Germany

The last phase of my June journey.

I took the night train to Germany, finally arriving in Paderborn. I wandered around with a blister as big as Montana and slept some... it was weird, sleeping for like three hours in the middle of the day, but I was tired from being on my feet all day in Paris, giving birth to the aforementioned Montana.

Having left the sphere of familiar Spanish and French tones, I found myself surrounded by a linguistic sea of German. It was strange; I found myself saying German sounding things to myself as a walked around, as if subconciously trying to practice the sound. I guess I did the same thing in Spain and France, but hadn't realized it. In German, they have sounds that are deep in the throat... try trilling your r's in the throat and you'll get the idea. By the way, I've learned that English came originally from a language on the north coast of Germany called Frisian (like 1400 yrs ago).

The week in Paderborn was pretty cool. Most nights I spent hanging out with the good folks I know from the Dynamical Systems Group at University of Paderborn. The last day I was in Paderborn, they had a Sommer Festival `03 at Uni Paderborn. Apparently the universities in Germany are okay with using their campuses to host huge multi-stage concerts. So I heard some German rock, some Irish folk, and some Jamaican reggae. It was cool. And as an exotic visitor all the way from California, I was interviewed by a local paper. As a friend told me later, the following appeared in a local paper: "We have nothing comparable in L.A.", a guest
from California said...

As midnight approached, I realized I should get back to my hotel so I could catch an early morning train to Frankfurt and catch my plane. But I was waylaid by a group of British soldiers who asked me to carouse with them. We went to a couple of pubs and I found out that two of them had been part of operations in Iraq. Around 2 am, I left and made it to my hotel, set my alarm, and went to sleep.

I must have slept through the alarm because I awoke just my train was leaving. I high tailed it to the train station to see if I could catch the next train to Frankfurt and still catch my flight. It looked like a train was going to be getting into Frankfurt airport an hour before my flight left. It was gonna be risky. And I was nervous...

Alas, the nice lady at the counter told me it wasn't going to be possible for me to make the flight, even though it didn't take off for an hour. So I was going to have to wait for the next available flight... which was going to be in two days! The woman at the counter was very helpful, and took pity on me. She didn't even charge me for re-assigning a ticket, which would've cost $200.

All hope was not lost. I had a plan. Having remembered that Matt Stahl was going to be passing through Frankfurt on his way back from a mission trip to Kosovo. So I headed to the Best Western near the train station where I knew he and his crew would be coming in. Althought I was a bit peeved that I had missed the plane, I figured it gave me an extra day or so to work on my book. I saw Matt and we got a beer late on Sunday night, and then I got to the airport super early, so early that they didn't even know what to do with me. And I made it back safe and sound.

But that was a month ago... and a lot has happened since then. As you see, I'm not a very disciplined blogger. Maybe I'll do one of my political or philosophical ones next time. Or talk about what I had for dinner. Ciao!