GERMANY pictures

Sex Drugs and Cops in Dusseldorf

City Shopping in Koln

Crazy architecture in Dusseldorf

Dusseldorf

Koln Cathedral

Martin and me in Koln. Martin was the best host ever!

Erkelenz or maybe Ktown...

Look at that mustache!

France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Oh my.

So many remarkable things have happened me over the past week in Germany.

Here are a few thoughts from my trip thus far:

-Dutch sounds like a British person speaking German.
-Apparently there are geeks in Germany too and they mirror the geeks in America: generally overweight or extremely tiny on the female's part, high pitched voice, and dorky clothing. This is not a slight against the geeky (as it very well may sound). I am a firm believer in the power of geekdom, and wish we trained children to play boardgames rather than shoot fake weapons.
-France smells like cigarettes and perfume.
-Many people have a fake tan in this part of Europe. This is likely due to lack of sun. We should pray for them and for the sun to appear more often.
-Dream and Trauma, a phrase used to describe a new Napoleon exhibit in Bonn sounds even better in German: Napoleon und Europa: Traum und Trauma. (Napoleon and Europe: Dream and Trauma)
-The "coffee shops" (a place for smoking marijuana in the Netherlands) were as creepy as I imagined they would be. The ones we visited were dark and sunken into stationary boats on the river that ran through Maastrickt. As I am not a smoker, i hung around for only a few minutes...enough time to notice the cool bob marley socks they were offering in a particular boat called "Smokey". Too bad they were so small.
-Expats are as interesting as they are crazy.
-It is hard to find a French person that speaks English in Metz, France. It is easy to find a German who speaks English.
-Martin's mother, a German wife of a very hard working farmer, told me that "the French work to live and Germans live to work."
-There are so many bicyclist in the Netherlands and there bikes are large and beautiful.
-I have eaten a donar Kebab in nearly every country I have visited (besides Luxembourg). They are so good--when these things truly hit the states McDonald's might go out of business.
-Germans follow rules better than any people I have met.
-If anyone ever tells you to come to Germany and visit their family's farmhouse...drop any and everything you are doing and buy the plane ticket asap!

There is more...but that is all I can remember for now. I will load up some pictures soon!

SXSW is over..and now I am off to Germany!

Today marks the end of SXSW and the beginning of the spring equinox. Coincidently, I found out today during a yoga class that the spring equinox symbolizes a new birth and the end of winter (I guess I could have figured this out but it was nice hearing it in hero's pose). In the last few weeks I have released a book, sublet my apartment, moved all my belongings, and officially and metaphorically prepared myself for a new existence. If all goes well, I will be in Brazil this summer writing and then Mongolia on the Fulbright Program (and still writing!). In two days, I will arrive in Germany and my new life will begin. After visiting K-town to do some writing for my second novel, Honey Dripping from the Barrel of a Gun, I will depart for India where I will finish the novel! Finally, I have finding fliers for Armageddon Skills in weird places, which makes me hopeful that people have been looking at them.

I have recently been bottling up inspiration and prose-based ideas for a hopeful creativity explosion after arriving in Dharamsala, India. SXSW should be considered fuel for this inspiration, and if it were a person I would thank it for the help! From seeing amazing bands, to a puppet play based on the Jungle (@Salvage Vanguard Theater)to basking in the depressing nature of Chicas Bonitas on a whim--I feel as if I were an open container this SXSW, being filled with ideas and hoping that some don't spill out (I meant to write a few down but I am such a believer in th power of memory that I forgot to!)

SO here is to a new year, although not officially New Years, and here is to every day from here on out being the start of a new year.