dish (the deeper point being, if you can't name a nation's dish, you have to question the nation's identity - is the "American" food burgers and a milkshake or apple pie? BBQ? Diner Breakfast!?). In reality, we were wearing aprons and chef hats and surveying people in Rothenburg, a medieval tourist town with more Japanese than Germans, and Heidelberg, home to the best castle ever, where we went wandering when it got dark and hell yes I felt like a hobbit. All in all - hilarious. I went because it was a free trip out of Schwaebs, and Tommy went because I made him - the Germans we were with were very nice, but we clearly had some communication issues. At dinner, we ended up comparing the names of insects in German and English - because why is it a "ladybug" or "dragonfly"? No sense. When I got back, my brain was still in German mode - and I have to admit, of course I feel some sense of pride knowing I'm in a foreign-speaking country, and that I can make my way in the native language. My vocabulary's pretty sporadic, but still, I feel like I'm getting a lot more out of being here than I would in Great Britain - we'll see how I feel after visiting Poland. Which is happening next week?
Mein Gott - alles sind Quatsch. Were did this month go? Can I have it back, please?
Classes started at Hamilton today. Happy semester, bros and brosephines. I'm just going to sigh and stare out the window for a while now - and tonight I'll pour one out for you.
OH THAT'S RIGHT I SPEAK GERMAN NOW.
If I were better with formulas and logical thought-processes, I'd totally take a Linguistics course, because honestly, languages make no sense. Today we learned the German form of "had had" - as in "If I had had more time, I would have posted earlier." Look at that sentence - FIVE verbs. The mathematics of grammar will never cease to astound me. Nor will my unfailing ability to think like a 5 year old - "What do dragons eat?" asks the teacher, as we're discussing fairytale vocabulary. My first thought: "PINEAPPLES." Or today, with sport words - "What animals do we use when we go riding?" "UNICORNS."
This weekend was also hysterical - on Saturday, Annie and I bought a "Pretty Weekend" train ticket, which lets you ride as many damned trains as you want for an entire day, all over Germany, but, as we had no map and no real plan, we ended up half an hour outside of France. We saw a lot of train stations but not much else, unless you count the charming town of Schwaigern, which is actually just a field.
Then, on Sunday, I volunteered to help a local university student out with her thesis project about redefining the national dish (the deeper point being, if you can't name a nation's dish, you have to question the nation's identity - is the "American" food burgers and a milkshake or apple pie? BBQ? Diner Breakfast!?). In reality, we were wearing aprons and chef hats and surveying people in Rothenburg, a medieval tourist town with more Japanese than Germans, and Heidelberg, home to the best castle ever, where we went wandering when it got dark and hell yes I felt like a hobbit. All in all - hilarious. I went because it was a free trip out of Schwaebs, and Tommy went because I made him - the Germans we were with were very nice, but we clearly had some communication issues. At dinner, we ended up comparing the names of insects in German and English - because why is it a "ladybug" or "dragonfly"? No sense. When I got back, my brain was still in German mode - and I have to admit, of course I feel some sense of pride knowing I'm in a foreign-speaking country, and that I can make my way in the native language. My vocabulary's pretty sporadic, but still, I feel like I'm getting a lot more out of being here than I would in Great Britain - we'll see how I feel after visiting Poland. Which is happening next week?
Mein Gott - alles sind Quatsch. Were did this month go? Can I have it back, please?
Classes started at Hamilton today. Happy semester, bros and brosephines. I'm just going to sigh and stare out the window for a while now - and tonight I'll pour one out for you.
17 January 2008
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.
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.
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