Since my last post...I have become German. Well, almost. I ate blood sausage, sampled the German brew, and purchased some very expensive, very well-made German shoes.

Everything here is so pretty, I really don't understand why the whole world wouldn't live in Europe if they could. I guess the whole language barrier might be a reason I wouldn't move here, but that's why I'm going to London. And having the majority of my friends and family all the way across the ocean would be less than perfect, but if I could hike through vineyards and then have pastry and wine for lunch like I did two days ago everyday, I think it would make up for most of that distance. Hmm, that sentence just before this one is less than perfect; being around people who speak broken English all the time is affecting my own command of the language in a humorous but kind of disturbing way.

So, some highlights from the last few days.

There is this beautiful forest at the end of the street I'm staying on, and I've been going for runs through the trees and flowers and bushes. And eventually I run past a blackberry bush with lots of ripe berries and I have to stop to eat some.

This is the cutest town I have ever been to. I visited it the same day I went walking through beautiful hills terraced with grapes and had pastry and wine for lunch. It was a perfect day, it even rained on and off.

I think I have finally been in Germany long enough that I'm over the jet lag and am enjoying things in full consciousness. It is kind of hard to compare this trip to other trips I've taken to Europe because I'm seeing things from a different perspective than I did two years ago or two years before that. But I can definitely say that I love this country! I'm staying with Daria's grandma and aunt and cousins, and they are the most welcoming and friendly hosts I have ever stayed with. They feed me delicious German food all day long, and buy me things like souvenir pennies and tins of mints, and let me use their internet and washing machine. Actually, I'm not sure why I would ever leave...

Today I visited the beautiful Altenberg Cathedral in the neighboring village of Altenberg. We were going to bike there, but it rained so we had to drive.










Since I've been in Germany I've been wondering a lot about the WWII legacy, but it hasn't really been appropriate to bring up. Today in the car on the way to Essen I was talking to Susanna about the city, and lamenting the lack of old buildings destroyed in the war. Susanna mentioned that Germany "didn't do so well in the war. We are very, very ashamed of it," she said. I wanted to ask her more about it, to say "I would think it would be very hard to live in a country with so much historical shame for a war that you weren't even alive for. It seems incredibly unfair, because the holocaust is not something you can write off as not that big of a deal, nor is it something that you had anything to do with." Not being German, I know this is unfair but it still colors my perception of Germans; the first three things that come to my mind when I think of Germany are sausage, beer, and Nazi. But I didn't ask her more about it, for the reason that English isn't her first language. Susanna is certainly proficient in English, but it seemed a daunting task to try to communicate about something so heavy as the holocaust without full use of my vocabulary. How can you discuss genocide with adjectives like good and bad and scary?? It gives me a whole new appreciation for words with so many slightly different meanings and slightly different connotations.

And yet, what am I doing traveling if not trying to communicate and share with people who don't speak my language and don't see the world from my point of view? Conversations like this one are what I've spent so much money on a plane ticket for; I can't be afraid to have them!

Here are some of my favorites from today: 

Pictures from my first day in Germany, maybe I'll write the stories that go with them later.

My waffle with cherry sauce and whipped cream and rice

Schlossburg

I flew from Sacramento to Minneapolis, where Dillon and Daria picked my from the airport and I got to see them for about 14 wonderful hours. Then the plan was to fly from Minneapolis to Chicago, and Chicago to Frankfurt. So I arrived at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport about 5 hours before my flight (because Daria's was 2 hours earlier than mine) and waited and waited, in a terminal that looked kind of like this.

After waiting about 4 and a half hours, it was announced that my flight was delayed 2 hours. My layover in Chicago was 3 hours long, so I wasn't worried about missing my flight. I was going to have to wait for a long time anyway, what did it matter whether I waited in Chicago or Minneapolis. After waiting abou 7 and a half hours, the flight finally boarded, with an estimated landing time of 3 pm. Not too bad, because my next flight didn't leave until 4:05 pm.

The flight was pretty average. I was sitting next to a rather annoying middle-aged woman with a smile that she employed at inappropriate times in the conversation flow. This woman didn't seem to think much of sitting quietly or minding her own business on a plane, but I had the window seat so I spent a lot of time looking out it and finishing my book "Prodigal Summer."(What a nice cover! If I wrote a book, the cover would be similar to this. Also, I don't have any other pictures to go along with this story hehe.)

We finally got to Chicago at 3:15 pm and it was clear that I was going to have to make a run for it. I had forgotten that, since this was my international flight, I had to go back out to the ticket counter and check in, and then go through international security. I guess that's why they tell you to arrive 2 hours in advance for international flights. And I had 45 minutes.

So I got off the plane and ran, or maybe waddled is a better word since I had my backpack and bag, through terminal 1 of the biggest airport in the country to terminal 5, the international terminal and the farthest terminal away. I always forget how it feels to panic, and since I hadn't really been expecting to need to hurry, I was caught off guard by my own sense of urgency. I must have looked a little bit insane weaving through people, running up and down stairs, cutting off small children from their parents in lines...

This is how I arrived at the Air India ticket counter, short of breath and breaking a sweat since I hadn't taken the time to take off my sweater in this process. I told the small, nice-looking, Indian woman in a maroon suit that I was here to check in for my 4:05 flight, and she said, "I'm sorry ma'am, we're done. We stop checking people in at 3."

It slowly sunk it that the whole time I'd been running around the airport, frantically trying to get to the gate in time, it was already too late. If I'd really thought about it, I probably could have figured out that 45 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave would be too late, but I hadn't really thought about it; I had thought I could really make it. I bet there are a lot of things that we try to make, or get, or fix, without knowing that it's already too late and we're waiting our time, because usually we don't have a small, nice-looking Indian woman in a maroon suit to tell us when to give up.

In the end, I got a very comfortable night stay in the Crowne Plaza hotel, complete with free dinner, complements of United Airlines. When I woke up, well-rested, the next morning, I checked in at the Air India desk, and got my choice of seats. The man asked where I wanted to sit, and ended up giving me my own row because the flight wasn't full. Then, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, I took a break from the millions of movies I watched and looked out the window and saw the big dipper, right above the wing. It reminded me of that book about slaves on the Underground Railroad following the drinking gourd, so I took this, and the good fortune in seats to be good omens of the trip to come.

I babysat this cute kid Nico all summer. He is one and a half, and when his dad left for work or when a truck drove by the window, Nico would say "buh-bye baba" or "buh-bye auto." Always. We would be walking down the street and pass a dog, and I wouldn't even notice, but Nico would say good-bye to it. Or sometimes if he was having a bad day, Nico would scream and cry and cling on to his mom when she tried to leave, but then 10 minutes later he had forgotten about it and was happily cooking wooden blocks in his pots on the carpet.

Today I left California. The last few days, I tried to take in the atmosphere that is Davis, that feels like home no matter where else I go. And in a way say goodbye to the wide oak-lined streets and the route I always run through the arboretum and smell of the sanitizer in the back of KetMoRee. Now I'd like to forget that I won't be back to California for 8 months and that I won't miss all of my friends and family from Davis, and happily cook on my European carpet.