Weeeeeeeeell...I's born down the Southland. Some twenty-odd years ago....

I'm back where it all started. I got to Wuppertal yesterday and I'll be heading home tomorrow. I've filled my day and a half eating entirely too much and seeing old friends. I'm gonna crash pretty soon so I don't miss my flight so I'm just gonna quickly thank all the people who helped me or made time for me along the way:
Jacky, Till, Pia, Klaus, Valtraud, Erich, Paula, Sabrina, René, Nico, Daniel, Bene, Kathrin, Janine, Minnie, Martine and last but not least the couple that ran the Döner stand in Kolsass who kept giving me extras because I'm so skinny and pathetic. Thanks to you all for helping make this trip amazing.
I'm tired and I'm sure I've forgotten someone here. I'll add you later when it comes to me. One last thing before I go:

OI! BOYOS! PREPARE YERSELVES! I'M COMIN' HOME!

Oh and be sure to check out my buddy Kevin's new blog post. He totally quotes me in it. (or rather he quotes me quoting my grandfather) Check it out. He's good people.

Baby I've been here before...

I made it back to Saarbrücken safe and sound, though admittedly a bit tired. I took off from Kolsass at ten after 7 and caught a bus to Innsbruck. There I had to get a train back to Munich. The lady that sold me the ticket got me the cheapest one available (thanks by the way) though the other side of that was that it was a 3 hour journey. Luckily the landscape was beautiful with lightly falling snow and mountains that gradually gave way to fields. I deliberately left myself ample time (3.5 hours) in Munich to run a quick errand for my buddy Jon. You see, there's a brewery bering Jon's last name near Munich and he used to have wheat beer glasses from this brewery. That is, until his wife accidentally broke them (as a quick aside - notice how my beer glasses don't get broken by wives, Jon?).

After that I caught a train to Mannheim. On the train, I sat across from a young woman who was on her way to the Frankfurt airport to catch a flight to Sydney for a year. We had a great time chatting on the train. There are always interesting people to be found in the world if you're just brave enough to say hello.

At the Mannheim stop I bid my new friend adieu and dashed across the platform and just made the train to Saarbrücken. A short nap later and I was back in the quaint provincial town near the French border. Till got off work shortly thereafter and we went to an Italian restaurant to quickly feed and watch the soccer game. A quick dig at the British military men who so gladly took the piss out of me in Kolsass. How'd y'all like that stomping Munich gave Arsenal three days ago? Yeah, eat it you potato-headed, island monkeys!

I plan on taking the next week pretty easy. Till's sick and this is the last week of my vacation, so I plan on spending my days frequenting cafes and coffee shops around town. Speaking of which, the song Hallelujah just came on over the radio. Thinking of you Nanna!

Odds 'n' Ends

As I spent the majority of the last week sick in bed, there isn't a whole lot to report. Nothing you people actually want to visualize that is.... That being said, I've decided to use this post to jot down some of the half thoughts and musings of the last couple of weeks.

Today I woke up to walk to one of my jobs. I decided to get up and do it earlier today so I could have more of the day to myself. I walked out of my apartment today at 6:00 and started the fifteen minute walk to work. I was the only one on the streets. It was an interesting sensation to realize that the entire village was asleep. There probably wasn't another soul out in the whole valley that early on a Sunday morning. Except the one guy who wasn't supposed to even be there. A sole American in a remote valley village. After work I took a walk through the woods surrounding Kolsass and made my way back to a small chapel tucked away in the trees. I had found this little place once by accident a number of weeks ago and hadn't found time to head back there. I spent fifteen or so minutes there in quiet, secluded meditation before going home, making coffee and beginning to pack my possessions back into my bag.

That alone has been a pretty liberating experience. As of right now effectively everything I own can fit into one hiking backpack. For anyone who's spent time as a poor college kid, or just someone starting out in the world with a few, precious possessions to their name, it's not difficult to remember having very little material wealth. The difference is as a college kid, there is always the possibility and even expectation that there will be a time of plenty in the future. The material is restricted by the financial. Now imagine you COULD buy something new: a new sweater or pair of pants, or a really cool tea kettle (ok so I like tea kettles), but then you remember that you physically have to carry any new acquisitions on you back. Is it worth it? And if so, what in your bag has to be left behind to make room?

Sorry again for the lack of substance in this post. My time in the valley is winding down and I can feel it coming to a close. On Wednesday I'll be back on the road and hopefully I'll have more of worth to share. See you all soon!

Xenoentomology

When I was first looking at colleges (after the Harvard/Yale/"I want to be a physicist like Einstein" phase), my dad gave me a piece of advice. I was looking at the programs at Fort Hays and had just returned from my one and only campus visit. We were sitting in the fire station drinking Dr. Pepper from the vending machine and he said, "It might not seem like a long way away now, Zach but you know, there is nothing worse than being sick and away from home. That two-and-a-half-hour car trip is gonna seem like half the world away when you're in your dorm room with the flu."  About three months later in that same office I told my father that I had decided to put college off for a year and go to Germany. Yeah I'm not always the best at taking advice.

He was right though. A lot of things were tough that first year, but being sick abroad is one of those things that just kinda stays sucky. Being sick is no cake-walk to begin with, but the point where you can't just stay in bed all day because no one is going to go out and get you soup and medicine is pretty terrible.

I've been fighting off a nasty bug for the last couple of days. No worries I'm well provisioned. I had the foresight to stock up on canned soup and aspirin when I felt it coming on. By the time I was completely bedridden I had all the tea and nourishment I'll need for the apocalypse. As such, this will be a pretty brief post seeing as I'm sneaking it in between naps. But I would like to leave you with this sentiment: the absolutely worst thing about being sick is when all the snot finally does drain from your sinuses and you can smell the rancidness of the room you've eaten, slept and had cold sweats in for the last three days. Yeah, good times.

So here's the thing...

I woke up today and walked to one of my myriad jobs. The stroll there was unremarkable. After about two hours I finished up and walked home. That stroll was also unremarkable. Therein lies the problem.

I got back into my apartment and looked out my window as I got breakfast ready. I saw the garden, the snow and my neighbor walking out to cut wood. After breakfast I took a nap and then started making lunch (hey I've got a cold and the whole country closes on Sundays; I can take a nap from breakfast to lunch!). Again I looked out the window and saw a bird flying by. Only after watching the bird for a bit did I realize that he was flying across an amazing landscape. He was flying across the breathtaking backdrop of the Alps and I had only just noticed it.

That's the problem. I had been outside, I had looked out the window repeatedly and only then had I noticed the outstanding view that I have. My Father has a theory about such things. Dad loves Colorado. Not skiing, not hiking; he loves Colorado. But he doesn't want to live there. And I finally understand why.

He's always said that living there would make it harder to appreciate the beauty that surrounds him. The dream becomes commonplace; the extraordinary becomes mundane. The Alps, unfortunately, have begun to lose their magic.

In ten days I'll be on the road again and I'm content with leaving the beauty of Kolsass behind. I'll stow it away for another time. I'll go away and come back to the breathtaking panorama that is this valley village and the wonderful people I've met here.

The wonderful thing though is that this concept works both ways. When I come back home to Kansas, it will be with new eyes. Just as I was taken aback by the beauty and novelty of the mountains, it will be equally breathtaking to see the purples and blues of the prairie and the green of newly sprouted wheat. Just as I enjoyed the company and hospitality of those I've met here and on the road, I'll be able to find ease and comfort in the familiar relationships back home. I guess what I'm saying is, it's been a wonderful time, but Kansas beckons. See you all in a couple of weeks!

Some People Part 2

Ok so it's been a while. Part of it is my fault, and the other part is, well... also my fault. As I've previously written, my apartment is currently under construction. Like heavy duty, total makeover construction. And, well, I used my computer to listen to music while I was using a jackhammer to cut into the concrete walls. The dust got into the computer and crashed it. Yeah it sucked.

I tracked down an Apple store in Innsbruck, but not until ten minutes after they closed. So I took the 45-minute bus ride back to Kolsass and went to a bar for dinner. While talking to the owner about my recent misadventure in Innsbruck she said she'd call her computer guy and see what he could do. As it turns out "fix the whole dang thing" is what he could do. The piece that was broken would have cost 1,000 Euros at an apple store (that's 1,333 Dollars about 200 less than what I bought the dang thing for). He did it for 100 Euros (still a hunk of cash, but only 10 percent of what it should have cost) and I had it back in two days.

The woman who referred me to the computer guru is also the woman who will be renting my apartment when I leave. She and her husband, have been phenomenal to me since I've gotten here. In fact, since they had to take out my oven and stove to do some wiring, they've been inviting me to the bar two or three times a week to feed me. Which is awesome because he cooks a lot better food than I would have made for myself.

Some people are like that. It seems that for every jacket-nabbing Kraut in the world, there is an alpine village full of Austrians willing to sit down and have a beer or share a meal with you.

I met several of these people when I went schellenschlagen last week.

Schellenschlagen is a Tyrollean tradition dating back 250 or so years. The idea is that the men of the village get together and strap on these huge bells and then go through the streets ringing them to scare away the evil ghosts of winter.  The video above shows them doing it in a parade on "Unsinniger Donnerstag", but the village men do it periodically all through the Fasching (Carnival) season. When not in a parade setting it more resembles christmas caroling. They ring the bells up and down the village streets and up to peoples houses, except they get schnapps and beer and mulled wine instead of hot-chocolate.

Last Thursday I got invited to go along...by someone that didn't even show up. That meant I infiltrated a time-honored, culturally significant tradition and the guy who invited me wasn't even there to vouch for me. It took the rest of the guys three stops to work up the courage to ask me who the heck I was. After that we had a great time. They were very excited to have their first American Schellenschlager, though I did have to keep pulling out my passport to prove that I wasn't German. Which is a compliment I guess.

Babel

Some six odd years ago when I started learning German, most people everyone warned me about the articles in German, believing that this would be the most difficult part of learning German as a foreigner. For a point of reference, there are three base definite articles that then each have several changes they can make depending on case, and an equally complicated list of indefinite articles. Not to mention the definitive and interrogative, possessive "article-like" pronouns.

Definite article (strong)

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative	der	das	die	die
Accusative	den	das	die	die
Dative	dem	dem	der	den
Genitive	des	des	der	der

Indefinite article endings (mixed)

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative	ein	ein	eine	-eine
Accusative	einen	ein	eine	-eine
Dative	einem	einem	einer	-einen
Genitive	eines	eines	einer	-einer

                                               (Wikipedia)

I don't really expect many of you to understand what this is, just that you marvel at what my brain does in split seconds while speaking a foreign language.

They were correct in that articles can be a challenge at times, but it is by no means the hardest part of the German language. You see, German wasn't always a unified language. Most people ascribe the beginnings of a formal, unified German to the publishing of Luther's Guttenberg Bible. Before this, everyone spoke their regional language, which throughout Germany meant they all spoke more or less related dialects. Fast forward to today where all of those dialects still exist in addition to German being widely spoken in no less than six countries in Europe, each having it's own set of unique dialects and governmental reforms to standard German. 

Now what I learned in school is known as High German, or the form of German recognized by the German government as the most standard form of the language. It would be like learning British English as opposed to American. Or so I thought. I thought learning High German would be the skeleton key to German speakers everywhere. I may not speak their dialect, but everyone will know standard German... Yeah, not the case. 

People in my village describe what they speak as "Deutsch" and what I speak as "Preisisch" (Prussian). That's right, they consider what I speak to be the dialect. Which of course it is. There is no perfect form of a language. There are only forms recognized by arbitrary bodies to be more correct. However, if there were perfect forms of language there would still only be the one. People speaking imperfect Latin became the predecessors of perfect Italian, French and Spanish. An early Germanic tribe known as the Angles couldn't quite wrap their heads around conjugation and passive speech and their bastardized version of Proto-Germanic lead to language of the British Empire, which in turn spawned American English. 

That is what is so exciting about language. It's a living entity that grows and changes and evolves with each generation. And it never stops. Think of the word Google. It's a search engine. But how many of you have used the phrase "I'll google it real quick"? I'm only twenty-four, and in my lifetime I've seen the introduction of new words into my native language. How many words do you use today that your parents would never have thought were a part of our language? Post 'em in the comments if you like. 

And here's a cool link if you, like me, wonder sometimes where a word comes from. Enjoy. 

PS - Time for some endorsements. My good friend Claire is a small town Kansas girl who moved out to San Francisco after graduation. She's a phenomenal photographer (she took the picture I'm using for my blog) and a terribly witty and open-hearted young woman. Oh! And she has a blog! Check it out. She's a pretty interesting person.