Day 4
Where to even begin? It seems like to me that the last 4 days have been a whirlwind of activity, sleep, eating, more sleep, being tired and sight seeing. But really, what has gone on over the past 4 days? Thursday we got up, got our things packed, headed off to our meeting point, got the group together, got all the luggage together, headed towards PDX and onto Lebanon. 36 hours without really sleeping (soundly) starts to make your head spin. Toss in a dash of jet lag (course I haven’t really felt it which is odd since this is my first trip overseas) bad airplane coffee and babies crying and you get a little picture of how long a day can truly feel. Let me backup a bit though— Germany; pretty cool place. One thing that I had heard (of course) that there are a ton of nice cars there since it’s basically the capital of VW/Audi/Porsche/BMW and Mercedes. If I had the money, I’d probably import one of those badass cars, as it’s true, the Euro models are a hell of a lot better than the US models we get. Bar none, the cars in Germany kick ass. Now Germany itself is quite interesting. I’d say it’s developing into a more “western cultured” nation from what I’ve seen of downtown Frankfurt. It seems that the Europeans are trying to emulate our Western culture but adding their own flair to the mix. A lot of the buildings in the area are very modern looking, which in this “post modern” area is quite cool, but who knows if the designs will last the test of time.
Our brief 12-hour layover in Frankfurt allowed for us to wander around downtown for a while and go into the shops and get some authentic German sausage as well. Quite good with some fresh potato salad and some good mustard. Finishing the feast off with a German pastry from a local bakery, it was an almond crusted, almond filled pastry puff with raisins in it. Yummy.
Frankfurt’s weather was pretty much like Oregon’s; Cloudy, a little windy and looked like it was going to rain but it didn’t. One thing that was readily apparent to me was that Europe’s mass transit system kicks the junk out of the stuff we have. I can honestly say that the MAX line we have at home is a joke compared to what they have. The only way I can describe the difference between the two is you’ve got a multi-leveled subway system along with a train system that runs along side the subway system and it’s cheap and fast!
At home it seems like we’re so dependent on our cars we forget that really, the rest of the world doesn’t even really use one or have one. Then again the justification for having one in an area where the mass transit system is so good, I can’t see owning one if I only needed to use the subway to get to work.
So aside from mass transit system, good food, a futbol team in the Euro Cup 2008 and some other cool stuff, Germany seemed like a pretty cool place. I still want to head to Ingolstadt (in Germany) to see the Audi factory and of course drive on the Autobahn — But I did get to see the Autobahn… so close… but yet so far. ☺
So right now as I’m typing this up, I’ve been up for about 2 ½ hours, had some food and getting all of these details hashed out. I’ve also gone through and organized my pictures, which I took on Friday and Saturday. Some of them actually turned out a lot better than I thought they would with one of them ending up having a pigeon on top of the statue, which was actually really cool looking.
More later…
