Losing my Virginity

What can I say, sex sells. So this is my first post from the EU. At the moment I have had my first opp to drop the parents (Eltern) and check my email. I hope you all are still ckecking the blogger.

Im sorry to those I havent sent a personal email to yet but strangely I havent found too many internet cafes and this whole german keyboard sucks. ive reverted to 4th grade typing and still havent found the apostrophe. but here is a recap of what i have been up to:

1) Flight: Ended up flying by myself and sat between an 80 yr old german woman, who only spoke german, and a 50 yr old man, who only spoke polish. i was thinking of being the 24 yr old jew who only spoke hebrew, but i wanted to make sure that i would get to germany alive. :)

2) Aachen: Very nice place, small city-town type place. pop of maybe 100,000 with 30,000 students so it will be fun. got picked up by Steffi, my labmate, at the aiport and met her friends. already got mildly drunk watching the germans tie the argentinians during a confed cup game at this big open aired drinking place. my german is slowly getting better, but its a struggle.

3) drove on the autobahn to berlin: auto bahn is nice, just like an american highway except that when the road is open you can cruise at anyspeed you want. took my passat station wagon to about 110 mph for most of the trip.

4) berlin: really big and beatiful city. lots of neoclassical buildings and good food and beer and interesting things to see. brandenburg gate, bundestag, berlin wall, and some sad things to see, remnants of synagogues and jewish cemetaries, site of gestapo and SS building, etc. stayed at an amazing hotel, went to the spa everyday, i like spas now. went to potsdam for a day, where many amazing castles from the prussian monarchy are. incredible how wealthy those guys were. oh, and this is particualrly for shih-chi, saw a performance of the berlin philharmonic in an open aired theater that was awesome.

Now i am in munich and doing this and that. more beautifully old buildings and great beer. the sun doesnt set until about 9:30 here so there are many a nights just chilling out with some .5l glasses of weizen. in fact i have to wrap this up and meet my parents at THE hofbräuhaus, who started making beer for the royalty in 15--- something (and was a favorite hangout of Hitlers, sometimes it feels like everything here is tainted). so, auf wiedersehen and i will be sure to say hi personally once i get back to aachen.

First Job for YOU

So in order to encourage people to get involved here, I've decided to set up a vote. Which pic should I put in my profile, at least for now? There should be two pics visible. Which ever one gets more votes will be my profile pic. It's in your hands. Just make sure I know which one you are talking about ("short hair", "sunday's pic", etc.). tschuess!

Like this one? 

Hallo, Wilkommen

So as you all know, I've set up this blog to keep everyone updated on my travels, and have a sort of interactive journal. So please, contribute a comment if you want. Just know, I've sent this site to everyone - friends and family. So be aware of the audience. Also, I'll be putting some of the essential info up here, like change of email, mailing address, maybe phone number, etc. Finally, in the links section you will find some random stuff of interest and also some useful stuff (like a good German - English dictionary). So check back here and there and keep in touch! Tschuess!

As of right now I am still in NJ, packing and getting everything taken care of. I fly out at 5:20 pm on Monday and will be in Koeln (Cologne) Germany just before 10 am Tuesday. Pretty wild. I am both excited to go, sad to leave and confused at how fast the time to go has come. I never can get over the feeling of "Where has the time gone"? Still, I haven't really thought about the trip too much and don't have much anxiety or anything, which is typical for me. This and the rest of the culture shock will happen once I get there I am sure. But I feel fairly well prepared. I'll let you know how it goes and post some pics soon. Bis bald!

This would be me
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