The funny thing about crazy people...

There are actually 2 funny things about crazy people:
1. They're everywhere.
2. They are similarly crazy everywhere.

For example, today I was waiting for my U-Bahn, while blowing on my cup of coffe to cool it down. You know how when you do something like this, you look at the ground, usually at about a 45 degree angle, but not really focussing on anything? Well, that's exactly what I was doing and there happened to be a sweet little dog in my line of vision. I would occaisionally focus on the dog and think about how cute he was; he looked just like a lab, but was so small. I have no idea if there is such thing as a toy lab, but if there is, that's what he was because he would have barely come up to my knees. Anyways, the dogs owner stands up, looks right at me, yells something about how I should get a dog of my own to stare at and then storms off before I could even figure out what was going on. It was really bizarre. And all I could think, is how crazy people in Edmonton act exactly the same way. I was also very surprised because people in Munich seem very proud of their dogs, and who gets mad when someone looks at their dog?!

On a different note, welcome Kathrin, my newest reader! A quick translation for my non-german-speaking-peeps back home: Kathrin says that she stumbled upon my blog a while ago and loves reading it! She is a student of the LMU, too, and finds it really interesting to see the familiar things (like naked people in the English Garden) through the eyes of a foreigner. She also says that she has been keeping her eyes open for me on campus, but no luck yet. This explains Hannah's comment about how crazy it would be if she actually saw me and one day and approached me. I think it would be awesome. Good luck, Kathrin, and you're lucky that I've started writing again; it was pretty boring for a while there!

FKK = Frei Körper Kultur

Frei = Free
Körper = Body
Kultur = Culture

Germany has this thing called FKK. What do they mean by “free body culture,” you ask? Well, they have things like pools and beaches and saunas that are called “FKK beaches/pools/saunas/etc.” Still not getting it? Fine, it means that you can be naked in public. There, I’ve said it.

There are even some public parks where you can be naked, from what I’ve heard. This includes the English Garden, which is a huge stretch of grass, some 5km long, which pretty much begins right behind the Studentenstadt. Now, I say that I’ve heard you can be naked there, but what I really mean is, I’ve heard that the English Garden is actually labeled an FKK zone. Regardless of whether it is allowed or not, people are naked there, and that’s just the way it is. No one enforces the law if it isn’t an FKK area.

Olivier and I went for a picnic on Saturday in the Garden. There was an extremely naked old man just walking around. It was hilarious. He wasn’t wearing anything but sunglasses. And he was very evenly tanned, so we assume he does this often. I also, from where we were, couldn’t see any hair on him… at all. ‘Nuff said. I was talking to a British guy in one of my classes and he was also shocked by this naked freedom. He said that he and some friends were trying to play soccer and this old naked guy kept walking around the field. He said the guy was playing naked badminton with a friend. Who plays naked badminton??!! I guess it’s not my place to judge. And it was so hot, that by the end of the picnic, Olivier and I were both down to our underwear, so maybe they have things figured out here in Munich.

Other than that, not much is new. I find it very, very hot here. I am constantly sweating. Take this morning, for example. It was 8am and Olivier and I were on our way to the first class of the day. It’s not that hot at 8am, right? Then why was I sweating? I looked around and no one else was sweating, just me. The worst part is this: it gets hotter. We are only in the middle of June! And this isn’t some weird heat wave!! Wait till July!!! And then I’m supposed to go to the south of France for two weeks at the beginning of August!!!! Ridiculous. I’m going to die of dehydration before then. I can’t seem to get enough water. I bet you’re all choked that I’m complaining, but I just have to say that I love Edmonton in the summer. It rarely gets too hot; it stays just cool enough… most of the time. I miss home, I think.

Holy Crap!!

So, it's 3:24 and I am listening to NHL radio online. The Oilers have just scored the first goal. This is a weird sensation since I have been long convinced that my connection simply didn't work for things like this. I am also a little drunk. Olivier and I just came from a party that my friend Perrine (France) was throwing and I had several drinks. Not too drunk, but sort of drunk, you know?

Let's see, what happened this week? I love Munich and its beer gardens. If you want to go somewhere to watch a game, you just go anywhere and watch a game. Katie and I were helping that guy with the website we were working on (surely I mentioned this) on Wednesday and we went out for lunch. We were able to see the game from all around and then while we where sitting around, outside, after finishing, I heard something hit the ground next to Richard. I thought it was pigeon poop, but upon closer inspection, it was spit. After a minute of looking upwards, I realized that there was a cherry-picker above us and the worker had spit downwards, without even caring that 3 people were enjoying lunch below. I cursed upwards in English for a minute, but then Richard freaked out. He got up and ran towards the main part of the cherry picker truck and started yelling at the guy that his colleague had spit downwards, without care that we were below. It was weird. And funny. And horrible/disgusting. I took pictures of the spit and would like to post so you can se exactly how close a call it was, but I seem to have lost the ability to post pictures on this site. Go figure. Hey Noirin, got any time these days...?

Other than that, not much is going on. Work is normal. School is normal. The conversation course is going well. And I can't wait till Monday when I see a baby. Oh, I have been getting a bunch of requests for these two pieces of information recently, so here are the answers:

1. I get back to Edmonton on the night when August 25th turns into August 26th. It's, like, 12:38am, I'm not sure and am too lazy to check right now.

2. Olivier and I don't talk about what will happen when we have to leave. Will we break up? Will we make plans to wait for each other? I don't know. He doesn't know. We don't know. And we don't want to talk about it. Period. The end.

Oh, something (SECOND GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) else exciting that happened this week is that we booked a flight for me to go to Lourdes with Olivier at the beginning of August. Long story short: instead of leaving in the middle of August like he had planned, Olivier has to head home at the beginning of August. So, now I'm going with him! I will spend 2 weeks in the south of France and will come back here with enough time to clean up and head home. I'm totally excited. Olivier has a pool at home, you know. Mmmhmmm.

Okay, I'm going to sign off now and see if I can sleep with this game going on. Ciao!

Baby crazy!

I am completely baby crazy. Baby crazy and dog crazy. Everytime I see a baby I have to coo and smile; I can't help it. Now, this does NOT mean that I want a baby! Not today, not tomorrow, and not nine months from now. Some day in the future, yes, but not any time soon.

I do like holding babies, and smelling babies, and playing peek-a-boo with babies, though, and the thing is that at home I know people of all ages and standings (ie. impoverished students to couples with homes and kids and assets), so if I want to play with a baby, I usually know someone who has one that I can hold and smell (face it, babies smell awesome). But here, I only know students, and almost all of them are international students. That means: no babies (and also no dogs). So since it's been so long since I've gotten to play with a baby, I have become baby crazy. Almost every single time I see a baby I go nuts. I think Eddy thought I was a little nuts last weekend, actually.

So, last night I was running the conversation class that Katie and I started (uhhh... yeah, sorry, I don't know if I've mentioned this at all.), but I was alone because Katie was in Turkey. Anyways, the point is that there were a couple of new people who showed up, one of whom is a lady who mentioned in her introduction that she had a baby about 6 weeks ago and that's why she hasn't come sooner; but her husband was home tonight, so she was finally able to come. I held my tongue from telling her to bring the kid next week because I thought it would be overstepping my bounds. Anyway, at the end of the class she said she had a question, and asked if it would be okay if she brought the baby next week since her husband would be back to his regular schedule. I assured her very loudly and enthusiastically, that it was totally okay to bring the baby, and that I couldn't be happier about it. Needless to say, she also couldn't be happier about the situation.

She says the little girl is really, really well behaved and hardly ever cries, so I hope it works out well, because I don't want to disturb the other people in the class (we had 7 yesterday, our second-highest turnout ever), but I really, really want to hold a baby before I drive Olivier crazy with all my cooing.

Oh, and I also mentioned to the class that if anyone has a dog they'd like to bring - that's welcome, too.

The World Cup is here!

I'm not really that excited about it, but it is a little exciting. The games started on Friday with Germany earning a 4:2 win over Costa Rica. Most of you probably know this, but I figured I'd mention it in case you're too busy with the Stanley Cup. By the way, I'd rather have the Stanley Cup. There are so many people in Munich right now! I'm glad my schedule is so lax that I rarely have anywhere to be. (Ha ha ha.)

Last weekend's trip was good. We went to Bad Hersfeld on Friday and spent the evening hanging out with Ina. Hanna was still in Goettingen, but she came on Saturday and we hung out with her all afternoon and evening. There was the annual JazzFest happening, so we spent most of our time in town walking around and listening to the music. On Sunday, Olivier and I slept in because I totally forgot to set any sort of alarm at all (we wanted to get up at 9:00 and ended up waking up at noon), but it wasn't too tragic because I used to sleep like crazy when I was there before, so I made a joke about some things never changing and we all had a good laugh. Then we had an amazing lunch, the likes of which I haven't eaten in, easily, 9 months. It was so fantastic; it was Rouladen with Rotkohl and Kloese (and potatoes, thank god because I don't like Kloese). Then we waited for Ulrich to get home from work and all sat out on the terrace eating cake (Elvira makes amazing cakes, too). The funniest part was that Hanna and I had discussed when we had to head to the train station, but forgot to (or just plain didn't) share the plan with Olivier. We had decided to leave at 3:50 so that we could take our time getting to the train station; the train was leaving at 4:11 and the station isn't too far away. After chatting for a while Hanna asked what time it was. It was 3:56. The two of us we like, "Oh, crap!" and stood up to quickly pack the car and head out. We get all of the stuff into the car and I use the facilities one last time, and Olivier is no where to be found. I say to Felix, "Do you know where Olivier is?" "I think he's still on the terrace." "Really?! Could you please go tell him that we're waiting for him?" So Felix goes down to the terrace and when he comes back up, he tells us that Olivier is finishing his cake. What?! It turns out that after Hanna and I stood up and ran off, Elvira looked at Olivier and asked, "Where did they go?" "I don't know. That cake was amazing, by the way." "Thank you. There's one piece left, would you like it?" "Yes, please." *sigh* I guess I should be more clear in the future! Don't worry though, we made our train just fine, and had a good laugh out of it.

So then Olivier and I headed back towards Frankfurt to meet Eddy in the town where he lives, Darmstadt. We got in fairly late, and it was a Sunday in Germany, so not much was going on. We got a walking tour of Darmstadt and then had dinner. Actually, I'm lying a bit when I say that nothing was going on; see, Monday was a holiday, so there was a long-weekend-marathon party happening at an old castle thing that is part of the university. It was actually kind of a bust, though. See, I think the marathon thing ended in the afternoon and then they went back to their usual schedule at the bar in the basement. Their usual schedule involves something called a Boys and Girls party. (This should actually be read as "gays and lesbians party.") That doesn't bother me, but it was kind of lame anyways, and I think it made the boys uncomfortable. At any rate, we headed home and went to bed.

The next day we took the train into Frankfurt. Monday, as I mentioned, was a holiday, so there wasn't much going on in the city. Not that we needed much, at least not in the way of shopping, and it was mostly the stores that were closed. We headed up to the top of a tall building, I think it's called the Main Tower, or something, where there is a viewing deck and we got a great view of Frankfurt. We were really lucky, too, because I guess if it's too windy they close down the tower; Eddy said that he's tried to ascend the tower 4 times, and it's been closed twice. Anyways, we walked around for a while; there was an area set up on the bank of the Main with kiosks and food stands. We stopped for apple wine (which is hard to come by in Bavaria, and I love), and then met up with some of Eddy's friends and had another drink. We took the train back to Darmstadt and then checked the internet to see if we could find a karaoke bar open in Darmstadt. We didn't find one, but did find a band playing at a local Irish pub. They were pretty terrible. It was just a cover band, but maybe they only sounded bad because we sat way at the back of the bar instead of near the stage, and the sound might just not have travelled well. We had something to eat and headed home because it had gotten very late and we hadn't realized it. Then the next day we got up and headed home.

I feel I should also mention that the weather in Hessen was really pretty good, except for Saturday, when it rained, but it was still some of the nicest weather we've seen all year. Then, on the way home, as soon as the train crossed the border from Hessen into Bavaria, the sky clouded over and it started raining. We were getting really sick of the weather here (mostly because it's supposed to be nice by this time of year) but then, suddenly, the weather is quite pleasant. It's nice to wake up to blue skies in the morning. Of course, now that I say that, it will be crappy tomorrow, but then I won't feel bad about the fact that tomorrow is my busy class day.

Bayern is nuts

I should first say that pretty much everyone knows that Germany is called Deutschland in German. On top of that, Bavaria is called Bayern and Munich is called Muenchen. I just find it funny that I thought I was coming to study in Munich, Germany, which lies in the province of Bavaria - and not one of those words is right!

Okay, apparently, Bayern is predominantly Catholic, so they celebrate all these religious holidays that we don't celebrate in Canada. For example, May 25 was Christihimmelfahrt (Ascension) so we had no classes. Sunday and Monday are Pentecost, so we have Monday and Tuesday off as well. Awesome. It's like there's no class this semester at all.

So, at the last minute Olivier and I have decided to take a trip. We leave tomorrow morning and take the train up to Bad Hersfeld where we will stay with the Kellers for two nights, then we'll head down to Darmstadt to visit with my buddy Eddy, who, as you might recall, was down here visiting me about a month ago. I'm excited, but I really, really hate taking trips at the last minute. I prefer to plan them out, but everything seems to be falling into place.

Anyhoo, my train leaves in less than 12 hours, so I should pack a bag. Ciao!