The Great Grey North

Here's to it being the Great White North at some point during th
is trip. I seem to be the only person actively enjoying the cold, though this much time below freezing without even a hint of snow is starting to grate on me as is the constant grey sky. In Texas, gray sky means rain, here it should mean snow at least.

A lot of stuff seems to be broken at my host family's house though I did help replace the washing machine today which earned me a free meal, which is good because all I had was Haribo (which I had to throw away for fear of some sort of diabetic shock). The internet remains broken however. I wou

ld have liked to have made this post on Friday as I am trying to make one post for the week and one post for the weekend but my internet was out for more than a few hours (This didn't manage to make it up until 6 hours after I wrote it) which caused me to miss yet another crazy euro-club night apparently. I finally managed to get all of my pictures off of my camera and onto facebook though, which is great even though it took all afternoon to upload all 430 or so pictures. While uploading the pictures was an ordeal, it wasn't nearly as confusing as finding an SD card reader was. Store clerks that don't k

now any English at all are tolerable as I can wave my arms very convincingly, but I learned today that I need to watch the ones who appear to speak English as well. I went to a camera shop over by the Hauptbahnhof today (I think it was the one Vincent, Chibuzo, and I spent an afternoon looking for earlier in the trip but never found) and asked if they had an adapter for my microSD card and they didn't, which is understandable. The store clerk then told me that the Galeria Kaufhof had some on the first floor. As I walked in the door of the Galeria I realized how daunting the words "1st floor" are in Germany. The way I saw it he either knew that we called the ground floor the first, in which case things would go smoothy, turns out there are no electronics on the ground floor so that's obviously not what he meant. Then I thought that he must have meant the German first floor (our second) I decided immediately after seeing the sea of lingerie in front of me that this also wasn't what he meant, so then I assumed he was really turned around and tried the basement. While there was a remarkable grocery d

own there it was severely lacking in SD card adapters. Thinking I had exhausted all of the possibilities for "first" that there were I made a quick run to the top and realized that the camera store clerk had in fact said "fourst floor" as the first thing I ran into on the fourth floor was camera stuff. So that was my adventure for the day.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, my host family does in fact have a working washing machine now so I will have to look for another excuse to class it up with my suits and ties. But that brings up another thing that is surprisingly different over here: Packaging. Now, the washing machine still had all of that plastic an styrofoam on it like it would in the states but when we started to actually connect hoses and whatnot there were a bunch of pretty heavy duty bolts that had to be removed just to be tossed. Bosch decided to just throw in four, six-inch-long bolts in just to hold a hose down instead of using tape. Now perhaps the bolts will be used for something else or can be returned or recycled or something but it still seemed a little ridiculous.

Another thing that seemed a little ridiculous was the Cologne cathedral, even though it was more or less built in the modern era its still mind-blowing. I've seen a fair share

of sky scrapers but the intricacy of the stonework and the fact that it manages to remain standing after all of these years is far more impressive to me especially considering, you know, that whole WWII thing. The scale of the decoration was ridiculous as well and seeing what the top of the towers looks like when you can stand next to it on the ground makes it harder to understand in an odd way.

I'm really enjoying everything more and more each day, especially now that I actually have

photographic evidence of the fact that I am truly in Germany. Also, Vincent, seeing as you worked so hard for this picture by stealing my camera I will go ahead and share it with the world.