1.7.04

TICKET EXTENTION AND THE STUPIDITY OF LUFTHANSA UPDATE

My departure from Deutschland is now offically scheduled to be the 23rd of August. I will be back in Olympia sometime on the 24th (thought probably not as a fully functional human being, considering travel time and jet lag).

On Lufthansa: they are still stupid, but the friendly lady who helped me get a reasonable return date was über cool. Thank you much, my good woman.

28.6.04

hey there!

long time, no blog. This last week, I have been in Hanover, Germany, hanging out, getting to know the city, speaking German, all of this fun exchange-student stuff. the original plan was to stay in Germany until August 16th, but it looks now as if I am going to be staying until about mid-September, due to stupid airline restrictions in conjunction with my stupid student-fare ticket. Not that I'm complaining.. Germany rocks, and I've done more interesting stuff in this last week than I think I've done for a long time. Still, though... there are friends at home I want to see, a brother that I have to see off to college, and an old high school friend's wedding to attend. what to do, what to do... nothing but what the airline tells me to.

A word about public transportation in Germany: sweet mother of Pete, this stuff is good. The family I am staying with lives about 18 kilometers away from the heart of downtown, and there is a train every hour that gets me from here to there in just about 13 minutes. The station is less than a 10 minute walk from my house. From the Hauptbahnhof (main train station downtown), it's a short U- or Strassenbahn ride to school, and there is one of these every 3 to 5 minutes. Everyone uses this system, not just poor students and even poorer street bums: there are old ladies, blue and white collar workers, small school children who would NEVER be allowed to do this if they had American parents, and even housewives. It's much faster and more cost-efficient than driving a car. If we adopted such an efficient train and bus system, we could achíeve the same thing in America... but granted, there are a few things in our way, namely a) the way America is much more spread out, b) our faithful marriages to our SUVs, and c) Bush's devotion to making sure none of his buddies in the petroleum industry have to go without their annual new vacation house in the Bahamas. (yes, I have been reading too much Michael Moore.)

A few weeks more, and Jeff will be joining me in Europe, where we will be going to fun exotic cities such as Paris, Zürich, Vienna, Berlin, Stuttgart, and Munich. Then I will come back and spend another month in Hannover chilling out and having fun, hopefully.

Anyway, I don't want to spend too much more online time, and I am sick of using the German keyboard which has the 'z' switched with the 'y', and puts special symbols in weird places (i still can't find the 'at' symbol for email addresses). But macht's gut, everyone, and I'm sure you'll hear from me sometime soon. (Postcards are on their way.)