On The Road Again

It's been a few months since we left Germany, and seeing as it's so close (380 miles or so), so romantic, and we got an insanely good deal, we're off to Paris as a late second wedding anniversary present to ourselves (let the record show that B and I spent our entire first anniversary feverishly packing for the move to Germany last year). This will be our 3rd time there-- and we're planning on digging a little bit deeper than the tourist stuff this time. Should be fun. There will be limited access to computers, so blogging will be on the slow side for the next week or so-- ah, who am I kidding-- there's no way I'll be blogging at all-- we're in Paris. Au revoir!

What A Difference A Year Makes

As I type this it's been exactly one year since we left our beloved Portland and moved to Germany. I had been told that settling in to a foreign land is a long process, that these things take time, and finding that right groove would take about a year. I took that with a grain of salt because certain things dealing with the acclimatizing process have come faster for us (and a few things much slower), but I'll go out on a limb and agree with this 12-month thing. I'm finally getting it. This isn't to say that life is getting any easier, but things are doing OK. B's got her 9-5 routine, and it would appear that the apartment will get finished up eventually (most remaining exterior work supposedly gets completed next week), and I'm happy to say I found employment in a field that I'm gaa-gaa over (automotive industry), and there is a plan in place now. Do we miss the USA? But of course. That's always going to be home. But Germany-- and I can't believe I'm saying this-- ain't all that bad.

Best. High Speed. Chase. Ever.

I've managed to wear out our guest Steve with a full day of walking around Nürnberg in 70-plus degree heat, a fair amount of Bavaria's better beers, and.. oh yeah, the poor guy got off the plane 36 hours ago after a 16-hour flight, and is staring down a 9-hour jet lag to boot. So while he's in the guest room sawing logs, I figured I'd put up a companion piece to the comedy video below. This video, however is dead serious, and even non-gearheads will get an adrenaline rush watching it. It's a full lap at speed of the famed Nürburgring race course in northern Germany (not to be confused with Nürnberg's race track, which is called the Norisring), featuring two cars dicing it out, and frankly if this 10-minute video doesn't get your blood pumping, I don't know what will. Yes, it's 10 minutes, but it's an amazing game of cat-and-mouse between a faster car with more speed out of the curves (Dodge Viper), and a more nimble car (Porsche 911) with better brakes, and a craftier, more fearless driver. If you can, go to YouTube to see a larger screen version, and please! Put in your headphones and crank up the volume. Enjoy!

Service Interruption (Again!)

Well, the Berlin and Rhine cruise photos haven't been posted yet from my parent's visit, but we're hosting another guest this week, my old buddy Steve from that toddlin' town of Olympia, Washington (capitol of the Evergreen State, don't cha know). Hiking, historical tours and a fair amount of beer drinking are on deck, and we'll resume normal blogging later next week. Hope everybody enjoyed their summer-- Have a good one everybody!

Best. Low Speed. Chase. Ever.

From the Canadian import The Kids In The Hall TV show. Don't know why I love this skit so much (it's one of my favorites from that show), but it's a good larf. Enjoy!

My Goal, And It's A Modest One...

A series of brisk evenings to break up what's been a brief, hot, sticky summer have descended upon us here in Nuremberg, which shares the same latitude as Vancouver, Canada. A long wet fall followed by a downright chilly (though largely snow-free) winter will happen in the fullness of time. So it's time to devote a little thought as to cold weather projects.

Knowing full well that I can't play competitive full-contact sports with my dodgy back (old snowboard injury) and creeping advancement of age, I've decided to do a work-around to stay close to my beloved adopted game of Australian Rules Football, and recently received materials to be an accredited Umpire (aka referee; old skool attired Aussie Rules ump pictured above signaling a 6-point goal, not the size of the fish that got away). Aussie Rules has its own 6-team club league here in Germany, and I've already made inquiries to the more local teams to see if they'll need a ref for next season (answer: Hells Yeah!), so I have that going for me. The rules book is a bear though: including supplemental material, it weighs in at over 110 pages, and has to be known backwards-and-forwards. Should make for a gripping read this winter.

I've given up on learning any more German-- beyond my painfully limited baby talk and merely so-so broad/general reading comprehension, this language has not exactly opened up its secrets to me. Whatever I do manage to pick up from here forward will be through osmosis and observation, but any more formal instruction seems pointless, frankly. So what does a person with shattered confidence in their language learning abilities do? Teach themselves Esperanto of course! This constructed language (flag above) pulls the best bits of Romance (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian), German and Slavic languages, blends them together, keeps the rules eminently logical and simple (example: all nouns end in "o"; all adjectives end in "a"), and is actually fairly comprehensible to Romance language-speakers who haven't even seen or heard it previously-- meaning an Esperanto speaker can get their point across throughout most of western Europe without knowing the native language themselves. I'm still slogging through the book, but progress is being made.

The goal by next summer: To be the best Esperanto-speaking Aussie Rules Umpire in all of central Bavaria. I think I can achieve that. I really can.