A Yank in Europe

Big Day Today

2010-01-24T18:09:00.002+01:00

It is extremely difficult to keep up with American sports over here in Europe. Most of the games, whether they be Hockey, Football, Baseball, etc. tend to happen when I'm already asleep (4pm EST is 10pm Berlin time), so the most I can do is often wake up the next morning, hop on ESPN.com and check scores. I hadn't watched an NFL game or anything else for ages and living in a place where Soccer rules supreme, I tend to just do as the Romans do. Give up any efforts and just show up on a saturday and watch some Footie.

Naturally, the time I'm gone and away from the States is the time that my favorite NFL team, the New York Jets, decides to make a run and is now one game away from the Super Bowl. Tonight, they'll play the Indianapolis Colts in Indy in the AFC Championship Game.

For the few of you who don't follow Football, and probably for my European friends who especially don't. The Jets are most often the lovable losers of the NFL. The Chicago Cubs of the NFL. They haven't won the Championship since 1968. There is no real reason to hate them. (Unless you're a Miami or New England fan) The Jets are often mediocre more often than not. And when they are good, they tend to blow it. Leaving their fans heartbroken for getting their hopes up for what in is essentially nothing.

I grew up learning this firsthand, watching the Jets go from periods of utter shit (in 96', they won 1 game) to periods of greatness, only to blow it (1998 AFC Championship, Doug Brien's missed FGs against Pittsburgh) I've become so used to it, and used to get so angry at it, that I literally almost don't care anymore.

That said, I'm pretty stoked they're in. Literally no one expected them to be there, and still no one expects them to win. Yet they keep winning. They have the cockiest SOB of a coach I've ever seen. And the players play with supreme confidence. For entertainment's sake, I hope they kick the bejesus out of the Colts, but if they don't it'll be a good season nonetheless.

J-E-T-S JETS! JETS! JETS!

Sleeping Awake

2010-01-22T17:48:00.002+01:00

Today's entry takes us back to the friendly confines of Berlin. I returned from the States bearing gifts and cheap wines last sunday.

It was a great trip, to say the least. Since I left for Europe in October 08', I hadn't really seen much of my family. I'd been back once, in August for 10 days. Beyond that, both my sister and mother had made separate trips to see me last spring. When you're the sole member of the family out and aboot for a lengthy period of time, you can't help but feel like your an outsider on the group looking in.

Over the last year, my 5 year old niece has started Kindergarden, my brother has gotten remarried (to a wonderful woman I might add) and my new nephew, Reed Thomas Stanton, was born on Dec. 4th. What these events all have in common is that I wasn't present for any of them. The price I pay for living abroad, I suppose. So as you can imagine, being home for 3 weeks was a great chance for me to feel like one of the family again. I got to hang out, was taken to just about every restaurant I had missed in the last year (my stomach is still recovering), and had a great christmas. It wasn't all fun, as after Christmas, my final two weeks were consumed by graduate school applications. Luckily, I'm finished and can't sit back and relax, at least for a week (on to Fellowship applications!)

I had originally planned on being back in Berlin on January 6th, but an unexpected turn of events caused me to find myself in Orlando that day instead. I spent a week with Noel and her family, which gave me another week to relax and for once, enjoy some warm weather. I got to see high school friends I hadn't seen in years, as well as a few college buddies, Austin, who just so happen to be in Kissimmee for a Football tournament, and Joey, who just so happened to be with Austin, and drunk, which makes Joey all the more fun to hang out with. Add a zipline obstacle course that I did with Noel and he family at a State Park and it was a pretty damn good trip.

My return trip to Berlin ended up being on the 16th at noon, with a flight to JFK and about a 5 hour layover before flying on to Berlin to arrive at 10am Sunday.

Overnight Flights. Son of a bitch!

For those of you who've experienced jet lag flying to Europe, you understand the vital importance of sleeping on an overnight flight. For those of you who haven't, let me explain.

When flying international flights, you are always going to have it easier flying East to West than West to East. Going from Berlin to Detroit, for example, is never a problem. If I'm leaving Berlin, and say 9am for a flight and arriving in Detroit at 4pm, even though the flight has been 8 hours and I haven't slept a wink, the fact that it will still be nightfall by the time you reach there gives you solace that you're exhausted self will simply just fall asleep at a normal hour.

Flying West to East, however, is a bastard.

I don't sleep.....at all...on international flights. Having a 6'4' frame cramed into a tiny space for 8 hours isn't going to convince my body it's snooze time. So I get stuck being awake the entire time, watching terrible in-flight movies which always seem to be romantic comedies (in this case, "Love Happens", and "He's Just Not That Into You", both utterly garbage)

In my case, my overnight flight landed in Berlin at 11am Sunday. Which means from 10am Saturday Morning till 10am Sunday morning (berlin time), I hadn't slept at all. Common sense tells you that if you get home from something like this, best thing to do is probably just stay up. It's 11 already. Stay up and become so tired that when normal sleeping time rolls around, you're ready to pass out.

Instead, I fell asleep at 1:30pm and woke up at 8:30pm. Doh'!

My sleep hasn't been the same since. In the last 5 days, I have had sleepless nights in 3 of them. The 4th I slept a grand total of 3 hours and the fifth I somehow fell asleep at 3am and woke up at 3pm. Going through this puts your mind and body through hell, where I've had neither the energy to do anything, nor the state of mind to get anything finished. I completed and submitted academic essays for fellowships, and I barely remember doing it. Let's just hope Subconscious Josh is as good on the type as his better half.

But it feels good to be home, and for now, home is Berlin.

Cheers.

Charles De Gaulle Airport: Where Common Sense Goes to Die

2009-12-18T21:02:00.002+01:00

Im finally back home in Michigan after what I could only describe as the worst flying experience I have ever had. Just.....sickening how bad it was.

We had a Thursday morning flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris scheduled to take off at 9:55, which we would then have a two hour layover before flying directly to Detroit from Paris at 1:55. To start off this disaster of abad trip, we find out at midnight the night before that the flight from Berlin to Paris was cancelled. Barely any notice other than an email simply stating "your itinerary's changed; call us". After some finanguling, we managed to get ourselves onto a 6:55 flight to Paris. Of course, for international flights like that, if your flight is leaving in at 6:55, that means its probably a good idea to get there 2 hours before hand. Great. We have to be there at 5am, which means I'm waking up at 4am.

12am-4am: No sleep for Josh.

We took a Taxi over to Flughafen Tegel at 5 and managed to get on the first flight with no problems.

When we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport, our flight was still scheduled to leave on time. We relaxed a bit, grabbed a coffee and waited. For such a new and modern airport like Charles de Gaulle, it was incredibly cold inside. You could even feel the wind breezing through the terminals. I literally froze my ass off waiting for our flight to come.

We managed to board the flight at 2. Little did I know that I would be sitting on that plane for 4 hours before we took off.

Why 4 hours? Because the officials at the Air France decided it was important to wait the first two hours for the passengers who were supposed to make our flight but hadn't gotten into the airport yet. You know, all TWENTY FIVE of them. Naturally, none of these people actually showed up. I always thought that it was your job to get to your flight on time, and if it wasn't, then you were SOL. So because we had to wait for all of these people, not only would we be late, but people who had made the flight on time would now miss their connecting flights in Detroit. Great job boys.

So finally, they close the doors and pull out of the gate. Great, where taking off right? Not so fast. The plane has to de-ice. So we ANOTHER two hours just to de-ice the plane. We finally took off at 6pm, a mere 4 hours after we were supposed to.

The delays, of course, were blamed on the "snowstorm" that had rolled into Paris.

I have lived in Michigan most of my life, and my definition of a snowstorm is something dropping nearly 15-21 inches of snow. This French "Snowstorm" dropped what amounted to a quarter of an inch of snow. So a quarter of an inch of snow cancelled flights, delayed others, and made my life a living hell for one day.

I'm glad I'm finally home. I've got no sleep between 10am Wednesday (Berlin time) got to bed on Thursday night at 11pm Michigan time (5am Berlin time), which is probably why I feel like this blog post isn't flowing at all. Maybe when I've slept enough I can write something witty and coherent. But for now, I'll just be glad to be home.

Hello, US of A. Good to see you again.

Get Off Tiger already! Your mom just did!

2009-12-15T01:01:00.004+01:00

When I was growing up, I always held a very high opinion of reporters and journalists. My parents, from as far back as 6, always had me reading newspapers and watching the nightly news. While many other kids my age were watching cartoons or playing Super Mario, I more than likely was watching Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and the like. It explains why today, I tend to know so much about what's going on in the world, much to the astonishment and confusion of others (Did you know an iceberg is on a collision course with Australia?)

Anyways, at that age, Journalists were the gold standard. I trusted them. They were on TV, so they must be respectable, right? Possibly even heroes.

Of course, at that age, I also believed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were heroes. Silly Josh.

Today, I know better. The media by and large, is a complete joke, more in line with the William Randolph Hearst-era of "Yellow Journalism" than any respectable journalism. The "innovation" of 24 hour news in the U.S. has, I think, essentially turned major news outlets like NBC, CBS, Fox News, and CNN into Tabloid Media. No different in alot of ways than The National Enquirer. In today's media world, stories about Britney Spear's shaving her head and smashing a car with an umbrella get more coverage than the two wars and crap economy were currently dealing with. Although I will say Britney seems to have a natural swing. Perhaps Cricket is in her future.

The reason I bring this all up, of course, is that I sit here and chuckle at the Tiger Woods debacle that is unfolding before our very eyes. So big in fact that it is making top headlines in Germany, where I'm sure Golf ranks somewhere between Rock-Skipping and Midget-Hurling in terms of being a followed sport.

Tiger Wood's face is on every newspaper, magazine, tv show, and internet page from here to Bangkok. Everything (and everyone) he's done over the past 2 weeks has made headlines. So right now, Im going to go ahead and say this:

I completely support Tiger Woods.

Why? Why would I support someone who's cheated on his wife with, at last count, 10 women? Who did it while having two kids, one of which is 10 months old?

It's simple, really. It's none of our business.

Now before I get into it a bit, let me first say that Tiger Woods is a god damn idiot. I don't understand people who cheat on their significant others. It's pretty low. It ruins lives. If you're that unhappy, how hard is it to simply get a divorce or break up with them? Naturally, there are other reasons for people to cheat beyond unhappiness. Thinking you're hot shit and can get away with it is one. One in which it sounds like Tiger has used as his excuse.

But, tell me this? Why exactly is this any of our business? The media has reported incessantly about this. How many other people have had marriage infidelity? Why is it so damn important?

Here we are, as a nation, getting out of arguably the most controversial war since Vietnam (Iraq), escalating another one in Afghanistan (Ask the Russians how that went for them) and enduring perhaps the worst recession the 21st century will ever see. On top of all of these, 20,000 delegates are meeting in Copenhagen at the moment, struggling perhaps in vain to come up with an agreement that will make an attempt to put a curb on greenhouse gases which are causing the entire planet's climate to radically change (another topic for another time). All of this is happening, and all we can talk about is Tiger Woods?

Get a life, people.

Tiger Woods is guilty of one thing. Possibly destroying his family. That's it. Not your family. Not my family, and not the family of millions of others. Now, because of constant media scrutiny, he's had corporate sponsors drop him, his kids and wife are now under more scrutiny than ever, and he's been essentially forced to stay away from the game that makes his living. Did he bring it on himself? Yes. Does it need to go to this far? Certainly not.

What laws has he broken? Is it against the law to cheat on your wife? No, it isn't. The only person he needs to answer to is his wife, not the media. He doesn't owe the media everything. I was on Yahoo! Sports the other day and came across a headline from a Yahoo 'Columnist" saying "Tiger Woods needs to open up and discuss his infidelity". It made me laugh. Really? Why? Because if he doesn't, you won't have anything to write about?

For all the negative comments you hear about Tiger from the media, let me show you something that gets ignored from just about everyone. Below is a list, courtesy of Wikipedia of the number of charities Tiger has either founded or is currently involved in.

-Tiger Woods Foundation
-In the City Golf Clinics and Festivals
-Tiger Woods Learning Center.
-Tiger Jam
-Chevron World Challenge
-Tiger Woods Foundation National Junior Golf Team

That is 6 different charities and events. Most athletes don't even have one. Woods has done much to give back to the community and help young, underpriviledged people, yet the media focuses on how evil he is because he cheated on his wife.

Coincide how he's treated and what he's done (charity-wise) with the NFL:

"According to Benedict and Yaeger, 21 percent of NFL players -- more than one in five -- have been charged with at least one serious crime, including two murder arrests, seven rape charges, 45 counts of domestic violence and 42 charges of assault and battery."

See a double standard? Where's the media focus on this?

What's the moral of my story. People aren't perfect. People make stupid decisions. The heroes of our country, the JFK's, FDR's, George Washington's and Martin Luther King's, weren't perfect. They had their flaws. Some of them larger than others. But they are remembered for the good that they did and the acceptance that people can be respected, even if they have personal flaws. Hopefully, Tiger learns his lesson. Hopefully, the media can focus on more pressing issues than a man's infidelity.

Although, I have to admit. It does make for a good joke or two.

"What's the Difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards...."

USA vs. England: Loser has to claim Madonna as their own

2009-12-04T02:40:00.000+01:00

I'll have to keep this one brief. Watched the World Cup draw today with nervous anticipation. The U.S. could not have asked for a better draw. Before the draw began, all I could think about is the 2006 cup, where we drew Italy, Czech Republic and Ghana. Group of Death and a 1st round exit ensued.

Would it be the same in 2010. Fortunately not. The U.S. got paired with England, Slovenia, and Algeria. Not a bad group. Not a bad group at all.

What are our chances? Decent. At least to make it out of the group stage. Slovenia and Algeria are very winnable. Two wins the U.S. will more than likely need to advance.

As far as England? We'll see. It depends on what U.S. team shows up. The side that shocked Spain and came within 20 minutes of beating Brazil, or the side that lost 5-0 to Mexico. (In all fairness, that was our B-squad)

The Brits are already invoking the spirit of 1966. The Yanks are already invoking the spirit of 1950. Maybe I need to throw on a Continental Army uniform and invoke the spirit of 1776.

Finally, whose decision was it to have Charlize Theron host? I love Charlize Theron. Great actress. Absolutely stunning. But having her host a football draw is like getting Rod Blagojevich to teach a class on political ethics. She looked absolutely clueless up there. More cringe-worthy moments than I care to mention.

That was one big dumb blonde joke waiting to happen.

Denmark: It isn't a suburb of Sweden

2009-12-01T01:00:00.004+01:00

"You're just a suburb of Sweden!"

That was the chant yelled out by about 20 or so U.S. fans who made the trek to the city of Aarhus to see the U.S. Men's National Soccer Team take on Denmark in an international friendly. Funny enough to prompt a chuckle? Perhaps. Original? Probably not. Being clever and original when it comes to songs and chants isn't a strongpoint for Americans, but yet again, Football isn't exactly our sport either.

I am fortunate enough to have met some great people while I've been in Berlin. A few of them had been planning on attending the match for weeks. I, on the other hand, had not been planning on going at all. A poor (literally) soul with about .16 euro cents to his name who couldn't afford to go.

Of course, said great friends decided it would be a travesty on the level with if I didn't go, and as a birthday present, bought me a ticket as well as taking care of my housing and transportation. For that, I'm definitely grateful, as it would turn out to be one of the craziest nights I've had here in Europe.

We left for Denmark the day of the game, with 7 guys crammed in a van. Beside me were a few buddies from the ICD, (Colin and Ben). A few buddies from Hairy Mary's, (Travis and Morton), and a two guys who I vaguely knew. (Tim and Rob) Also accompanying us on the trip were 63 mutual friends who went by the collective name "Berliner Pilsner".

The ride over was great. We joked around. Drank some beers.(not the driver)and bullshitted about what Danish girls must be like. Of the group, Morton was the only Dane (despite the deceiving British accent) surrounded by 6 other obnoxious Americans.

We arrived at Aarhus at about 6:30, drank some more beers and stumbled our way to the game, where we celebrated our arrival at the stadium by....drinking more beer. We stood in an entirely empty Away section, with about 14 other U.S. fans making the trip, along with 2 possibly deranged Danish fans who were rooting for the U.S. for no other reason other than that Benny Feilhaber played for the Aarhus club. These guys seemed to already be 8 beers deep by the time we met them, so for all I know, they probably thought magic elephants were parading around the field.

The U.S. started the game strong, scoring a nifty goal on a mistake by the Danish keeper in the 27th minute. Jeff Cunningham, who had just been called to the U.S. squad to possibly replace Charlie Davies, got the goal. Ironically enough, the game aired live on ESPN and when Cunningham scored, cameras immediately fixed on us, which you can see below. (I'm with the black flat cap at the :30 mark)

The U.S. went into the half at 1-0, and we were all happy...and drunk.

Of course, by the second half, things fell apart, as they often do for the U.S. side. 3 quick goals by Denmark pretty much nullified whatever good play had come out of the first half, and at one point, you started to wonder whether the U.S. team forgot they were playing a game at all. A complete lackluster effort through most of the second half. Although Edgar Castillo did make it into the game.

In the end, was a 3-1 defeat. Down, but not out. We all left and decided to hit up what we all thought must certainly had to be a crazy downtown Aarhus nightlife. I mean small town, the Danish, sheer insanity right?

An hour later, we stood outside one of the two open bars in the entire city, ironically called Sherlock Holmes because I'm sure it would have even taken Holmes hours to find a clue as to why the nightlife in this town was nearly non-existent.

We walked in and after a few hours and several beers were enjoying ourselves and partaking in horrible renditions of karaoke songs like "Piano Man". The single guys in our group did their best to hit on just about everything that moved, and the relationship guys just watched, laughed, and got more drunk.

At some point, I noticed that most of my friends had left the bar, so I went to walk outside to see where they were. Outside, I found Ben and Colin talking to someone who I didn't even bother to look at.

Me: "Hey, guy's what you up to?"

Ben: "Hey man, just talking to Frankie Hedjuk here"

Me: "Stop the bullsh....hey, you're Frankie Heyduk"

The man they were talking to was Frankie Heyduk, current left back for both the Columbus Crew and U.S. national team.

Holy shit.

It turns out that the U.S. national team decided they wanted to enjoy the Aarhus nightlife, just like us. And, much like us, they discovered it came down to 2 open bars.

As I started talking to Heyduk, I look over and see other players start making their way to the bar. Jozy Altidore, Ricardo Clark, Jeff Cunningham, Carlos Bocanegra. About a half hour later, I am standing in the bar, having a beer while the ENTIRE U.S. team is in the bar, singing Karoake (to sum up their singing: great on the field terrible on the mic), getting drunk, and having every single Danish girl in Aarhus hitting on them.

My condolences to my single friends. Whatever game they had at their disposal that night was torched the minute the team walked through those doors.

I got the chance to chat with quite a few of them. Heyduk is probably about the most laid back guy on the team. Nice guy. I've heard he's an avid surfer and he's definitely got that surfer style to him. Also managed to have a few conversations with both Jeff Cunningham and Carlos Bocanegra. Both were polite and very gracious. Cunningham in particular. I think he was still beaming over scoring a goal on his call-up. So we ended up chatting for about 10 minutes about things like the game, his season in MLS, and what kind of free shit he gets hooked up with.

Eventually, we stumbled home around 6:30, only to wake up at 9:30 to get back home. A good nap on the bus and a McDonald's Mexican Burger value meal made up for the nausea I felt for much of the morning.

So..in closing, I went from not expecting to attend the game at all, to watching the game and drinking with the U.S. team afterwards. Not a bad gig. My luck in partying with celebrities apparently knows no bounds:

-Have an NFL Quarterback crash on your couch (Check)
-Drink with the entire U.S. National Soccer team (Check).

Who knows. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to run into Obama and we can have a beer summit together.

Krakow Update

2009-12-01T00:49:00.002+01:00

So updating you on what I had mentioned about Krakow being mildly offensive. Here's the transportation schedule for a tour guide company for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps...which back then, the primary way to get there was...um...by train.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

2009-11-14T19:35:00.004+01:00

"Arbeit Macht Frei"

The words written on the gates of nearly every German concentration camp from World War II. In English, it roughly translates to "Work Makes You Free". Chances are, you've probably heard about the words before, most likely as you daydreamed in your high school history class. To many, the words mean nothing. Yet, as you stand at the entrance of Auschwitz, and the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" hang coldly above the gate where 1.5 million Jews were led obstentiously to their deaths, you realize how chillingly real those words become.

Today was our trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau. To say I was extremely excited to visit a death camp may sound inapporpriate for those of you who don't know about my strong interest in history, so let me just say that I had been looking forward to seeing the camps for some time. This was actually my second trip to a concentration camp. The first camp I visited was the Sachenhausen Concentration Camp in the town of Oranienburg just outside Berlin. Saschenhausen was used mainly for political prisoners and Soviet POWs, although later in the war,Jews were brought and murdered here, up to 10,000 I believe. Much of the camp was dismantled or burned down, and it's rather hard to get a feel for what happened there. Saschenhausen isn't the symbol of German opression. Auschwitz is.

We drove for an hour to see the Camp, and quickly got into a 3.5 hr English tour. We were taken inside the gates and shown around the barracks area. Much of the living quarters that the prisoners of Auschwitz used look more like military barracks than holding cells. And in fact, they were. Prior to Nazi occupation, the buildings were used by the Polish Military to house soldiers and supplies. Once the Nazis invaded Poland on Sept. 1st, 1939, that all changed.

While the exterior at first glance showed itself to have much in common with a contemporary prison (with barbed wire fences and watch-towers), it was the inside that detailed the madness and brutality that took place room. Each different barracks we were led into detailed everything about prisoner experiences in Auschwitz. Who was brought here. What they were forced to do. Where they were punished. What was taken from them. Everything. Each room, (from the SS "Tribunal" room where prisoners were given death sentences for something as little as sharing bread with another inmate) got progressively worse and worse (We were also shown "The Dark Room" where up to 20 prisoners at a time were forced into a lightless and seal-proof room, often to suffocate to death)

It isn't until we get to the possessions barrack that I had my first genuine jaw dropping, mouth covering experience.

We were lead into a dark room, about 15-20 yards in length, and on the left side of the room contains a lighted room behind a sheet of glass.

In this room contains the human hair of over 20,000 prisoners, mostly female.

The Sonderkommandos (prisoners forced by the SS to do specific tasks, such as disposal of bodies within camps) would be charged with shaving the heads of women after they had been gassed. This hair was then packed and sent to a German company, which used the hair to make everything from blankets to nets. The thought of a government trying to eradicate an entire population was bad enough, the fact that a company tried to profit from it made it almost unthinkable.

Much of the rest of the rooms were the same. One room contained thousands of children's shoes. The next contained thousands of clothes that formerly belonged to prisoners. You realize these people were literally stripped of everything they had.

After Auschwitz, we were driven to Birkenau, and although many of the barricks for Birkenau no longer stand, the chimneys and much of the fencing, railways, and other things still exist. The camp stretches as far as the eye can see. Once your hard, it's not hard to imagine over 90,000 people at a time were forced to live on this sprawling base.

It was an experience I was glad I was able to have. I honestly think everyone should have to visit these camps to understand the gravity of what happened in World War II. It's quite a thing for young Americans like myself to read about how horrible the atrocities were, and quite another thing to see with your own eyes where it happened.

As we left the camp, I couldn't help but think how anyone could possibly deny that the holocaust ever happened. There is so much evidence, so much documentation, and so many stories from those lucky few who survived. I imagine most people who take such a stand have probably never visited a place like Auschwitz. Or Dachau. Or Saschenhausen. It seems like nowadays, denying the holocaust ever happened is chic for some, either because it serves someone's political purpose (like Iran's Ahmadinejad) or perhaps because people simply don't learn. Humans kill each other for some of the most trivial reasons, yet after such an event as this, you would think we would have learned from our mistakes after coming to the brink.

Apparently, some of us still haven't.

Krakow: Mildly Offensive since 1945!

2009-11-13T23:56:00.003+01:00

We arrived in Krakow, Poland last night after what seemed like a 4 hour drive. I say it seemed like a 4 hour drive, because it should have been a 2 hour drive. I woke up from a nap to discover that we had apparently taken a wrong turn somewhere, and we're were now on some back-country roads in the middle of nowhere....in Poland.

^$%&^%!!!

Not to worry though, after stopping at a gas station to buy a map (and talk to an equally confused gas station attendant who spoke only Polish), we were back on the road and back on track. I got my first experience driving in Poland, which I suppose was as monumentous as say...driving on I-275 in Detroit. We arrived late last night so didn't really go out and see the city.

Today was adventure day, and I was pretty stoked. We made a trip down to the Old Town Center first. Very beautiful. Old churches. Old buildings. Old people. Just your typical European city. Krakow sort of reminds me of a 50 year old retired meth-abusing SuperModel. You can see it still has some beauty, and a long time ago it was probably extremely beautiful. But it also looks as if it's been put through the ringer a few times (and in this case, by the Commies)

Regardless, it is a wonderful city. After checking that out, we drove through the Jewish Quarter (and past Liam Nees...I mean Oskar Schindler's factory), before walking around the Wawot Castle as the sunset. Again, another fantastic structure which gave a great view of much of the rest of the city.

All in all a great day. And a great start to our little trip to the land of Golash and Lech Walesa. On a side note, I will probably never figure out this damn language. Everything seems to end in an 'e', 'y' or an 'i'. I saw a sign for computer repair with the words "komputery" written in big letters on the window. It is even harder trying to comprehend the language on the radio, although after every 5 minutes of talking, they seem to continuously play Lady GaGa music.

That's all for now.

Cheers.

*ON a side note, you may be wondering what makes Krakow "mildy offensive" as my title suggests. I have a picture from a tour guide brochure which I need to upload (and have to dedicate a short post to). Regardless, you will know what I'm talking about once you see the picture.

Road Trippin' It.

2009-11-13T10:58:00.002+01:00

So today's random blog update takes place from Krakow, Poland. I can't say it's from "lovely" Krakow because I haven't actually had a chance to go see the city yet, but that'll come later today, and there will be another post talking about that.

My girlfriend's parents are in town, and were nice enough to take me and Noel on a little road trip through East Germany and Poland. First stops on our trip were Leipzig and Dresden, one city known for absolutely nothing and the other known for being blasted to smithereens in WWII.

The first stop was at Leipzig. Now I can't honestly say that Leipzig is known for nothing because that's not true. The first major protests to take place against the GDR Regime (German Democratic Republic, or Communist East Germany for you non-history types)happened right here in Leipzig. But other than that, I don't really know much about the city itself, and to be honest, it isn't the most attractive German city I've ever visited. Driving into the city, you get to see nothing but all of the gaudy, uniform Communist-era apartment buildings and structures that helped give the Reds a giant 'F' in architectural creativity. This is also one city (much like Berlin) that doesn't benefit from winter weather or overcast skies, as the more overcast it is, the uglier the city gets. Once we got downtown, we were able to see a bit of old town Leipzig, which was nice, but again, nothing to write home about. If I were going to rank this city on a list of German cities I've visited, I wouldn't put it too much higher than Madgeburg (the Flint, MI of Germany)

Dresden, however, was a different story. We got into Dresden late on Wednesday night, and coming in, I thought it might be more of the same of this city as well. But I was wrong. Downtown (Old town) Dresden was quite impressive. And very beautiful. Old buildings with neo-classical designs found everywhere. Palaces. Churches. Amazing. What impressed me the most was the Frauenkirche. A beautiful church located in the heart of old town. Looking at the Church, you would look at it and marvel and how it somehow managed to survive the bombings of WWII.

Truth is, it didn't. Looking at a postcard not far from the Church, I saw a picture of the church lying in absolute rubble just after the war. The Church, like much of the city, was literally rebuilt from scratch. Dresdeners worked tirelessly to rebuild and restore much of the buildings that helped give the city the nickname of the "Florence on the Elba".

As I've gone through cities like Dresden, and Berlin, it almost makes you sad over the amount of history lost thanks to the Nazis. Here you had a totalitarian regime that was in power for barely 13 years, yet they still managed to wipe out thousands of years of German history because of their own ignorance and aggressiveness. Berlin would easily be on par with Paris and Rome in terms of its beauty if many of the buildings that had been constructed before the war had survived. The Communists took over the East, effectively replacing one dictatorship with another, and did nothing but cheapen the look of much of East Germany. What a shame.

That's all I got for now. Off to explore Krakow a bit for the next couple of days. Will tell you all a bit about what the city is like.

Cheers.

Um...well....CRAP!

2009-11-03T16:12:00.003+01:00

So naturally, I wrote my last post admonishing myself for not writing on my blog more. And what do I do? Wait another couple months! Hooray for procrastination!

Since my last blog post was on June 8th of this year, I'll give you all an update on what has happened since then.

-I finished working for the Lichtenberger Sprachinstitut (the children's school I worked for) on July 15th. That job was filled with its ups and downs. I had to deal with a handful of psychotic German, a sometimes psychotic management, and the pains of driving 450km a week. All in a car just a little bigger than the desk your computer is sitting on. There were positives to the job though, and ironically enough, for as much as I bitched about the job and the travel, I felt myself getting just a bit emotional saying goodbye to the kids. Sure, there were plenty of kids (mostly my 8 year olds) that hated the very idea of English and tried to make my life a living hell for 6 months, but for everyone of them there were 2 or 3 genuine great kids, who came to class each week excited to see me, excited to learn english, and excited to act like a goofball just like their teacher. On the last day, they were crying, and some had death clutches on my leg as they hugged me and wouldn't let go. A good experience nonetheless, and I learned a little bit about German life that most Expats in Berlin never get to see.

-I've also done a bit of traveling in the last 6 months. In May, my sister paid a visit for 10 days and we took a weekend trip over to London. Great city. Had the opportunity to do most of the "tourist attraction" type stuff such as Westminster Abbey, Parliament, etc. But considering how much of a history buff I am, I didn't mind. The only downer of London was that it was so god damn expensive. Just eating out cost me and my sister an arm and a leg. And Don't even get me started with transportation.

In June, I took another weekend trip, this time to Rome. My mother was here to visit this time, apparnetly as part of the Stanton Family Tour. Of all the cities I have visited so far, Rome is perhaps my favorite. History literally surrounds you everywhere. It was surreal. I know it is odd (and perhaps a bit nerdy) to try to visualize the city and its inhabitants thousands of years ago, but while wandering the streets, and seeing both the Colosseum and Palatine Hill up close, it was hard not to. Italians are also an interesting bunch. Super Friendly, extremely helpful, but also doing just about anything to try to rip you off. Whether it was food being mysteriously added to our restaurant bills, or the hotel trying to add an extra 30 euro to our hotel bill for no reason, it seems like they try to squeeze every last dime out of you. I did manage to hear one of the worst (and yet awesome) pick-up lines used in quite a while. As I left the Colosseum, a vendor trying to peddle his merchandise saw a pretty girl in front of me and said the following:

"Hey Baby! Where you come from? Paradise?!?! aaayyyyyyyy!!!!"

All I could think about for the rest of the week was the creepy Italian guy from 'Eurotrip'.

In the last of my travels, I actually came back to the United States in August and spent some time with the Blanchet family. We took a 7 day cruise to Mexico (Cabo and Puerto Vallarta) which was a great time and relaxing, before I went back to Michigan for 10 days and spent some time with the family. I definitely took advantage of the euro-to-dollar exchange a little too much as I was a bit broke when I got back to Germany.

I'll leave it at that for now. I'll go into my internship with the ICD and Graduate School in another post.

Cheers.

Dubai

2009-06-08T20:58:00.004+02:00

It's hard to imagine that when I stepped on board the Lufthansa flight bound for Frankfurt last October that I could ever think I would, in 6 months time, see a Middle Eastern country. Americans in the Middle East, I imagined, were about as popular as the Catholic Church in a Gay Rights parade. It would have been even harder to imagine that that country would be the United Arab Emirates, and that I would be seeing a city that seemed like it was built overnight. A city that, from what I had heard, sounded more like some sort of mirage in the middle of the desert rather than an actual city.

Dubai.

But that's just where I found myself in early March, stepping off an Air France flight at Dubai International Airport and instantly feeling the 85 degree heat and the ever constant Sun. So why exactly was I coming to Dubai?

As in most of my awesome experiences since I left the United States, I again, have the Blanchet family to thank. Noel's brother Gaston, is graduating from UCF this year, and had been interested in checking out the possibility of finding employment with a company in Dubai. Noel's mother was also celebrating her birthday, so they all decided to take a trip to see the city. And luckily for me, they asked Noel and I to come along for the ride. 10 Days spent in the desert.

I didn't really know what to expect from the city. Like everyone else, I had heard about how big it had gotten and how fast. How they were coming up with crazy things like the Burj Dubai, which is a mile high, or the Burj Al-Arab which is a hotel a ways into the water with a helipad and a tennis court on the top.

Let me say that Dubai is one of the strangest cities I have ever been to. In the 10 days we were there, I rarely felt like I was ever actually in the Middle East, but rather in some city in South Florida. The entire city has the look and lifelessness of a city like Miami. I don't mean lifelessness as necessarily a bad thing, but in the sense that it is so modern that there is nothing that really speaks for Arab culture in the city. Everything is so incredibly Westernized, that you almost have to go out of your way to find anything resembling Arab culture. The Sheiks and Architects who have planned on transforming Dubai into a world city have essentially borrowed just about everything from other cities that make them unique and put it in Dubai. There is an exact replica of the Chrysler Building. They are creating a second Louvre (ok, this is in Abu Dhabi, not Dubai, but still..) They also want to create a neighborhood in Dubai that looks to the smallest detail exactly like how a neighborhood in Lyon, France would look. One can also not go a block without running into an American restaurant like T.G.I. Friday's, Chili's, or even On the Border. Hell, I thought I saw a Southern Fried Chicken restaurant one time when we were on the highway. The city, as I found out was populated with 80% expats, with the rest being Emirates and Indian and Pakistani workers hired for construction. It was probably the closest I've felt to being in the States since I left in October.

Don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy what Dubai had to offer. I was able to get a lot of fun activities in. The beaches were fantastic. We went sailing for a bit in the Persian Gulf. We took A-TVs out on the sand dunes in the middle of the desert. We also go to see some of the more out-there things like the Dubai Mall which had the indoor ski mountain.

In addition, Noel's parents had friends who were stationed in Dubai as British diplomats, so they also took us outside the city to see Arab culture and see some of the markets and other things that one normally wouldn't get to see.

All in all, it was a great, albeit weird vacation. I don't know when I'd ever go back to the city, but it's great to say that I had gotten to see Dubai with my own eyes.

Cheers.

So I guess I have some catching up to do....

2009-06-08T20:49:00.002+02:00

A little over 4 months since my last post, and I'm finally putting in my next entry. To call me a lazy bastard over these last couple months just wouldn't cut it. For anyone who genuinely follows my blog and wonders "hey I wonder what Josh is doing right THIS SECOND.", then I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Don't worry, I'm not dead.

I have just had a genuine lack of energy in updating this. I probably should have. I have visited 3 countries since my last post. I'm visiting another one next week. Information that you probably should privy to considering some of the locales are a little out there (okay, only one is a little out there). I've decided I'm going to make more of an effort to keep this thing updated, so that the people that I've unfortunately lost contact with lately have a chance to at least see what I've been up to lately. So what I'll do is make a post for each of the last 3 countries I've visited, and tell you about the experience in each.

I have updated my blogskin as well. I jumped on here last week to find that the background looked all screwed up, so I went with another template. Thoughts are always welcome.

Cheers.

My Sugarlumps and Life in Poverty

2009-01-29T13:12:00.003+01:00

So if you have any good taste at all in this world, and judging by how many people still watch 'American Idol', many of you don't, then I'm sure by now you've joined the cult following that has surrounded the HBO series "Flight of the Conchords". I first watched this guys when I was a senior in college when a friend of mine showed me some Youtube clips of them from a stand-up show they had done a few years prior. Absolutely hilarious bunch. Their humor doesn't always reach everyone. Their show's success is based dry, very ironic sense of humor. One of those quirky, awkward kind of shows which is guaranteed to make some laugh their asses off and others turn away to find solace in token sitcoms like "Will and Grace". If you've never watched, the show is about two New Zealanders named Bret and Jemaine as they try to make it big in the music industry in New York City, along with their manager Murray who works for the New Zealand consulate, which in the show is a one-floor office in a small, cramped building.

The latest episode deals with the band being dirt poor. They have no money, and are late on paying their bills, so they turn to prostitution to try and make a buck. Jemaine explains to Bret that women dig him because of his 'Sugarlumps' and what follows is a fucking funny song that is classic FOTC.

Watching that episode made me think about my post-college life in (relative) poverty. No, I haven't turned to prostitution just yet I do already have a gigolo name lined up: "Tommy Magnum". So if a guy in Berlin named Tommy asks you if you like what you see, just know that I expended all of my options before that moment and that I more than likely will give you some sort of discounted rate.

No, my life, while it has been an amazing experience this past year or two, has albeit been one in which I have lived with little or no money at all. Now, there's nothing to say that being poor will not allow you to have fun, because as I stand here today 3,500 miles from where I previously lived, I am a bit of a contradiction to that notion. But suffice to say, having money definitely makes living a helluva lot easier.

Now, from a 24 year old's perspective, let's clear up what exactly it means to be poor. Obviously my level or poorness cannot even begin to match what many Americans face or what many people around the world face on an everyday basis. I am fortunate enough to have a roof over my head and for the most part, eat. The type of poor we'll talk about is how young people view poverty. Now, when you grow up, and this is especially in the case in high school, other kids would look at 'wealthy' kids and often say "oh, that kid is rich" or "that kid has a lot of money" Bullshit. They aren't rich. Their parents are rich. They are simply living off their parents wealth, or as I like to say "sucking on the golden teet". Those were the kids who, with a few notable exceptions, were born with silver spoons in their mouths and never worked a day in their lives. Never was this more true than when I attended high school in Boca Raton, FL, where kids drove to school in BMWs and Lexus IS 300s. (I would have taken my 1996 Jeep Cherokee over any of those cars anyday) When you get to college, this perception of wealth starts to change a little bit.

College begins, and you immediately realize that to an extent, you aren't living with your parents anymore and you're somewhat on your own. When I was in college, obviously, I didn't have a lot of money, but technically, I wasn't exactly "poor". I won the a scholarship from the state of Florida which paid 75% of my college tuition, so that was never a huge problem. My parents were kind enough to pay for my rent, food, and books while I was there, so those were never worries as well. I was what you called "College Poor". Not exactly worrying about eating, but not exactly "making it rain" as the kids call it nowadays. You had money for the bare essentials, which in no particular order, were as follows:

a) beer

b) beer

c) beer

d) beer

e) beer

Now occasionally, you have to throw in a road trip or two into those experiences, such as my two trips to Panama City for Spring Break or my memorable trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 07'., but even in those cases, my limited funds were going towards beer purchases. What other money I had went to paying all the f'ing towing tickets I accumulated over my 4 years in Tally. (5 in all, burn in hell tow-truck services!) How my car and liver survived Florida State is to this day, a mystery.

No, my first experience with life on my own and what it meant to have little money at all came right after I graduated from college. At the time, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I mean, I did..to an extent. I knew I wanted to work for the U.S. State Department at some point. I knew I wanted to attend graduate school at some point. But those were things that weren't going to happen immediately. No one just waltzes into a govt. job right out of college. So, looking over my options, I chose a job as a Career Adviser with the University of Michigan.

The job was a one year gig, so it was great in that it gave me enough time to figure out what I wanted to do in the next couple of years and how I wanted to get there (i.e. come to Europe) But the job was also one of the most low-paying jobs I probably could have taken. Every two weeks, I pulled in 820 dollars a paycheck. Not incredibly bad, yes. $1620 a month. But if Ann Arbor is anything, cheap it isn't. Subtract from that $850 in rent, a cell phone bill, a utilities bill, TV bill, car insurance, and other things and that money disappears pretty quickly. So for most of my year with U-M, I probably didn't have any more than $400 in the bank account to last through the month. This meant that I was covering my bare essentials, but was doing very little else besides staying home or finding free activities on U-M campus.

It sucked. A great deal. But it wasn't completely bad. I learned a thing or two about budgeting, and more importantly, that if I didn't need something, I really didn't need to buy it (something a lot of people seem to have trouble with).

Over the following summer, I was able to recoup my money a bit, working two jobs over the summer and pulling in over $6000 to bring to Europe.

That money has lasted me a good 4 1/2 months now, and through food, travelling, and other expenses, it is finally starting to dry up. As of this moment, I currently have about 300 Euro in the bank left. So after enjoying the freedom of travelling with relative ease, I am back to being frugal and back to budgeting. Right now, I'm working a teaching job that pays me 980 Euro a month, and chances are, I will end up taking a second job at some point to make some more money. It seems kind of ironic that I have repeatedly worked two jobs at a time since college, and probably will so again. But now, I understand that sometimes, for some people, you have to work twice as hard just to get by. You also have to work twice as hard to get what you want out of life.

I, like many people our age, was sometimes guilty of looking at people with little to no money through a jaded lens. Obviously, they didn't work hard enough or fucked up their lives somehow, many of us thought.. But now I realize that so many of these people do in fact work harder than most. Many are working 70 hours a week, or two jobs, or sometimes even 3 jobs just to earn a living, provide for their family, or work their way to their dream jobs. It makes you appreciate the sort of self-sacrifice and determination many have, even if deep down, you know some of them might never get out of that position again.

I didn't necessarily have to be in the position I'm in. I could have taken safe jobs right out of college, and I could have easily worked in positions that would have put me in a stable financial situation. But coming to Europe and teaching was my choice, and one I knew I made with the understanding that the next couple of years weren't going to be incredibly fulfilling financially. To get to where you want in life, you need to be willing to go through an incredible amount of shit to get to it. That time for me is now, and, considering the experiences I have had so far, I wouldn't have it any other way.

My First Official Cap

2009-01-25T22:16:00.000+01:00

Since I arrived in Berlin in November, I have been fortunate enough to have started training with my friend Travis' Football team, British Lions FC. The team is a collection of Germans, Brits, Americans, and Canadians playing in a low-tier German league (I wouldn't call it a rec league, but I wouldn't call it a beer league either) here in Berlin. I had been anxious to get involved in something when I got into Berlin, both as a chance to exercise and as a chance to meet some people.

Growing up, I was never much of a Football player. I played a few seasons of indoor football in the winter, mostly as something to do while I wasn't playing Baseball, and mostly because my family couldn't afford to let me play Hockey. When I got to Florida State, however, I started to get back into the game. I was never very good at shooting, or dribbling, or running for that matter. But some friends I had needed a goalkeeper for their intramural squad. So I figured, why the hell not?

Turns out, I had was a half-decent goalkeeper. The position seemed simple enough for me. All I have to do is throw myself in front of the ball. I did the same playing Catcher in baseball all those years. Besides, most people usually don't want to play keeper, so it was the best way for me, as a shitty football player, to get some playing time. Maybe that's why I was halfway decent at it. I started to get more and more interested in playing, and as a result, began to have a bigger appreciation of the sport as a whole.

Which leads us back to now. Travis' told me that his team was in need for a goalie, so it seemed like the perfect chance to play and enjoy myself. I've been training since the end of November/early December with the guys. A good bunch of guys they all are, and some good players too.

Now the funniest part about trying to play in a German rec league is that as an American, you actually have to apply for a player pass (or transfer) from the U.S. Soccer Federation to play. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, especially for someone who never even sniffed an organized league. But in a way, it for some reason also feels pretty badass when your transfer comes through, because you almost feel like some sort of important player that the U.S. Soccer Fed has to push through (Not that they would throw me on the MNT anyway). It took all the way up to last week for me to get my player pass in and approved. So after practicing for that amount of time and not being able to play in actual games, I finally had a chance to play in an official game with the team.

That first game was last Saturday, and I'm happy to say that in my first official cap with the team, we emerged victorious 3-2. A crazy game at that, albeit a very sloppy one. I did alright in my first game. Made a few mistakes, including one which ended up becoming a goal for the other team, but as they say, you live and you learn, and in the end all that mattered was that we won. The pitch was slippery and wet as hell, so it wreaked havoc trying to field the ball, but for the most part, I was able to get some control of the ball. I also managed to get shoulder checked by a 250lb. guy on the other team while going for a ball, so my shoulder was killing me for a while.

All in all, It was fun getting out there and playing with the guys, and luckily, it will be something I get to look forward to now for the rest of the year.

If They're Not Throwing Shoes at You, You're Not Trying Hard Enough...

2009-01-22T02:13:00.003+01:00

Let me start off this epic blog entry (and recap my day today) by playing a scene for you, courtesy of our friends at Youtube and some bored 39-year old male sitting at home who took the time to load it online (Go you!)

In this scene, I (Played handsomely by Arnold Schwarzenegger)am driven to near insanity by a legion of 4 year old kids and finally let loose on all of them.

(The quality of the video is crap, but it's the only video I could find of the scene)

Kintergarden is like the ocean. Really?

Funny eh? Get a good laugh because that is almost exactly what happened to me today while teaching my Wednesday classes.

Now I have the vast majority of my classes on Monday and Tuesday, and about 95% of those kids in the classes are great, well-behaved kids. Wednesday, is a completely different story. On Wednesdays, I have 4 classes running from 11:45 to about 4:30. 3 of them are classes consisting of 4-year olds while the other class is a group of 8-year olds.

With the exception of one class, these kids are easily the most misbehaving, possibly psychotic bunch I've seen yet. I don't know if they all collectively were just having a shitty day or perhaps there is some sort of "Hate on a Ginger" Day in Germany that I am unaware of. But for the good chunk of the day, these kids did everything from scream at the top of their lungs to fighting each other to throwing chairs (not the plastic ones, I'm talking the large wooden variety) and altogether just refusing to do what I ask of them.

Now granted, two things have generally kept me from unleashing hell on them. First and foremost, these kids are, as I said before, 4 and 8 years old. At that age, they've got enough energy to power half the continental U.S. and all they want to do is play, eat, and crap their pants. I wouldn't for a second pretend that when I was at that age, I was some sort of saint, because I wasn't. I was usually hyped up on so much sugar that my teacher's probably thought I had ADHD. Secondly, and the thing that I have had the most trouble with since I've started is, I am typically a very laid-back person. It's not easy for me to go off on someone (unless they deserve it), but it's even harder for me to go off on someone when as little as 3 years ago were still getting breast-fed. It would take a lot for me to yell at a little kid, but after suffering through 3 classes of insanity, I was ready to snap. Naturally, it was a girl in my 4th and final class who made it happen.

My last class of the day is a group of 12 4-year olds. They, generally, have been pretty good. A few bad eggs here and there but nothing too bad. I have them all sitting down on the floor and we're going over English flashcards. As I'm talking, a boy takes his shoe off and starts banging it on the cards. The kids start laughing and I go along with it "Ha ha that's good" I say to myself. Just then, I get a glance in my periph to see a girl standing up and unwinding her shoe at me with full force. It was a full on, Nolan Ryan-esque delivery, folks. The shoe ends up hitting me in the shoulder.

As the kids all erupted in laughter, I finally had it. I felt the rage building up inside of me as I stood up and screamed out "You made me angry! You won't like it when I'm angry" Just then, I clothes began to tear apart as I transformed into a gigantic Green Monster. The children screamed and ran and I roared out "HULK SMASH!!" and proceeded to punch holes through the walls and destroy cars in the parking lot.....

......okay, so it didn't happen quite like that. But I did yell at her for throwing the shoe. The kids quickly realized I didn't find it funny and got quiet. Very...quiet. The girl asked for her shoe back. I refused and instead put it on the highest point of the room I could find and told her she would get it back when the class was over with. At that, she remained silent for the rest of the class until she apologized to me as class gave out, and I promptly gave the shoe back.

This had been one of the things I had been worried about when I took this job in December. How much of this is going to be actual teaching and not simply babysitting for 45 minutes? It will be interesting to see how the next 5 months go. I guess the beauty of it is that luckily I have only signed a 6 month contract. So if this continues, by July, I can find another position teaching somewhere else. If I had signed a 1-year contract, I might as well had been signing my last will and testament.

It's amazing what one will do to earn a living. Here I am, 24 years old with a double major in Communications and International Affairs, who just finished training to teach English to adults, but now finds himself teaching Musical Chairs to 4 year olds.

Boo.....ya.

Holy crap that took a while. Whew!

2009-01-22T01:53:00.003+01:00

So after a few hours of painstakingly of surfing the net and sort of teaching myself how to do HTML code, I managed to throw together a new template and some extra things onto my blog. Definitely an upgrade I would say over the last one. Blogger doesn't exactly give out the most creative designs for its bloggers. But this one will do just nicely. Thanks to Scott Tsuchiyama for creating a header (which I still need to figure out how to incorporate into this damn thing) In honor of him, I present to you "Africa" by Toto

Sie hat ein poopy!

2009-01-10T11:08:00.002+01:00

So this week concluded my first official week working as a English Teacher for the Lichtenberger Sprachinstitut. Over the course of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I taught 16 classes of kids ranging from age 4 with two classes of kids who are 8 years old..or "acht jahre alt" as I would say with my budding German skills. It would probably the most of up and down first week of any kind of job I've ever had. I've had jobs where the first week has been absolute hell (Working at 56 Union in Nantucket) and jobs were I had a good run of things after week one(UofM). But never have I had a job where I was both cursing it and praising it almost every other hour like this one.

If there is one thing that I absolutely hate in this world it is starting a new job. It sucks. It doesn't matter what job I do, I always get that nerve-racking feeling that comes with starting something that you almost have no idea how to do. In this case, I have never taught children. My only experience with kids lately has been my 4 year old Niece, and that's easy. I just play with her and spoil the crap out of her. With these kids, you've got to teach them AND babysit them. Not a good combination for anyone.

The night before I was to work, I was a wreck. My heart was in my throat, and I couldn't fall asleep. I might have managed to fall in that in between period where you know you're supposed to be asleep am somehow still aware of everything. Before I know it, it is 5:30 am and I have to get up to get ready for my first class at 8am. Normally, I would have no business getting up that f'ing early, only my school was nice enough to make my first class AN HOUR AND A HALF AWAY in the small town of Milow.

So already grumpy and hungry from having to rush out on time, I managed to get into my car and get the GPS going. This is the first time I've driven in Germany, so I have no idea what to expect. I think to myself, "Can't be much different than the States". Finally leave Schoenhauser Allee at 6:00am. A good two hours until my first class. Plenty of time to get there, right?

Now, I have to stop this epic story for just a minute. I have been in Europe for close to 3 1/2 months now, two of which have been spent in Germany, and I think I'll take the time to go on my first tirade on the German people. I have found the Germans for the most part, especially Berliners, to be very nice, very gracious people. I have yet to have anyone give me trouble, and it seems like this is one of the few major cities where people don't really have that big city mentality of "if you died tomorrow I wouldn't notice or care". The Germans for sure have their quirks, and over time you do notice them. They are obsessed with punctuality. The trains must always leave precisely when they mean to (Mussolini would have been impressed), and if you ever tell someone you're going to meet them at 4pm, you better damn well be there at 4pm. But ouf course that is not a bad trait to have actually, and from growing up with a dad who stressed professionalism and hard work in whatever you did, I definitely appreciate it. But the thing I have noticed in the last week, and grown increasingly frustrated over, is something that is no different than any other place in the United States:

They are shitty drivers.

I don't know if it's just driving in a big city or just a general lack of that"let's get a move on" mentality that most Americans tend to have, but I found myself screaming inside my car at other drivers for pretty much most of my first week. Taking turns at 2 kpm. Waiting 8 seconds to go through the green light that lasts only 10. (Seriously? 10 second green lights?) For the most part, most drivers I've encountered seemed to have little idea how to drive in snow. But then again, I'm from Michigan, and of the opinion that most people not living in a northern state don't know how to drive anyway. When it's your first week, and your trying to get to schools on time or feel the wrath of your abuse of the punctuality philosophy, it gets to you quick.

So back to the story, I head out for my first class, and of course, I am fortunate enough to be driving there in the middle of a snowstorm that has been going on the better part of two hours. Needless to say, the roads and visibility were a nightmare. I made it to my first class at 8:20, a full two hours and 20 minutes after I had left. It looked light this was going to be a mistake from the get-go.

As I progressed through most of my classes, I found that it wasn't all that bad. The kids, for the most part, are just happy to be there, and give you little to no trouble, as long as long as you are keeping them entertained, which is pretty easy to do. Discipline wise, I never really had too many issues. The 4 year olds for the most part look at you at an authority figure, so they'd often think twice about doing something again once I had asked them to stop it. The 8 year olds, on the other hand, liked to test me. And once they realized how little German I spoke, I think they tried to take advantage of the situation to an extent. But being with someone and showing them you are not happy crosses over into many languages, so for the most part, these kids got the idea and played nice.

The funniest part of the week came on Tuesday, when I was teaching my last class of the day to 12 4-year olds just outside of Berlin. I have them in a circle and going over flashcards when all of a sudden, this girl to the left to me let's out a fart that in terms of loudness probably could only be beaten by a flautulent cow. I could have heard this thing from Denmark. As the class starts cracking up (as children appreciate fart jokes probably more than anyone), the girl next to her turns to the class and screams out "Sie hat ein poopy!" (She has a poopy!) At this point, I f'ing lose it, and for a good 3 minutes, the rest of the class and I are just laughing our asses off.

So much for maintaining that professionalism, but then again, I get paid to sing the Hokey Pokey.

My last class finished on Wednesday, and I felt pretty relieved by it. It didn't go as bad as I thought it would, and it seems like a job that I might actually do well at. I honestly had my doubts as to whether this was the right job for me, or whether I had made the right decision taking it. But I think I have. I don't really have the luxury of being able to pick and choose my jobs anyway. It's pretty simple. Job = Visa. So I'm just grateful to be working after 2 months of being a lazy asshole.

So I get to relax for the weekend. Noel left for the States' today for a week which sucks, but on the flip side, I have friends from Prague coming into town tonight as well as a going away party to attend for a friend who's leaving Berlin for the lovely city of Vancouver.

Great White north, eh?

"It could either be fireworks or artillery rounds..."

2009-01-02T20:27:00.000+01:00

I've often wondered what it would have been like to have been in a major city during a bombing raid in World War II. London during the Battle of Britain or when the Allies completely laid waste to Dresden towards the end of the war. This year is my first year in Berlin and my first New Year's in the city, and from the celebrations going on in the city, you could have swore there was some kind of battle raging throughout the city and nobody had bothered to tell me.

Berliners don't believe in any sort of normal American New Year's celebration. No "let's sit our ass on the couch and watch Dick Clark and 1 million more people have more fun than us". No, Germans buy tons of fireworks and proceed to shoot them off anywhere and everywhere. Streets. Sidewalks. Subway cars. On top of Subway cars. I could barely walk a block without some firecrackers whizzing past my head or people launching M-80s into empty streets. Watching all of this made me laugh thinking that as a Michigan resident, I have to drive all the way to Ohio just to buy damn fireworks. I should have just came to Berlin.

Anyways, Myself and Noel got to spend the New Year's together, and luckily we had some of her friends from her program coming into town for the festivities. We decided to meet up at the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) festivities going on downtown. The Brandenburg Gate New Year's is pretty much the equivalent to Time's Square. They had a concert stage set up behind the gate, and on either side of the road that leads out from it were nothing but small tents selling gluhwein, brotwurst, and other things. We met up with the freinds and had a good time there for a bit. We didn't plan on staying there until 12 because we didn't feel like fighting our way through 1.2 million people, and we also had a party we were invited to. On top of all this, there was a awful cover band playing on stage playing some aborted version of Queen's "We Will Rock You" and other shitty 90s American music. They were all dressed up in red leather..and to be quite honest from my viewpoint the lead singer looked like a female..until he started singing and I realized the singer made RuPaul look like Sylvester Stallone.

This night wasn't without its ups and downs of course. While at the Gate, I managed to break Noel's camera. The camera she had for only 4 months. And this was after we had been at the Gate for barely an hour. Needless to say, she wasn't thrilled with me. And I don't blame her. I politely explained that the camera, under a bout of depression, wrote a suicide note and jumped from my hand periously into the ground, but for whatever reason she didn't buy it. I don't know why...solid reason if you ask me.

Around 11:00 and 7 camera breaking apologies later, we made our way to a party that we had been invited to by some friends. Awesome place. Penthouse apartment overlooking much of the city. Great view of the fireworks and festivities. Most of the people were all expats and members of the Toytown germany website (A website for english speakers in Germany) Had a great time and met some really cool people.

Now, coming back to the whole Germans-fireworks thing. So 12 came around and everyone in the apt celebrated. The view outside was absolute insanity. You could hear fireworks going off every couple second for about an 1/2 hour to an hour. Looking out at the buildings and the landscape, you could see nothing but fireworks and clouds of smoke rising from the streets. I thought maybe the Russians had thought "eh...better late than never" and just drove their tanks through to West Berlin and started shooting.

This New Year's was a first for a lot of things...not the least of which was trying to stop a guy from committing suicide. Definitely a first for me. Not that I see a lot of attempted suicides. I've never seen one. Never knew anyone that committed suicide (at least personally) So when I saw a guy climbing the balcony at about 2:30..my first instinct was to just run to the balcony and grab the guy. Myself and a few others managed to grab the guy and yank him back, who was about halfway up the railing when we got him. From what I had heard, at least hearsay, was that the guy's girlfriend had broken up with him that night. Talk about the absolute worst fucking timing in the world to break up with someone. The guy was shitfaced and apparently decided to call it a night by leaping off the ledge. Haven't heard what happened to him after this, but hopefully he's got his head in the right spot now.

So all in all a good time...friends, booze, fireworks..and luckily no foreign invasions..

cheers.

Merry Christmas to all...except the New York Jets

2008-12-25T14:04:00.002+01:00

Just wanted to wish all of my friends and family back in the United States and here in Europe a merry Christmas. While this is the first time I won't be celebrating Christmas with my family in Michigan, I get to instead celebrate my first Christmas with my girlfriend here in Berlin. So a good trade off.

On another note, I hope every single member of the New York Jets got coal in their stockings for Christmas. After losing 13-3 to a joke of a Seattle Seahawks team, they now have to beat the division leading Miami Dolphins in their last game and pray to the football gods that a few other teams lose in order for them to have a shot at making the playoffs. For a team that started the season 8-3..and is now 9-6...this is a typical Jets collapse in the making. All I know is that I'm glad I'm not in the U.S. to witness this collapse and that I don't get as mad about the Jets losing as I used to (and certain former college roommates can attest to).

Good wishes to all of you and I hope you all have a great day. I know I am.

Cheers.

My Big Fat American Football Sunday

2008-12-21T14:21:00.004+01:00

One thing that has absolutely sucked since I have been here has been my inability to keep up with, or even watch, American sports. Baseball is in it's offseason, but the Detroit Red Wings and New York Jets are in the midst of their seasons (both my favorite teams), and it's been agonizing not being able to watch the both of them.

I've had the hardest time in particular keeping up with the Jets. Last year, the Jets finished 4-12 and in last place in the AFC East. Now, they are 9-5 and pushing for a playoff spot between the Dolphins and the Patriots who are both tied for the division lead. Naturally, the Jets only end up being good when I am out of the country. Go figure.

There are a few places, mostly expat bars, where you can catch an American Football game here in Berlin. The one I have usually been trying to go to the most is Belushi's, which is located near the Rosa-Luxemburg U-Bahn station. A British (I think) run pub and hostel which shows all sorts of American sports games along with the usual Futbol, Cricket, and Rugby you'd expect to see in a British expat bar. Nice place and the food is relatively cheap. However, I have yet to see the Jets play here. Being in Europe, one's choices for NFL games to watch are usually pretty limited. The North American Sports Network will usually put on one game and then Belushi's usually gets one more game on their satellite. Lately, this has meant having to watch one game at the bar at the time the Jets are supposed to be playing, so I don't get to watch the games.

The Jets have a pivotal game agains the Seahawks today, and I'd love to watch it. The Jets pretty much have to win today to keep their division (and probably playoff) hopes alive, so hopefully they'll pull it off. Let's just hope Belushi's carries the game today and I can relax..enjoy some American football and eat an American cheeseburger. ...mmmmmm...

Stanton...like Hasselhoff...big in Germany.

2008-12-20T23:32:00.003+01:00

So when you dream about taking a trip to the old country, or perhaps taking a step further and trying to actually live there, you think about all the great stories your sure to have. If your backpacking, you'll think about the crazy people you've encountered over the course of your trip, the drunken nights you've experienced in places like Prague getting drunk on what amounts to $3.27 worth of beer, the proverbial "I don't know how I made it out alive" story everyone seems to have, and the awesome places you've gotten to see along the way. Most people wouldn't add "Starred in a German Burger King commercial" to their list of experiences in Europe, but that is precisely what has happened to me which has made this move to Europe all the more bizarre.

Yes, you did read that right. Your friend Josh, the tall, dorky red head kid with no muscle tone whatsoever, was in a Burger King commercial....in Germany no less. Your probably asking yourself, "How the fuck did he manage to pull that off?"

To politely respond. I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE. In fact, I still don't know how it happened.

What did happen was that I got an email from my buddy Travis while I was in Nancy, France for Thanksgiving. Travis and his girlfriend have a friend who does castings for tv and film productions and other such stuff, and he occassionally tries out for stuff to make some extra cash. Anyways, so I get this email from him, which reads "hey they are shooting this burger king commercial and there is a part that you should try out for". I look at the description of this "part" and it says "STUDENT TWO: Tall, dorky red head with freckles with the body

of a long distance runner and no muscle tone whatsoever". THAT"S ME! I thought to myself, "Holy Shit, someone has me figured out don't they?" I didn't really take it seriously until I found out that they were paying up to 450 Euro for the part. As a kid who's dirt poor and desperate to make some money to support himself, that's a gold mine right there. So I thought what the hell. I'll try out.

I arrived at the tryout with Travis, who had already tried out earlier in the day. Basically, I had to act like a nerdy red head for an audition, in which case they filmed me and would show the tape to the people who were making the commercial. After acting like a complete fool (and doing my best caveman charlie chaplin impression) I went home thinking the whole thing was an absolute joke. Then of course..I get the call. "It's the production office, you've got the job."

You have got to be shitting me, right?

So I filmed the commercial two sundays ago. To be honest, I don't know how much detail I am actually allowed to discuss as far as what the commercial is about specifically, so I will stop here. The reason for this is, I was made to sign a contract which basically forbids me to talk about the shoot and the specifics. Yeah, crazy shit. I can't even be seen in a McDonalds for christ's sake. Once the commercial comes out, I'll add another entry going into detail a bit further, and I will most definitely post the commercial on this blog, or at least provide the link. All I will add, is that I had a somewhat prominent role in this commercial.

Don't believe me? That's your perogative. But your talking to the guy who got drunk with an NFL Quarterback, had him crash at his house, and also drove him home the next morning and

got free breakfast from said NFL Quarterback...which ironically.......was Burger King....

Stranger things have happened...

Finally...Found a Job

2008-12-15T23:06:00.000+01:00

So I've been away for quite a few weeks from this blog. Out of sheer laziness, I have been forgetting to update it. I also realized thatI I had taken off the link to it on my facebook page, so I'm sure there was pretty much little to know way most of you saw it anyways.

I'm happy to report that I have finally found a job. I can..for the first time since the beginning of November..relax. Managed to secure a job at the Lichtenberger Sprachinstitut, which is in Westkreuz. (Berlin). Seems like they were desperate for a teacher to fill a series of classes starting in January, and luckily I was their guy.

The job will be difficult, but in a lot of ways, pretty easy. I will be teaching 16 classes to children ages 4-8 over the course of 3 days. Each class is 45 minutes and I will be provided a car to drive to and from each school. The other 4 days I will have off to either lesson plan or do god knows what. 16 classes might sound daunting, but spread over 3 days it isn't exactly that bad. If you think about what your..say..history teacher in high school taught...6 classes a day over 5 days a week...(that's 30 classes btw), then it's not that bad at all. Probably the hardest part will be the language barrier. The kids for the most part, speak German. Their teachers speak German. My German as of now is still shit. It will be shit by the time I start the job. It probably would be a little better if it wasn't for the mess I've had to deal with both with my Rosetta Stone program and with my computer goin AWOL on me. I almost didn't get the job precisely because my German was shit.

This was probably the kind of job I least expected to work. Me? Work with kids? I'm trained to teach adults. So instead of explaining the use of infinitives of purpose in a sentence, I will now be explaining the use of the color red on a paint-by-colors activity sheet. hmmmm. Fun.

I can totally see myself having some sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger-like breakdown in the middle of the class..yelling "EVERYBODY SHAT AP!!!!!! in a thick Austrian accent.

I'm happy to finally be done with this job search. It is stressful enough for anyone going a month without finding a job and watching your bank account dwindle in front of your eyes. It only adds to the stress when you also have to deal with the fact that your 90 days in the continent expires the next month and you have to find a job or be kicked out. The day before I got the job, I had breathed a minor sigh of relief when the German Auslanderbehorde (visa office) granted me an extension until March on the condition I couldn't work. Now I have an appointment set up for the 22nd to complete the final process for my work visa, which includes getting a letter of intent from the school and health insurance, which shouldn't be a problem.

I still have another month to rely on my finances, which isn't much. At this point, I'm used to being dirt poor. Working at the University of Michigan will do that to someone ($5 billion endowment and they can't pay their employees more than $23,000 a year?) I won't get paid until the end of January so should be a pretty bare month in terms of travels, stories, etc. That's alright. There is plenty of Berlin left to be explored...

Wish me luck tomororw...

2008-11-20T12:56:00.000+01:00

So right now, I am in Magdeburg still with Noel. Finding jobs specifically in Berlin hasn't been easy. I am at a bit of a disadvantage compared to others in my program because I am only able to try and find jobs in Berlin. My girlfriend is coming to Berlin for an internship in February, so I'd rather not have to get a job in say, Munchen (Munich) which is as far south as you can get. (Berlin is northeast) So far I've applied for 18 places and I've gotten only one interview so far (Berlitz in Berlin) I've gotten 6 rejections and the others haven't responded to me. From what I've heard, it's easier to land a job in Berlin by actually going to the schools and asking for jobs rather than sending in your CV via email, so I'm planning on doing that once i get into Berlin. But here's hoping that this Berlitz interview works out and I can get my work visa started and start making some money.

Speaking of Berlin, I was able to find a place to live and will be moving there tomorrow. I can thank my friends Travis and Sophie for finding it for me. Travis is a buddy of mine who's been living in Berlin for the past couple years. His brother, Austin, was my college roommate at Florida State. The place is right around the corner from him, in East Berlin. Very nice place. Very convenient. Just about everything you need is right there for you. Groceries, public transportation, everything.

I've done quite a bit of travelling in the last couple of weeks. Two weekends ago, My girlfriend along with her siblings and other friends spent the weekend in Bruges, Belgium. As you might know, Bruges was made famous by a movie with Colin Farrell that came out last year called "In Bruges". The city is as beautiful as it was portrayed in the movie, minus the shootouts, racist American midgets, and Brendan Gleeson falling from the Clock Tower. We took a bicycle tour through much of the town, which was fun and scenic. There isn't much else to do in Bruges besides sight-see, so the town definitely feels like one big museum. We found one nightclub while we were there, which made too much use of its fog machine.

Noel and I spent a day in Brussels after that. Got some Belgium chocolate, saw the pissing midget boy (I don't know the statues name, so don't ask) and all the monuments.

Last weekend, we also took a trip to Berlin and saw all the sites there with Travis, such as the Brandenburg Gate and the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. The JHM is very strange btw, for anyone who hasn't seen it. The memorial is nothing mroe than a bunch of blocks of concrete. thats about it. Strange. I was also able to see my first ever European Football match, as we watched Hertha Berlin BSC take on Hamburg SV. Great match, with Hertha winning 2-1. The crowds were great, with Hertha fans singing and chanting the entire game. It gave you goosebumps.

On Wedsnesday, we are flying to Paris for the day and then taking a train to Nancy, France to spend thanksgiving with Noel's siblings. Needless to say, I have been quite the world traveller over the past couple of weeks. Feels pretty good.

That's all for now. Tschuss.

The TEFL Course

2008-11-08T11:47:00.000+01:00

So I'm finally in an area where I have some legitimate access to the internet for the first time since coming to Europe (that would be Noel's place in Magdeburg) so I'd thought I'd add an entry into my blog considering how much of a piss poor job I've done of keeping you people updated on my comings and goings. Hell, even my family barely know what I have been doing.

I finally finished the TEFL course back on November 7th. For those of you who have no idea what TEFL is, or are perhaps too lazy to, um, scroll down to previous posts, TEFL is a month-long intensive training course that I took in order to become an English teacher and stay in Europe past 90 days.

This course was probably one of the most intense things I've done since college, and frankly, I'm glad it's over. From the first day of class to the end was wall to wall work, work, and more work. One the very first day, we were shown an example of what a lesson plan normally looked like, whati t contained, etc. Our instructors then proceeded to tell us that we would be creating a lesson plan at the end of the day and teaching our first classes the following day. Here we were, barely a day into training, and we already were going to teach the following day. Shit!

The classes we taught ranged from 4 students to up to 16 students, all of which were Czech adults. Going into our my first lesson, I was nervous as hell as to how these people would take our teaching, but throughout the course, they were actually very patient and cooperative, even very helpful. I've never had a problem getting in front of a group and talking, and once I got my nerves down after my first lesson, it became a lot easier to get in front of a class full of Czech students and teach.

The most difficult part of teaching, I've discovered, isn't actually teaching it, but planning it. Much of my time was spent preparing for lessons more than actually giving them. I'd usually wake up at 7:30am, do some work on a lesson plan, get into class at 10, go to class from 10 to 6, and then spend from 6 to 7:30 in the library getting materials for the next lesson, and then the rest of the night actually writing up the lesson. It was that much work. It was almost sad because I didn't get to see as much of Prague as I would have liked because we had so much damn work. But I guess that was the point.

Our instructors, Paul Whitaker and Terry Glosser, were both helpful. Everyday, we learned new concepts and new grammar lessons to give us a refresher on some of the stuff we were expected to teach. The grammar always kicked my ass. I never fully grasped it in grade school and I struggled to grasp it in this course. By the end of the course, though I think I finally turned a head and was able to understand some of the things that I had to teach to the rest of the class.

The best part of the course was the people I was taking the course with. We had a great group of people who all got along extremely well, and in a little over a month, I was able to make some good friends. Most came from America, but we had a few from England and we even had an Aussie. We all usually went out and got drinks on the weekends and got loaded up on Czech beer. Had a great time with them all and wish them the best of luck in their teaching jobs.

The best part of this course is that it is now over. Now on to finding a job...

Prague (or Praha if you want to get technical)

2008-10-21T19:12:00.001+02:00

So I've been in Prague for oh, 3 weeks now. It's been quite the experience to say the least. Everything I've expected out of my trip to Europe and more.

To start, the city centre is gorgeous. The center of the city is an epicenter of history and Czech culture. Much of the city's centre's buildings and architecture come from as far back as the 15th century and probably farther (I'm a history buff, but my knowledge of the Holy Roman Empire and Czech history is rather weak) There is a particular building called the Old Town Hall which was built in the 15th century. It's famous for its giant astronomical clock, which was built to observe time, and the movement of the stars and planets. Pretty advanced considering it was built hundreds of years ago. Me and my girlfriend, Noel got a chance to go up to the top of the tower. It was pretty nice.

The farther you get outside the center of the city, however, is when you start to see the rather "not-so-nice" parts of Prague. Much of the buildings and architecture in the outer parts are pretty run down. Most of the buildings have those "Stalinist" styles to them. Bland. Absolutely no creativity. Look like they were whipped up in a week. Oh, the joys of the Communist-era!, or what I like to refer to as the "Stupid Fucker Period" of Russian-Eastern European history.

The bars here in Prague are great. There is a vibrant nightlife downtown and plenty of bars and discoteques (sigh, for using that word) to hang out in. Much of the group in my course have been going out together, so we have been hitting up a few of the spots. I'm guilty of stumbling back onto the train on a few occassions with my girlfriend and this group. Beer is literally cheaper than water here. You can get a beer for 35 crowns (about a buck in America). And when I say a beer, I don't mean some pussy-glass of beer like they do in the states. They give you half a freaking litre of beer. Great beer too. Pilsner-Urquell, I guess, could be considered the "official" Czech beer, and it's probably the one Czech beer many in the U.S. might be familiar with. It's nice, but I prefer Gambrinus and Staropramen (which is especially cheap) My liver never quite recovered from my last two years of college (I think between me and my roommates, we probably drank the equivalent of Lake Michigan), so I've been trying not to drink too much.

Czech people are....interesting to say the least. I've had a lot of different reactions to Czech people so far. Some positive. Some negative. It is definitely a culture shock to come to a country with a different culture, language, etc. Czechs in many ways enjoy some of the many things Americans do, but in many ways, go out of their way to be different. English is spoken quite a bit in the city centre due to tourism, but the farther out you get, your lucky if you can find anyone who does understand it. Czech people tend to be particularly short. Especially waitors and waitresses. I think the fact that you don't speak Czech merely pisses them off more, so your service tends to hit the back-burner if you ever go to a restaurant.

The Czechs, like any other culture, can and will appreciate you a little more if you make at least an half-assed effort to speak the language however. I've learned just a few words in Czech from the course, but they have helped and I have noticed that people tend to be a little more friendly. The people I've taught at the TEFL school have been extremely polite, so I suppose I just ran into a few bad eggs, no different than any major city in the U.S. (well, maybe not Detroit)

Some highlights-and-lowlights of my time here so far:

-Prague Castle is amazing. If you ever come to Prague, you have to come here. It was built by Charles the VXXXXIIII (God knows how many Charles were before him) and has people entombed there from as far back as 900 AD. The inside looks like St. Peters Basilica. It is breathtaking.

-Apparently, according to a man who tried to get me and a couple of my friends here into a bar, there is a tradition in the Czech Republic where people kick Midgets in the ass. I'm not making that up. He told us this when someone mentioned they were from Denver and he goes "oh, Colorado, you have midgets there, much like us". I imagine this guy was joking, and I don't know if this "kick the midget in the ass" festival is coming up soon, but I'd love to see it. Can you imagine if they tried to do this in America. The ACLU would be crying foul.

-I've become quite apparent about Americans' particulars about respecting their personal space, you know, that 3 ft of room around us that we don't want anyone near. Czech people tend to walk right up to you and turn away at the last minute when they are walking. For a city that apparently has a large pick-pocketing problem, it's a little bit of a concern.

-We saw a giant Pink bunny float near the Charles Bridge. Still not sure about that one.

-Stores, Shops, and bars send out minions to try and get you into their establishments. They are pretty militant about it. I had a guy who tried to get me into a Cabaret club (strip club) and after I repeatedly told him "no thanks " said to me "You will into cabaret right now, no questions". A little creepy.

-I've already had my "seperated from the group and didn't get home until 5am in a foreign city" experience, I might share that one with you another time.

I think that's all for now. I'll make another entry a bit later.

Nashledanou!!

The Flight

2008-10-21T18:48:00.000+02:00

So a lot has happened in these past 3 weeks or so since I've been out of the country. I haven't had a chance until now to start writing about them, and so people are thinking "I thought this bastard was going to write about his travels". I'm going to write a section on my flight over, a section on Prague, and a section on my school.. So starting with the first and foremost

THE FLIGHT

So I've never actually been on an international flight before and I had no idea what to expect. Do they put you in those big jumbo jets you always see at the airport? I usually get stuck flying in some puddle jumper or if I'm lucky, some marginally larger plane where their idea of service is throwing a bag of half eaten peanuts and a quarter of a can of pop your way. (And it is called POP by the way, you Southern folk need to get used to this) I'll also have to sandwich my 6'4'' frame into a middle seat and be stuck in between the 290-lb. man who eats the same way Cattle graze on grass in farms, and between the woman with a baby who cries for 7 freaking hours.

Anyways, I spent the days, minutes, and hours before my flight stressing over what I had to bring. I checked things over, checked them again. Checked them again. And once, I had checked them, had my mom check things to make sure I wasn't forgetting things. As my girlfriend could tell you, I could probably lose my head if it wasn't attached to me. Hell, I once couldn't find out where my eyeglasses were, and tore up my house looking for them, only to realize I had been wearing them the entire time. I am what I would refer to as an "intellegent retard". My parents drove me to the airport and we said our goodbyes. My mom was a wreck. She had to see her youngest son (her baby) off to college, which was hard enough. Now I was leaving the country. So naturally tears were flowing. I wished my parents farewell and got onto my plane with Lufthansa.

All I can say next is that this was perhaps the greatest flight I have ever been on. Amazing service. Absolutely amazing. What the hell have I been missing all my life? I should be travelling the world just to get on this planes! The Lufthansa crew services you which seems like the entire flight. Bringing food and beverages and hot towels. I don't know what the hot towels were needed for. I didn't use them. But I'm sure they were glorious nonetheless.

Each seat has its own touch screen video display, and you can watch up to 11 pre-selected movies, listening to music, and chart the flight as it happens. I ended up watching "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull", "Leatherheads", and a highlight video from Euro Cup 2008. Not too shabby.
Unfortunately, I didn't fall asleep during the entire flight.

As we descended into Frankfurt, and as I began to see the lights and landscape of Germany below us, I can only compare the feeling I had at the time to the feeling you got when you were 5 or 6 and you woke up that morning knowing Santa had left you something under the tree. I was absolutely giddy. Germans and everyone else on the flight were all ho-hum "yeah we made it big deal". I've got my face permanently glued to the window looking at everything outside.

The excitment from landing in Frankfurt was only short-lived though, when I realized that European airports and U.S. airports share one thing in common, they have HUGE layovers. Mine was a nice little 11 hour layover. My flight got into Frankfurt at 5:30am and my next flight didn't take off until 4:30 that afternoon. So I spent the ENTIRE day inside one terminal. I didn't have my converter with me, so I couldn't check my email or use my phone, or do anything.

I was also a bit hesitant to try and talk to someone or ask a question. My German skills are meager, so would they understand me? I felt that embarassing feeling you get when you want to ask someone something but don't have the nerve to do it. Later on, though, I would realize that just about everyone aside from the ripped-beerfest- looking security guard who frisked me (he was quite gentle) spoke English.

Finally, I hopped on my flight to Prague and my adventures in Prague officially began...

What a Drag

2008-10-20T10:01:00.000+02:00

So I know I haven't exactly been writing about my European adventures on this blog yet. Don't worry, they're coming. I honestly have been so busy with this TEFL course (and aside from the utter lack of internet I have here) that I haven't been able to sit down and hammer out some posts. I promise as soon as I get some free time this week, I will try to let you all know what I've been up to.

Cheers.

GO SEMINOLES!!!

2008-10-05T05:13:00.000+02:00

Good show by my boys at FSU today. Beat Miami 41-39. To call this game a shootout is a gross understatement. Now I don't have to listen to all the Canes fans running their mouths for the next year.

That's Right...Ice...Man...I am dangerous.

2008-10-03T08:00:00.000+02:00

So I realized in between studying German, listening to Paul McCartney and the Wings, and listening to the Vice Presidential debate that I am a mere 6 days away from setting off to Prague. Absolutely insane.

I'm usually not the one to have a list of errands to get accomplished. I'm not exactly a wait till the last minute guy. More like a wait until the last 30 seconds kind of guy. But I've had so much shit to do these last couple days as I get ready to go that I'd thought I'd keep track of them. Yesterday, I bought some clothes (which I haven't done in close to 2 years), as well as got some important documents notarized. Finally, I managed to register to vote and send out for an absentee ballot which is going to get sent to Prague.

The way this presidential election has been shaping up, I'm thinking I'm rather glad I'm going to be in Europe for a while. The fact that this race, in effect, has been going on since 2006 is pretty pathetic. Most of the media outlets either have a hard on for one person or the other. Case in point, I watched the debate on CNN tonight. They've got their legion of "analysts" with their little CNN labtops, declaring Joe Biden to be the winner. I flip on to see what FOX News is saying, and people on there are overwhelmingly declaring Sarah Palin the winner.

Sometimes I think 24 hour news could possibly be the worst thing to happen to this country.

btw, in case you haven't heard it the first 240,000 times it's been repeated, John McCain is a Maverick. Does that make Barack Obama Iceman? I'd go with Hollywood.

Dear Diary, JACKPOT!

2008-09-24T07:03:00.000+02:00

So I thought as I stand on the dawn of a new and exciting part of my life that I should probably get it into my head the idea to start keeping a blog. I've sucked at writing journals, diaries, whatever you want to call them. Growing up, I had friends who would write all their little daily activities and goings-on, to keep for god knows what. I tried to be like the cool kids, but after maybe, I don't know, 3 days of writing shit, I found that I wasn't particularly writing anything useful or worth mentioning. My entries probably looked something like this:

"5/24/96
School was fun. Poked a badger with a spoon. Oatmeal Cream Pies make me fart more than is usual. Girls still don't find me physically attractive. Might be linked to farting stemming from Oatmeal Cream Pies."

Needless to say, I got bored quick and said "F this, I'm going to go smoke crack"

Once you've gotten out of school, however, you start to realize just how difficult it is to keep in touch with all your friends. You graduate high school or college telling yourself you always going to chat with your buddies and visit them all the time, and then 3 months pass and you realize you haven't talked to any of them. I graduated from Florida State in the spring of 2007, and already I found out how hard it is to keep in touch with the people I hung out with regularly a little over a year ago, even the people I considered my great friends.

Working two jobs, 13 hours a day for 5 days a week during the summer doesn't exactly help ones ability to chat either. So, I've decided to keep a blog. A chance for my friends to get an answer to the "Where the hell are you?" that I seem to be getting a lot on facebook and elsewhere. Also thought it would be a great opportunity for me to document my travels. Now, if your one of those "where the hell are you" people, then your probably following that with "where the hell are you going", so let's focus on that for a second.

Anyone who knows me knows I've been absolutely intent on getting my ass over to Europe. Call it my dream. Since my brother was stationed in Bamburg, Germany back in the late 90s, and since I have always been interested in European history, I've always wanted to see it. For one reason or another, things always got in the way of me getting there. Whether it was not having enough money to pay for study abroad, to planned backpacking trips being aborted, the idea of going to Europe for a while to me was like watching the idiot who chases the dollar attached to a string. Always so close, but you can never pick the damn thing up.

I used to bitch about how I could never get over there, until finally one day, I just told myself that I was going to find a way over to Europe no matter what. While working at the University of Michigan last year, I came across some programs for teaching abroad, and I realized that this was how I could find my way into Europe. Teaching English. I talked to quite a few people who had taught in Europe and Southeast Asia and had excellent stories to share about their experiences, and I decided that this was the path for me.

Now, one doesn't just waltz into Europe and live there. You need a job. You need a work visa (which you can't obtain until someone hires you) and you need money. Lots of money. UM doesn't pay much, certainly not enough to fund my expenses over there, so this summer, I moved to Nantucket, Massachusetts where my buddy Chris Wessels lives, and took two jobs as a fine dining waiter and at a bike shop. Anyone who's been to Nantucket knows the rich people flock to it like the Salmon of Capastrano. They wear their Nantucket Red pants (another story for another time) and compete with each other to see how much money they can throw around. Which is fine by me. I made a shitload of money this summer and am now back in Michigan.

In two weeks, on October 8th, I'll fly out to Prague, Czech Republic. I've signed up for an intensive, month long training program to teach english, run by TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) They teach you how to create cirriculums and the proper way to teach, all that jazz. After I finish that, I'm moving out to Berlin, Germany to settle and find a job. My awesome, world traveler Argentine girlfriend, Noel, is already over there, doing a cultural exchange program in Cologne for now and later Magdeburg and Berlin. So we'll be travelling and seeing the sights and sounds together.

All in all, I'm pretty stoked about everything, and it's really the beginning of the next big part of my life. I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences with whomever cares to look. I'm not going to be writing in this everyday, but I'll get to it as much as I can and share what I've seen and what I've done.

That's all for now. Cheers.