Mein Blog

Horseback riding

2008-01-22T08:34:00.000-08:00

and terrible videos:

They really shouldn't sell video cameras to people like me.

An open letter to Joseph Stalin

2008-01-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

In retrospect, I don't think that statue is actually Stalin.

More load shedding

2007-12-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

The first blackout was kind of funny and cute. The second one wasn't. Seven years of this??? No thanks.

Load shedding

2007-12-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

Today I had my first experience with what South Africans call "load shedding." The electricity system in South Africa was only designed to support 10% of the population (i.e. the whites). As a result of this and extreme weather conditions, the country experiences intermittent blackouts.

At 10am this morning, all the power went out in our office. Most people expected it, because the state's energy company, Eskom, had issued warnings over the past few days. But no one knew exactly when it would come.

This was a "planned" blackout. Others are unplanned. The other day I was watching SABC news, and a little message ran across the bottom of the screen that said everyone should cut down on their energy use for the next few hours to avoid a blackout. Luckily I got the message in time, and I turned off one of the two lights in my bedroom. Crisis averted!

Eskom said that load shedding will be around for at least the next five to seven years.

Today's blackout only lasted about three hours. It gave me an opportunity to leave work and go grocery shopping in the dark!

Cullinan diamond mine

2007-12-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

I went on a tour of it Sunday. It is big.

They gave me a hardhat, so I was under the impression that we were going underground. After about 2 hours, they told me the tour does not go underground on Sundays. I was angry for having worn my hardhat for so long.

More ugliness in a beautiful country

2007-12-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

A lot of things about my guest house make me uncomfortable: They wash my towels every day. They put little stickers on my toilet paper before I come home. They offer to have the black maids bring things to my room, as if my arms and legs are broken. They constantly ask me if I'm "doing ok," while old women hunch over next to me scrubbing the floors.

There is a new Afrikaans girl working here. She is majoring in tourism, so she is doing a sort of intership. She grew up on a small farm outside Pretoria. She has never traveled outside the country.

I asked her where I should visit in my last two weeks here. "I heard Durban is nice," I said.

"Ya, well, I don't know. Are you a racist?" she asked me, in the same manner in which someone might ask, "are you a vegetarian?"

"Because a lot of black people go there, and they can't swim. They get really excited when they see the waves, too. It's really irritating."

The guy whom I'm renting a car from also runs a car recovery service, meaning that he goes to recover stolen cars. I dropped my car with him before leaving for Cape Town, and as he drove me back to my office, he started telling me about the business.

"You can think I'm a racist after I tell you this. You can take your business away from me. I don't care. But I have recovered thousands upon thousands of cars in the past 10 years. Not one of them has been from a white person."

"Don't tell me it's because they're poor. They do it because they want to get rich. I see these guys every day. None of them are on their last meal."

I didn't ask (because I was too busy listening) but as he was talking I wondered whether he thinks it's something genetic in black men that makes them steal cars. Like an extra chromosome or something. Because from his perspective, I can see how he could conclude that all black people are greedy criminals. That is what he knows. Twenty-five percent of his VW Citi Golfs get stolen. He has been shot at numerous times. One of his friends was recently killed.

Last week and yesterday there were shootings in my neighborhood. One was a carjacking down the street from me. A young woman was killed. Her car locks and house gates may have brought down her insurance costs, but they did not save her life. Someone wanted to kill her, and he did it. Simple as that.

What I wonder is why he wanted to kill her in the first place.

Cape Town

2007-12-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

Cape Town. Cape Town. Cape Town. Who knew you could be so magical?

I suppose plenty of people knew. But now I can count myself among them.

I arrived Friday. Bright and early Saturday morning I went mountain biking down table mountain. This is it:

The omnipresent cloud on top is commonly called the "table cloth." I hope my dad can tell me why it's there.

Mountain biking was a little more difficult than I thought it would be, especially because we went down the mountain, rather than up. And by the end my hands were killing me from gripping the brake.

There are more species of flora on table mountain than in all of Europe combined. And you can drink the spring water that runs down the mountain. Delicious.

The couple I biked with was on holiday from Israel. They were both America. One worked at the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem. The other worked fro UNOPS in Gaza. Needless to say, they were interesting to talk to. So in addition to the workout and beautiful scenery, I had great conversation. They were also very young and gave me good advice about working in international development.

On day two I went to Robben Island. The guides there are all former inmates or exiles. So they add an extra dimension to the experience. Our guide was chums with Mandela and Robert Sobukwe - the man who first told blacks to abandon their identification booklets and turn themselves in to be arrested. He had some pretty amazing anecdotes; many of then funny; many of them very sad.

He wove the nationalities and appearances of the people on the tour into his story of Apartheid and the liberation. He told me that under the standards of the Dutch army, I would have probably been sent to the leper camp; because I had two earrings in one ear and one in the other. The island was used as a leper colony before it housed political prisoners. This was at a time when leprosy was not well understood.

I cried when our guide told the story of how the prisoners worked in blinding quarry pits without sunglasses, many of them losing their vision from the harsh glare. To this day, no one is allowed to take flash photos of Mandela, because of the damage this did to his eyes.

The prisoners later learned that the stones they hauled day and night were not put to any use; they were just carted around the island and back to their original locations. The prisoners were overseen by 16-year-old-white boys. They knew that the boys were not evil work locking them up, they were just manipulated by an evil system. Mandela and some of the other well-educated prisoners tried to teach the guards what they learned at university on their breaks.

Like everything under apartheid, the prisoners food and clothing allotments were determined along racial lines. This former terrorist showed us the meal rations, and talked about how the Coloreds and Indians would share their food with the blacks, and they went on multi-day hunger strikes together.

Here are all my pictures.

And for those of you not in my family, here are the picture I took from my safari the weekend prior: My claim to fame on the trip was spotting a hyena. My guide told me that was very rare.

Pumpkin pie

2007-11-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

South Africans cook with pumpkin a lot. But to my great surprise, none of my coworkers had ever tried a pumpkin pie!

I had to rectify this.

I went to two different grocery stores. Neither of them had pumpkin puree or pie crust. Nor did any of the employees know what either of these things were.

"A pie..." (extended pause) "crust???"

"Yeah, you know, like the shell of a pie."

In both grocery stores they led me to the premade pies section. I said, "no no, a just the crust" in the second store.

The man acted like he finally understood, walked me around the store and then back to the same pie section.

Nice try, Themba!

In store number three they had both pie crusts (apparently they're called "puff pastry" here) and canned pumpkin puree with both sugar and cinnimon already mixed in.

There must be other pumpkin pie makers in this country.

Viola! I made two pies and celebrated the only day white people were nice to the Native Americans with my friends.

I promise to blog more about racial inequality soon.

My best friend

2007-11-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

Bacardi is my best friend.

She loooooves being photographed!

I am definitely bringing her back to America with me. (At least, I THINK she's a she!)

I will have to negotiate with her a bit. This is the yard she currently romps around in. I won't have this to offer her in New York.

I don't think she will mind though. She and I are really good friends. I just don't know how to tell her owners. Woe is me.

My car

2007-11-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

After being forbidden to do almost anything on foot (will blog about this soon) I finally broke down and rented a car.

It is a luxiourios '91 Volkswagen Golf. I say "luxiourious" because it has a manual transmission. However, it costs $15 USD/day, has no computer inside it and requires quite a bit of muscle on my part to turn the steering wheel. As the car most likely to be broken into in South Africa, it also a has huge lock over the gear shift.

Driving on the wrong side of the street is not as hard as I thought it would be. I can't wait to try it back in America.

Soweto

2007-11-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday I visited the Soweto townships. Townships are the areas to which black people were relegated under Apartheid. I was told never to go into Soweto, or for that matter, any of the townships on my own. So I found I a tour group that drives through. (Nevermind the irony of paying $120 USD to go see the poorest areas of South Africa).

Soweto is just a few minutes drive outside Johannesburg. (Hence the name, SOuth WEstern TOwnships). Under Apartheid, all the blacks who flocked to Johannesburg in search of employment were forcibly removed to make room for whites. This was often done against their will, and all their homes and belonging were often bulldozed in the process.

The transfer of minorities to peripheral areas was made possible by legislation that meticulously categorized people by race and allowed them to be limited to certain housing areas on that basis.

The conditions in Soweto have improved dramatically, so I was told, especially in the past five years. My black tour guide went to great lengths to point out this out at every turn.

“You can tell by the children,” he said, slowing down the van and pointing flagrantly. “Look at that one! He is not going to church or to a party. That is just the way he dress.”

Indeed the kids wore bright, clean, logo-smothered clothing. They still live in cramped, relatively uniform housing projects, many of which are the same homes their families lived in during Apartheid. The “improvements” manifest in the fact that people now paint their tiny homes; they decorate their tiny yards and cultivate tiny gardens. They drive beat-up, used cars and sell tires along the streets.

Soweto is currently home to about 60% of the population of Johannesburg. I did not see one white person the entire time I was there.

Along the road, there were hand-written advertisments for "HIV curing tea" and "painless abortions."

The white Afrikaners (former Dutch colonialists) staying in my guesthouse were amazed to hear I went to Soweto.

“I’m not a racist,” one of the women told me at dinner, “but I just don’t understand them. Don’t get me wrong, I know them. I have worked with my maids for more than 35 years. And they are so superstitious and gullible. They just don’t have any common sense. They will believe anything someone tells them.”

I could have sworn she had just ripped out a page of Huckleberry Finn and read it out loud.

“Could you give me an example?” I asked.

“A few weeks ago, a lightning bolt hit a tree in our yard,” she told me. “I asked one of our groundskeepers to go uproot it. He said he could not, because the gods laid an egg under that tree, and he could not touch it. You see, they just don’t make any sense.”

“Yes but in fairness, many people in Western culture believe God created the earth in seven days and that they can absolve their sins by drinking wine and eating bread. I bet your groundskeeper would think that’s ridiculous.”

After spending the day in Soweto, the Hector Peiterson memorial and the Apartheid museum, I must admit I felt little sympathy when the Afrikaaners in my guesthouse complained that their children had to move out of South Africa to find jobs, because the "biased" post-Apartheid government instituted racial quotas systems in most professions.

Of course, the people in my guesthouse probably had nothing to do with the evils of Apartheid. It was probably unfair for me to blame them. But then again, Apartheid did not spring entirely from the head of Jan Smuts; it was the product of an entire social system.

After a while it struck me that maybe some of my anger towards them stemmed from the fact that, at the end of the day, I am more like the Afrikaaners than I am like the people in Soweto. I am more of a passive facilitator than I am a victim.

When my tour guide took us to Soweto’s squatter camp, the “worst of the worst,” he invited us to get out of the van to take pictures. I was somewhat appalled at the suggestion of jumping out to snap pictures of humans in degenerate conditions, as if they were animals in a zoo. My first thought when he suggested this was that other tourists have probably done this.

As I peered out into the sea of tin roofs and shoebox lean-tos, two children began walking over to me. I knew they were going to beg me for money. I knew this because it happened every other time I had gotten out of the van. I turned for the door instinctively, like I was scared of these tiny, desperate, 6-year-old black boys. But I was scared; I was scared of having to say no to them; I was scared of dealing with my own feelings of guilt again.

The little boys didn't have a van to get back in. I could’ve at least said hi to them, so that they would know that they're not bad or damaged just because they are poor. Instead I did nothing. I got back into my air-conditioned van and went back to my gated community.

Let me oversimplify South Africa

2007-11-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

I am spending the next six weeks at my company's office in Pretoria. I suppose this blog name/logo is no longer fitting. I had originally planned to upload a nice photo of me with the South African flag. But unfortunately, Internet connections are not the same below the equator, so for the time being, my dear blog readers, you will be afforded additional time to bask in the garish colors of the German flag.

I arrived in Pretoria Wednesday. On my first drive through the city, I was greeted by poshy, gated communities lined with fragrant Jacaranda Trees:

I went with my boss to an American-style mall. We ate at a place that resembled TGI Fridays.

South Africa wasn't quite what I expected.

It was not until I looked a little closer at the parks that intersperse Southern California-style office buildings that I realized all the public spaces were downing in emaciated, black African vagrants. On my radio, there was story after story about crime after crime, and discussions of how you could phone in to report what you see.

"You're not really South African until you've been held up at gunpoint," one of my co-workers told me in her thick Afrikaans accent, which sounds vaguely Austrailian.

I am staying in one of those poshy, gated houses. Inside, it is filled with beautiful gardens, Victorian style decor and lazy kitties. I am not allowed to leave on foot outside the hours of 11am and 4pm. I could rent a car, but I would have to learn stickshift and to navigate the Brit's backwards traffic system. I am caged in and pampered. I am allowed to go on pricey, organized tour groups and on a shuttle that goes to and fro that overpriced, Western mall. For all I know, I could be in suburban Ohio on a pleasant summer day.

The landscape is beautiful, and the sun is always shining. But it strikes me that no one can really enjoy it. The rich (white Afrikaans) spend their lives inside their cars and fancy buildings. They poor (blacks) spend theirs looking enviously from the street. They do not engage one another, unless it is violently.

A remorseful blogger

2007-11-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I apologize for the extended absence. Will you forgive me?

I can't write much, because I will start to realize how much I am leaving out. But here are some highlights:

After Munich, I learned that Hitler's former favorite hangout is now an Apple store.

After Russia, I will defer to Madame Wei Wei and to Google photos to tell the story.

I will also add this piece of advice: if you try to take a photo of a poster of a half-man half-cat in the St. Petersburg Metro, you will be fined 100 Roubles by the police.

After Berlin, it feels good to return to planet earth. No more banana milk or reputation management for me.

Before Wednesday, I must learn Afrikaans.

Tot siens.

Dear Wei Wei

2007-10-12T16:54:00.000-07:00

In preparation for our trip to Russia, here are translations for the words you requested (spelled phonetically in the Latin alphabet). Mom, please flag any mistakes.

Hello---ZDRAA-stvee-tyea
Thank you---Spaa-SEE-ba
Excuse me---Eez-vee-NEET-yea menya
Sorry---Eez-vee-NEET-yea
You are pretty/cute---Thui do-VOL-no/seem-pat-EE-nuy
How much---Na-SKOL-ka?
How long---Kak DOL-go?
I am sick---Ya BO-lin.
The hospital---Bol-NEE-tsa
Soup---Soop
I can't speak Russian---Ya nee ga-va-ROO pah ROO-skee
Ladies' room---Twah-LYET
I love Russia---Ya LOO-bit Roo-SEE-ya
Airport---aai-roh-PORT
Taxi---Tak-SEE
Putin is cool---Pooteen (nye) ho-LOD-no!
Postcard---Poch-ta ot-KRUT-ka
China---Far-FOR (not sure about this one)
Hong Kong airport---Gon-kong ai-roh-PORT
E-mail---el-ek-TRO-ne-ya POCH-ta
We are tourists---Mee to-REE-stee

Two more I added:
I speak a little Russian - Ya ga-va-ROO nyem-NO-GO pah ROO-skee.
My family is from Russia - Mo-YA sem-YA ot Rossee

P.S. Your blog is so much better than mine is. "If I had to pick one word to describe Ms. Wei wei, I would say that she is very very enchanting."

Munich and Uh-merica

2007-10-12T16:42:00.000-07:00

I am going to Munich in 3 hours (at 5am). I took a lot of yes-drowsy cold medicine throughout the week. And now without it, I can't sleep.

German tissues are thick and durable. They are not particularly soft, but there is something about them that I find comforting.

I should have written more about the Russian embassy.

I am not sure what I will do in Munich tomorrow. Sunday I am going to the Dachau concentration camp.

I leave for Uh-merica Monday. I am going there for work. Originally I was going to four cities. Now only three - DC, New York and someplace in the Midwest called Cleveland. I wonder what it will be like.

Nice lights

2007-10-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about Germany is that the men do not catcall. You could walk down the street in a bathing suit, and no one would say anything to you.

The closest thing I have had to a catcall occured last Saturday night. I was stopped at a red light on my bike, and a middle-aged man pulled up next to me in his car. He started saying something in German.

"Ich verstehe nicht" (I don't understand), I told him.

"The lights on your bike are excellent," he said. "I could see you all the way from the end of the street."

Granted, there are a lot of bikers in my neighborhood. And it can be dangerous if you can't see them at night. But this man's comment was so innocent and so German. He genuinely just wanted to convey his admiration for the lights on my bike.

Frankfurt is supposed to be the Manhattan of Germany

2007-10-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

It has a few skyscrapers, but only about 660,000 inhabitants.

Writing hard. Posting pictures easier.

(Note: this picture was not actually taken in Frankfurt.)

Mitfahrgelegenheit

2007-10-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

Translates to: "riding along opportunity" in my dictionary.

Translates to: "awesome" in reality.

Steps to laboriously obtain a Russian tourist visa

2007-10-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

1. Google "Russian" and "visa." Click on first search result.

2. Pay $20 for a visa "invitation letter." Believe you are paying for an actual visa.

3. Book flight two months in advance. Be forced to change flight three times.

4. Be charged for each rebook, as well as ambiguous "upgrade fee." Nearly lose Chinese travel partner in the process of rebooking.

5. Follow misleading signs on mile-long, 75 degree incline hill to Russian embassy. End up at bizarre camping grounds.

6. Ask nearby man on bike wearing "Wisconsin" sweatshirt for directions to Embassy. Have him laugh at you for trying to follow the signs. Awkwardly say good-bye to him as you speed down a steep hill together on your bikes.

7. Arrive at deserted embassy at 1pm. Learn from seedy Russian man that it is closed after 12pm.

8. Do not learn any lessons from previous day. Return to embassy on German federal holiday.

9. Nearly pass out while riding up hill to embassy. Pant and be covered in sweat. Begin believing God is inhumane.

10. Approach embassy to see that it is flooded with angry, disoderly people. Ask nearby woman, " is this a line?"

11. Watch woman speak mysterious Russian to the embassy guard. Have him demand your cell phone.

12. Explain that you do not have cell phone. Be forced to leave iPod with woman standing outside embassy.

13. Be told you have the wrong dates on invitation letter. They are off by one week.

14. Attempt to return to Embassy. Repeat steps 2 and 8-12.

I am justifying all this by telling myself that this ordeal has helped prepare me for what Russia will be like. (Why then, you may ask, would I want to visit?)

To be continued...

Germany Unification Day

2007-10-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

Today is Germany Unification Day. No parades or presents, but I did get the day off work.

I celebrated the birth of my dear, young Federal Republic by bulldozing all the walls in my apartment (heh) and visiting two very German museums.

The first was the Deutsches Museum, which documents advances in German science and technology. It had one of the world's two trautoniums, on which Oscar Sala composed the music for Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." Creeeeee-py.

It also had an exhibit on new technologies that are allowing women to detect genetic defects in their unborn babies. The exhibit said that if a woman does not take advantage of these technologies, she may be accused of being irresponsible. And so the question becomes whether the "right to decide" is really a duty. Hmm.

I then went for my fourth visit to the German history museum. They had a special exhibit that detailed the expatriation of German Jews at the beginning of WWII. In all its exhibits, the Bonn history museum has excellent primary source materials. This was no exception. It had several of the Nazis' original manifestos and the board games that they created for their children, in which sending Jews to other countries was the object of the game.

I always have trouble believing that some of the things I've read about in history books really happened in Germany so recently. You walk down the street and everything feels so normal.

Most of the vestiges of divided Germany are invisible (they are either economic or in terms of cultural mentality). That is why when I visited Berlin I was so struck by some of the visible legacies - the remnants of the wall and the hats worn by crosswalk figures in East Germany.
Prior to coming to Germany that same sense of disbelief always characterized my understanding of the Nazis. But seeing this exhibit really helped me believe.

Cordless phones

2007-09-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

They seem to be more common in Germany. Everyone still has a cell phone. But in German offices and businesses the landlines are all these nice, durable, little tiny thangs.

In my flat we have four cordless phones. But maybe we are unsual. We also have eight toothbrushes in our bathroom. And we live next to this weird rooster farm. But I should probably save that for another blog entry.

I first noticed all the cordless phones from the ubiquity of their 3-note arpeggio and chromatic scale rings. I hear these rings everywhere. Even in my dreams.

My hair is black

2007-09-23T01:14:00.000-07:00

I went to one of the few hair salons in Bonn open past 1pm Saturday. It was a local chain called Unisex. I walked in and there was loud techno music playing. Every hairdresser had black and/or red spiked hair and lots of piercings. They danced and waved around their scissors as they cut people's hair. It looked like the floor had not been swept all day.

As soon as I sat down, a DJ got on the turntables next to me. I had to yell over him in broken German to let my hairdresser know what I wanted: "2" "zentimeter" (scissor motion). "Haar" "same" (point to 1-inch roots).

They showed me a hair sample that was really dark. I told them I thought that was not right. So then an "English speaking hairdresser" came over to translate.

He and I arrived at a conclusion that I found acceptable: "Hair according to my nature." I let him dye away.

When he took off the towel, my hair was jet black. "It's really dark," I said.

"Ja sure, that's just because it's wet." But then he dried it, and it was still black.

"This is not my natural color," I told him.

"Yes it is."

"I'm pretty sure it isn't," I said.

"Oh no, it is."

"I don't want it this dark," I told him.

"Oh don't worry. It is just temporary," he told me. "In a few weeks, it will be back to your natural hair."

Throwing a grenade

2007-09-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

Zuzana consumed quite a bit of sugar and coffee in London. This was good because it helped her get through our 19-hour day. But it also made her very talkative. On our 10pm flight back she spoke at rapid pace about how much she loved sugar when she was a child growing up in Slovakia under communism, and how back then, even a banana was rare.

She then seamlessly segued into a description of how she was trained to fire a gun and throw a grenade when she was six years old in the communist era school. She didn't realize that this was atypical for Westerners until a German friend of hers marveled at how well she held a rifle from his gun collection.

Under communisim, school children fired actual guns, Zuzana said, but they did not throw actual grenades; they threw objects that were the size, shape and weight of grenades. If they did not throw the grenade-like objects more than 25 meters, they would get in trouble with their teachers.

I went to Koblenz and Dusseldorf last weekend

2007-09-21T16:37:00.000-07:00

The rivalry between Dusseldorf and Cologne is funny. My flatmate from Cologne genuinely got angry with me when I told him I was going to Dusseldorf. I spent most of the day walking along the Rhine.

At Koblenz there was a cute little street fair (with spectacularly awful Renaissance fair music and American cover bands), as well as lots of old castles and churches, and a nice view from where the Rhine and Mosel rivers connect called Deutsches Eck. Eck means corner.

On the train ride back from Koblenz, a group of about 15 elderly men sat next to me and Lenka. Soon into our journey they began uncorking numerous bottles of wine. Each of them had a little wine glass that they carried in a leather case around their necks. When we looked over to see what all the clinking and laughter was about, they quickly approached us and hung drink glass necklaces around our necks. They had just returned from a weeklong visit to the Mosel Valley, which is famous for its Riesling wines.

By the end of the trip, they laughed at how much more willing we had become to speak German after a few glasses of wine.

Knock knock jokes

2007-09-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

Today I told my Polish co-worker Piotrek the "Impatient Cow" knock knock joke. He laughed uproriously. It was great. I had never seen that kind of response to a Knock Knock joke.

Then he told me the "Mary Christmas" knock knock joke, but he could barely get through it without laughing.

Lenka couldn't quite grasp the format of the Knock Knock joke. But that is not her fault. The only ones I could think of were "Impatient Cow" and "Orange you glad I didn't say "banana?", both of which are more advanced. She kept saying "WHO banana???" And answering my "banana" by with "banana."

I can't wait to try more jokes on Piotrek. If you find any good ones, please send them my way.

Cabbage

2007-09-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Zee Germaans really do put sauerkraut on a lot of things - sandwiches, salads, pizza, etc. I love it. It is not like the cabbage in the States. The cabbage in the states tastes like diapers.

I am going to London Tuesday

2007-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

I did not know this until my boss emailed me my flight itinerary. It is just for one day. I will be meeting representatives from a Jordanian real estate company.

Say WHAAAAAT?????

The Rhine is very quiet

2007-09-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

It is very calming but a little strange. Even when you stand right by it, and there are big cargo barges passing by, you hear virtually nothing.

You have to walk right up to the water's edge to hear the river lapping at the outer banks.

On Saturday I rode my bike through Rheinaue - the park that runs along the Rhine from Bad Godesberg to nearby Beule. It is hands-down, without a doubt the most beautiful park I have ever been in. It is huge and filled with outdoor sculptures and descriptions of Germany's post World War II history (the "Path of Democracy.")

In Bonn it typically rains (or at least sprinkles) a little bit every day. While this is irritating when you are trying to ride your bike to work, it keeps the vegitation looking great. The grass and flowers in Rheinaue were practically glowing:

This splash of color is especially welcome because, with all the rain, the sky in Bonn is typically a darkish grey. When I took my parents to the Rhine the other week, it was raining. But then just before we got to the river, it stopped, and there was a full-sky, double rainbow, which I could not capture entirely in one picture:

Music and ornithology

2007-09-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

As the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven, Bonn hosts frequent concerts. Right now is BeethovenFest.

I have attended two concerts related to BeethovenFest. The first was the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Breme at Beethovenhalle. It was excellent. The piano soloist in the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was one of the most agile I had ever heard. The piece was very exciting. After it was finished, several males in the audience belted out a series of hearty "BRAVOs!"

This is the statue outside Beethovenhalle:

Tonight I saw the Choir of King's College Cambridge perform at St. Martin's Basilica, right in the center of Bonn. I couldn't see very well from my seat, and at first I thought the soprano section sounded a little funny. But then I realized that it was composed of 5 to 8 year-old boys. They were good, but yikes!

After the concert I stopped by the Bonn town hall, where a free outdoor concert was about to begin.

I had never heard of the band "Tri Yann." But a crowd of eager fans was camped out in front of the stage waving flags and chanting. So I figured they had to be pretty good.

Promptly at 8pm a pirate, elf, powdered-wig-clad man and stork-like bird emerged with instruments. The stork outstreached his arms and basked in cheers from the adoring audience. I don't know how he balanced his absurdly large headdress.

They began singing something like a sea chantey. The audience (composed of seemingly sober adults) lit up, grabbing one another's hands and forming circles of "ring around the rosey."

My new flat

2007-09-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

I have moved from Bad Godesberg to Bonn Poppelsdorf:

When describing the period during which Bonn was the capitol of West Germany, people often call Bonn a "sleepy university town."

If that's still true, then Bonn Popplesdorf is the sleepy university town within the sleepy university town. It is quiet, beautiful and filled with young people and bikes.

I found my place on the webstie WG-Gesucht, which seems to me like a more design-heavy, localized Craig's List. (Needless to say I don't understand most of the German writing on the website).

The room I am renting belongs to a University of Bonn graduate student who is doing a 3-month fellowship in La Jolla, California. He studies molecular biology and has a lot of big textbooks in his bedroom.

I have three other roommates - they are all blonde German grad students. They all speak English, are very nice, and one is even a part-time journalist!

Brussels

2007-09-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

Things I did not like about Brussels:
1. The people who were there from some bizzare festival walking around on stilts and squirted tourists with a life-sized replica of the Mannequin Pis

2. The fact that animals (and people!) frequently "do their business" on the sidewalks, despite the 152 Euro fine for public (human) urination. No one cleans it up, so you have to look everywhere you walk and hold your nose.
3. The locals were less friendly than in Germany
4. The restauraunts were more expensive

Things I did like about Brussels:
1. My parents were there
2. The heart-shaped stop lights:

3. The famous architecture:

4. The boring, EU bureaucracy architecture:

5. The surprisingly interesting National Bank of Belgium Museum
6. The shoe store named after me:

(Sorry Greggles, that's the closest I can come to a picture of me right now!)

My parents come to visit!

2007-09-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

Temporarily abandoning their status as the best two people in America, Rick and Jeanette Evans came last week to Bonn to visit.

They navigated trains and taxis completley on their own to get from Frankfurt airport to Bad Godesberg. My mom also surprised me with her knowledge of the German languguage. I guess my grandmother had spoken a lot of German, because she lived in Berlin for four years during and after WWII.

During the day, my parent explored Bonn. The last day they were here was their 26th wedding anniversary!

Then over the weekend, we took the train together to Brussels:

Cologne

2007-08-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I went with that same American colleague to Cologne. It is just a 45 minute train ride from Bad Godesburg. As soon as you get off the train, you are greeted by the Kölner Dom. This immense, 13th Century cathedral amazingly survived Allied bombings during World War II. Though certain portions of the facade look like they are in the process of restoration, most of it looks bittersweetly beaten and weathered.

The amount of detail on building was breathtaking, as was the view from the top of the South tower, which visitor are allowed to climb.

Cologne's main square was more lively than Bonn's, with a mix of both locals and tourists. The Dom gives the square a sense of drama and history, and it is strikingly anachronistic couched within its modern, commercial setting. Unfortunately I am unable to upload a video I took where you can hear the Dom's chiming bells at 6:15 p.m.

In other news, Cologne also had several Beer gardens open Saturday, as well as this mobile bar, which served as a testament to the German love of teamwork, bicycling and beer:

The Godesberg

2007-08-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

This is the Godesberg Schloss, which marks the center of my town, Bad Godesberg:

At lunch the other day, my American colleague and I climbed to the top of it.

I don't mean to be morbid...

2007-08-26T05:39:00.000-07:00

but there is this really beautiful cemetary in my neighborhood.

I have marveled at it several times passing by, but this was the first time I actually went in.

At first I felt like a trespasser, like my taking photographs was somehow dishonoring the deceased. But then I remembered how at the Rheinisch Landesmuseum, there were extensive exhibits on the burial rituals of ancient societies. This was my own anthropoligical study on how the Germans honor their dead.

The gravestones were all very different. Some were tall, others covered most of the legnth of the burial plot. All of the sites had not just flowers, but landscaping - bright, tropical flower beds, complex ornaments and shrubbery. Each site had somewhere on it a small, lit candle.

My Little Friend

2007-08-24T10:45:00.001-07:00

On Tuesday evening I received a visitor at the back door of Zuzana’s flat:

I tried to feed her a piece of Brie cheese, but she would not eat it. Perhaps because she is a German cat, not French.

If she returns, I will try sauerkraut.

German Kids

2007-08-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

For years I’ve been reading news reports about declining populations in Western Europe. But you wouldn’t know it from a walk through my neighborhood. Everywhere, there are kids. And unfortunately, they are often loud and unruly, and their parents often smoke as they push them in their baby strollers.

On the bright side, these kids bring with them some excellent playgrounds. As I mentioned before, there is a park in Zuzana’s backyard. Just a few blocks down the street, there is another playground, and then another and another, repeat. They are all of similar quality, but unique. The Germans seem to delight in designing creative but sturdy jungle gyms.

At Bonn’s Rheinische Landesmuseum Bonn which I visited Sunday, part of the permanent exhibit focused on the region’s earliest civilizations.

Between ancient artifacts, they had areas where children could put on life-sized replicas of the clothes and shoes worn by the early inhabitants, and then enter model homes. Museum staff helped the kids prepare food from the era, gather wood and write on cave walls.

After seeing what the kids got to do, the audio tour suddenly didn’t seem so great.

A few days later, I took a new route home, and stumbled upon this elementary school:

I peeked inside and saw walls adorned with Piet Mondrian paintings and doors that looked like they had been painted by students:

The next time I become a child, I want to visit Germany.

My First Home Dinner Invitation

2007-08-18T04:39:00.000-07:00

My culture book said that it is common for German families to invite people over for dinner. On Friday, my colleague Matthias gave me my first such invitation.

He lives in a cute residential neighborhood near Siegburg...

...with his wife and three young children. The evening was very casual. We ate pizza bagles and salad. Embarrassingly, Matthias' seven-year-old daughter spoke English better than I spoke German.

After dinner the kids gave us a gymnastics show in the basement, and we all had ice cream. Matthias and his wife have invited over several employees from my company, because they said they want their children to learn that people from other countries are not scary or bad.

Before I left, Matthias' daughter gave me a picture that I think is supposed to be me, although I don't remember wearing a flowered shirt.

CNN

2007-08-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

I would like to take this opportunity to complain about CNN.

Given that I have a television at Zuzana’s house, and only two channels in English, I have been watching a lot of CNN International and BBC World. Now, the BBC has an off day every now and then, mostly because the quality of the hosts is inconsistent. But CNN is just consistently bad.

Of course, in the States, CNN is also bad. (Sometimes I’m convinced its sole purpose is to see the most absurd station-promotion it can get Wolf Blitzer to say on-air.) But there’s something even more embarrassing about the fact that CNN International serves as a kind of American ambassador, bantering and blathering while the important news is unfolding throughout the world.

From what I can see, CNN “International” covers fewer foreign stories that most regular German news shows. Of course, the BBC is guilty of focusing more heavily on Britain and the countries of origin of British immigrants. But CNN takes national bias to new heights.

Perhaps they just have an low budget. That is not necessarily their fault. But I cannot believe how many audience-generated "iReport" submissions they use instead of correspondents.

And then there are the hosts.

Half of them sound as though their teleprompters are malfunctioning any time they reports news of any substance. Then they adopt this snarky, condescending tone when they joke about the news between segments.

Oh, and did I mention yet that they did a legnthy story Thursday about how Vladimir Putin went fishing on his vacation without a shirt on?

Whoever told the hosts to deliver the news “with feeling” ??? Hala Gorani sounded absolutely devastated as she told the story of a paralyzed Palestinian child. She paused dramatically and labored over each word. But just seconds prior, she was giggling about David Beckham.

Finally there is Richard Quest I was first introduced to Mr. Quest in a "Daily Show" segment in which Jon Stewart's own British correspondent, John Oliver, spoofed Quest's cliche British phrases and exaggerated accent.

Quest’s segment this week, "Business Traveller" discussed the “Open Skies” agreement, which, beginning in March 2008, will deregulate the market for Transatlantic flights between EU countries and the US. It’s a worthy subject. But Quest spent the most time in his report taking out a map and asking an EU official, “Wait, so…you mean I can go from here…to here!?! Or here!?! Wait, wait…what about here!?!?” The official’s response was always an obvious “yes.”

Also, for no apparent reason, Quest chuckled when he said the names of ordinary airlines.

After his “report” on Open Skies, Quest did a story on ZipCar, where he traveled from London to New York to show how INCREDIBLY EASY it was to use the service. It was a straight-up advertisement.

I promise I will not make Mein Blog a place to air my personal grievances. But Richard Quest is without question the most absurd television journalist of all time.

Slugs and Snails

2007-08-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

It rained all last week, but I noticed that Bonn does not get many worms! Instead, it gets plenty of big fat slugs and snails.

Personally I prefer these creatures to worms; slugs are easier to see (and thus avoid) and some snails have very pretty shells. In fact, if I had to be an animal, I might consider being a snail.

More Civil Disobedience

2007-08-14T08:23:00.001-07:00

After visiting Beethoven Haus Saturday, Lenka and I stopped for some pasta and wine. Amidst our conversation about the breakup of Czechoslovakia, we heard all this commotion coming from the University of Bonn’s main square. When we walked over we saw hordes of Polizei (police) complete with plush, Mercedes-Benz SUVs, well-groomed horses and barking German Shepherds:

What was this all about? From what I could see, the police were called in to monitor a group of 20-30 "punks" who had congregated on the lawn. They were drinking, smoking and engaging in other visually disruptive behavior. The police (who outnumbered the punks two-to-one) huddled together, and so did the punks, each group strategizing and waiting for someone to make a move. Every now and then, a punk would break off from and begin hurling verbal insults at the “pigs.” The police would respond by inching closer, and nothing more. They would not violate anyone's free speech rights, and the punks would not break the law.

This dance continued for several hours; I left several times and returned. Each time there was a surrounding audience, guiltily enjoying the free show. The punks must have spent hours selecting their anarchy-themed American t-shirts, slicing their pants and spiking and dying their hair; the police donned their official uniforms and sped around on various noisy transportation methods, pushing aside the general public to rush into “the scene;” all so that onlookers could react appalled and talk to each other over dinner about how the society is going down the drain. The whole seemed result from boredom and overprivilege.

Once the punks grew tired of their own antics, they headed towards the main train station. The police followed closely behind, appearing as if they could have been the young punks' parents.

Strike!

2007-08-14T08:22:00.001-07:00

Last week my co-worker asked me if I took the train to work. “No,” I told him. “I either walk or take my bike.”

“That’s good,” he said, “because the train workers are going on strike.”

I looked online, and sure enough, a group of “rebel” train drivers were orchestrating a country-wide strike until they got a 31 percent wage increase.

How exciting! My first workers uprising!

Deutsche Bahn, the federal transportation operator, said it would maintain a scaled back schedule (about one train an hour) by recruiting civil servants with train operator licenses. Civil servants are barred by law from going on strike.

But then just a day later when I began asking people how they were dealing with the strike, they informed me that it had already ended. A court in Nuremberg made it illegal for the train workers to strike before late August, because it is the height of the tourist season and it would do significant damage to the German economy.

Until then, Deutsche Bahn said it would try to negotiate the workers' salary without any disruption to future operations.

German Class

2007-08-09T00:26:00.000-07:00

I enrolled in a cheap beginner German class for longer-term visitors and immigrants. It is me, Lenka, two people from Turkey, one from Italy, one from Libya, one from Morocco and another American (who, by the way speaks zero German and is capable of making the most confused face I have ever seen on a human being).

I wanted to quit after the first class. My teacher allowed very little English, Arabic or Turkish to be spoken, and no one understood enough German to tell what the hoot was going on. But Lenka encouraged me to stick with it, and the second class was much better.

We will see if the immersion approach pays off.

Sprechen Sie Deutsche?

2007-08-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

Several of you have asked whether or not I have learned German. The short answer is: not yet. The longer answer is that I have surrounded myself with German speakers, audio lessons and dictionaries, and everywhere I go, people speak English!

Studying English is a mandatory part of the German education system. And most Germans are keen to practice with native speakers. Of course, a handful of store owners frowned at me when I told them, “Ich spreche keine Deutsche” (I don’t speak German). But the majority of Germans have simply begun speaking English to me after they hear how poorly I attempt to speak their language.

The people at my office come from all over the world, so several languages are spoken. About a quarter of them do not speak any German; they speak English and their native language. The Germans are usually pretty considerate about switching to English when they are in the company of foreigners, but it is obviously more comfortable for them to speak German, so often they switch back without noticing.

I have now sat through three meetings conducted entirely in German. I did not know whether I should just tune out and begin reading something I had brought with me, or whether I should join in and laugh disingenuously whenever the room erupted at a joke that I clearly did not understand.

I did start laughing (however this time, *ingenuously*) when all the Germans began banging their fists on the conference table after one of our colleagues gave a presentation. What a hilarious kind of German nonsense joke! Ha ha ha!

Strangely though, no one else was laughing.

I later read in my culture book that this is the German equivalent of clapping.

Brühl!

2007-08-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, Lenka (my other Slovakian co-worker) invited me to go bike riding with her in Brühl. We were joined by another expatriate named Raphael. He is here from Beijing training for a job with DHL.

I did not know really what to expect. I just knew I had my bike. When we got off the train, we were greeted by the great schloss (castle) Augustusburg:

Augustusburg was the residence of Clemens August, the Archbishop of Cologne. It is surrounded by beautiful forests and Baroque gardens. The interior looked similarly spectacular on brochures, but Raphael and Lenka said they planned to visit another time with a tour group, so we did not go inside.

Instead, we traveled by bike to a collection of lakes on the Southwest side of Bruhl. It is a popular vacation/camping spot for Germans.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather. But unfortunately we did not bring our bathing suits. In lieu of swimming, we decided to feed the swans:

Here is Raphael with his new friends:

But then his friends started getting scary:

(Barb, do you remember when that swan bit dad????)

We walked around the surrounding area, and in a typically German style, there was a small amusement park:

And another example of how the Germans will mechanize just about anything:

Lenka and Raphael are both smart, well-traveled and easy to talk to. (Not to mention particularly enduring on a bike!) We had a really nice time. But Raphael showed me how to work the focus function on my camera. And I feel foolish for not knowing how it operated before. I promise to take better pictures.

Some More Pictures of Bonn

2007-08-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

My office:

The building next door (It's either a statehouse or a hotel. I ate dinner there, so it's probably a hotel):

Deutsche Welle:

The University of Bonn:

There Are A Lot Of Bees

2007-08-05T03:02:00.001-07:00

When you eat outside, they swarm all around your food. But they are kind of lethargic and weird, even when you swat at them. I’m surprised I haven’t gotten stung.

Russlands Seele (The Russian Soul)

2007-08-05T02:53:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublic Deutschland (Federal Art Museum), which I visited next, was much busier. This museum features a handful of traveling exhibits. And what luck! The first was about Mother Russia!

The collection was taken from the first National Gallery in Moscow, which was created by a wealthy industrialist named Pavel Tretyakov. The curators went to great lengths to point out that Tretyakov believed that wealth should be acquired only to give back to the society in some way. (The concept of a common good is strong in Germany, likewise in this exhibit.)

I stepped over to the first piece and attempted to read the Cyrillic text. Just as I was beginning to string together some phonetics, the man next to me spat out some quick German and started laughing. I looked at him and realized that he was looking back at me.

“Ich verstehe nicht,” I said. (I do not understand).

“Ja!” he replied happily, and walked away.

I realized that he was laughing about the fact that he did not understand the Russian text. And by my reply, he thought I meant that I did not understand the Russian either.

In reality I probably understood the Russian better than I understood him. But there was an even greater irony: I am Russian and German. That is what I tell people in the States. And here I was, only decades removed from these ancestors, and I would not be able to talk to them if they were alive today.

Anyway, at this exhibit, the art labels were detailed and in English, so I was ready to move on.

I must admit, I was not terribly familiar with Russian art before coming to this exhibit. The Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, which dominated the first few rooms, was obviously influenced Neoclassical and Romantic techniques in Western Europe. So they did not feel very “Russian.” But I had never seen paintings by Leo Tolstoy or some of the bright, cartoonish drawings of Russian fairs. Both were delightful.

The works began to take on a more "Russian" feel in the 1860s with the “Wanders” movement. These artists strove to portray late-19th Century society truthfully, which (in most cases) meant critically. Some of the paintings were positively heartbreaking – ragged old women who had lost everything in political reforms and dark Orthodox churches whose only light came from a few clusters of candles and reflections they made off the gold icons.

The Russian landscape scenes of were similarly bleak. “I love the monotonous nature of my home soil,” wrote writer Mikhail Saltykov-Schedrin, “for what it instills in its people.” There were pictures of immense swaths of land that grew nothing; they merely froze and thawed. Painters often used the same grey paint for the skin of Russian people and the grey, Russian slush.

There was, however, some comic relief from the ridiculousness of Russian drama. The “Wanders” often painted scenes intended to capture a single, suspenseful moment. They all made me laugh, particularly Ilya Repin’s “They Did Not Expect Him.”

The Kunstmuseum

2007-08-05T02:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I visited the Kunst Museum – Bonn’s museum of modern art. It didn’t really do it for me. There was very little information written on the art labels, and all of it was in German. So I had trouble putting things in context.

Probably the most impressive part was the building itself – a spare, clean design with complex entrances, secret passages and windy staircases. The only problem was that it was desolate. As I made my way from room to room, I realized that I was all alone, except for one or two museum attendants who stood up as I entered, then proceeded to stare at me and shadow my movements. I began to get a sense of paranoia as my heels clicked across the long, wooden floorboards. Maybe I was the art! Maybe this was all some bizarre experiment in human behavior, a kind of highfalutin version of “Candid Camera” where they let people loose in a tangled maze of architecture and highly abstract art, to see if they can tell the difference between a doorway and a conceptual rendering of our culture, manifest in small rooms with walls made entirely of beeswax.

Then I though maybe the museum attendants were the artists! (The work was current enough that this could have been the case). And they just wanted to see how people responded to their work – how they approached it, and what they did and did not like. But as I made my way into the early 20th Century room, I realized that the attendants would have had to have had a lot of plastic surgery for this to be true. And there were even some other patrons in these rooms. Clearly my solitude (along with the all the mirrors and reflective surfaces) had gotten to my head.

For lack of a better conclusion, this was my favorite piece:

Bad! Godesberg

2007-08-04T03:52:00.001-07:00

Despite its certified air purity, the smoking ban has definitely not made its way to Bad Godesberg. It seems like everyone smokes - even at offices and museums. Every few km there are cigarette machines:

And almost every public advertisment is for smoking:

Communists!

2007-08-04T03:51:00.003-07:00

In outdoor areas they often have books available for public use. It's not unusual to see a mini library like this one in a park or shopping center:

I Never Want to Drink Water Without Bubbles in it

2007-08-04T03:51:00.001-07:00

Never.

My Temporary Flat

2007-08-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

I am staying with my co-worker Zuzana. She is about my age and from Slovakia.

Like most of my co-workers, Zuzana's English is very good. She has been working at the company for about 3 years and has gotten to travel with them a lot.

Her house is very nice. She left town today for a 3 week holiday!!! While she is away she has allowed me to stay in her flat...

And use her bike!

What a blessing she has been! I cannot imagine how I would have transitioned myself into Germany without her help.

This is the children's park in our backyard:

A Popular Hangout

2007-08-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

After about an hour walking through Bonn, I had to use the toilet. Zuzana recommended I stop in McDonalds.

I walked in and down the stairs. I was immediately met by a friendly bathroom attendant who pointed me towards a selection of unisex toilet stalls, each illuminated inside with its own neon light. When I told Zuzana about the bizzare selection of lighting, she shrugged matter-of-factly, “Yeah, McDonalds is very popular with young people.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

Yeast

2007-08-03T06:55:00.002-07:00

I thought my first trip to a German grocery store had gone well. Until I got home and opened the foil packet I bought which (I thought) contained cheese.

The smell was overpowering - like rotten wine. And the color was a dull, gummy grey. Needless to say, it was not cheese.

I asked Zuzana about it when she got home, and she took one look and started laughing at me. Apparently I had never seen European yeast.

A German Toy Store

2007-08-03T06:55:00.001-07:00

Zuzana took me to a German toy store in the main square of Bonn. It was my first opportunity to hear a screaming child yell out "NINE!" rather than "No."

They had a section of figurines from actual wars, including American Special Forces and Vietcong. They advertised
the skin color as a feature of the toys.

Bonn Is Clean

2007-08-03T06:54:00.002-07:00

A co-worker of mine met me outside the train. He was wearing a denim jacking and earring (among other things). He was very friendly. After six tries to get his car started we were off to Bad Godesburg - the town where Media Tenor is actually based. It is about 7km south of Bonn.

The term "Bad" (pronounced "Bot") is used frequently in German city names. It translates to "Bath" and signifies that a town has met certain air-quality/cleanliness standards.

The Germans are very environmentally-aware. In my culture book it said that in the German psyche it is actually more difficult to leave a piece of garbage sitting on the ground than to pick it up and put it in the waste bin. I'm not sure I would go that far. But the streets are quite consistently clean.

“Entschuldigung Sie”

2007-08-03T06:54:00.001-07:00

I took the InterCityExpress (ICE) train from Frankfurt Airport into Bonn. It was fast (280 km or 173 mi/hr), quiet and clean. Its greatest disturbance was (unfortunately) me, because I could not fit my suitcase behind one of the seats. My balance was thrown off by my heavy backpack, which caused me to smack another passenger’s seat from behind. Despite having practiced my best “entschuldigung sie” (“excuse me”) on the plane, I could not manage to form my first six syllables of publicly-spoken German on this silent, efficient train. I accepted help from the porter and sat down.

Once the train got moving, I got my first exposure to a lush, German landscape. I did not expect so many trees.

Getting to Bonn

2007-08-03T06:53:00.000-07:00

My trip to Bonn pretty much went off without a hitch, except for a mechanical failure that caused my plane to have to wait over an hour at the terminal. The captain came on the intercom several times to inform us that he was trying “one last quick fix,” (which wasn’t very reassuring). After the fourth try, he said we would have to deplane.

We waited inside the airport for about two hours and were told that the plane may or may not be fixed, and we may or may not get a new plane. The pilot did not have any information, and he did not appreciate it if you asked.

Just prior to leaving I saw a CBS report about how flight delays are becoming increasingly common. Two in ten flights now arrive at least 15 minutes late.

Thankfully, we were able to get back on our same plane, and on with our in-flight entertainment…“Wild Hogs!”

Tim Allen was looking pretty good.