The World is Your Oyster

What I love MOST about traveling (other than learning the food, people, and culture of new places) is the exposure to new and different things to laugh at. In my head, of course. I am as outwardly respectful as possible, as I feel the only way to know a culture is to be part of it. On the other hand, I have this blog as my comic release. I am reminded of one of my favorite Jack Handy quotes:

"We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me."

• I took a 12-hour night train from Vienna to Germany which arrived on the minute, exactly at its scheduled time at 7:51 am. 12 hours of driving and the arrival is synchroinized to the second! 2 weeks later when I arrived in France, however, the clock at the train station was an hour and a half off the correct time. After seeing that I was thrilled that my train ended up in the right city.

I am having a marvelous time with my lifeguard friends and have especially loved swimming with the swim team this week. I feel very at home here and several times a day regret not staying longer. "Longer" being "forever" in this case.

(By the way, I would put up photos but cannot because the computer chez Krystel runs on Windows 98. Windows 98! Does anyone remember it?!)

Thonon-les-Bains, France, in summer.


I can't believe myself. In the original itinerary of my circumnavigational trip, I hadn't incorporated my true love, France. Luckily, I added a month to my overall trip and am spending nearly two weeks here near the French Alps, on lake Geneva. The beauty of my current surroundings rival that of Seattle - a wonderful and bustling city set among mountains and water. Yet this place has baguettes, French wine abound, and cheese. Can life be any more grand?

With my French grandma, Marie Madeline, out on a walk.
I spent Easter weekend in the sweet country home of my friend Krystel's mom's boyfriend, Mike. Don't you love having connections? Mike is an Englishman, well, a Chech whose native langage is English, who has lived in France for nearly 30 years. I do believe he was delighted to host an Anglophone, as he sought me out for conversation throughout the weekend. All together we were 10 people, all family save Mike and me, yet we were of course treated as though relatives. We went for walks in the countryside with Mike's two dogs, who understand only English. It was incredibly amusing to hear the kids commanding the dogs "zeet!" instead of "sit," and "cuhm ere." The holiday, as all good holidays are, was focused around eating. When we weren't eating we were preparing the next meal. Accostomed to my gauche American customs, I filled myself up when we we sat down for the meal. "What a good appetite the American has!" they would laugh. I had forgotten that there were several courses still ahead of me. I was content with the large amount (and large variety, I might add) of food from the first course, and then oh là là, they brought out MORE food. I ate again. And then MORE food! It wouldn't stop! Not to mention, Krystel's mom practically force fed me; she's one of those women whose sole pleasure in life, it seems, is derived from watching people eat. We ate tartine, chicken, salad, potatoes, cheese, beans, several different kinds of dessert, lunch and dinner, 3 days in a row. I make it sound easy and simple, but do remember this is France, and these dishes have the innate French complexity you'll find in a good wine: 10 different flavors at once. The others were stragetic and ate little in the morning; but waking up to coffee, croissants, and pain au chocolat, how can you ask me to eat a light breakfast? Perhaps it worked to my disadvantage that I was willing to try everything and liked everything, because at each meal I'd leave the table uncomfortably full.

I have recieved several complaints about not having updated my blog. I'm shocked. Does this mean people are reading it?! My dear friend Laura noted that the last entry I had I was about to enter a pain experiment, and then she hadn't heard anything for weeks. In retrospect, that IS bad practice to leave everyone desperatly awaiting the results of an unknown venture. I'm alive folks, I actually didnt know what to write for a while. I did make an entry at some point but didnt post - I wasnt confident about the entry. But now here I am, worrying my loved ones, now forced to type on this horriffic French keyboard. Why do the French insist on changing a keyboard that is functioning and good? My life is so difficult, I have to press shift to make a period, the question mark and apostrophe are hidden somewhere and it takes forever to find them, and they took the letter "a" off the main row of keys. What are they thinking? Here's the blog from last week that I didnt post:

I know there are many desperate fans impatiently awaiting my next blog entry (many, in this case, indicates my mom and dad), but I'm sorry to say I haven't come up with any profound and witty musings to report in the past week. Perhaps you'd like an update on the pain experiment?

Falk, the experimentor, placed a metal device on my arm that could, in a controlled way, increase and decrease rapidly in temperate. The first part tested my pain limits, by which I pressed a key at the point of 'unbearable pain.' Then we went through a series of random temperatures and I guessed what temperature I was feeling. And, strangely enough, Germans use the METRIC system, so every time I felt pain on my arm I'd have to quickly calculate the temperature into degrees centigrade. That was fun, a little math project! Then we measured how accurately I measure pain: every 20 seconds the device would heat to a random temperature for a duration of 3 seconds. I indicated how much it hurt, on a scale from 'Is this thing even on?' to 'My arm is burning, turn it off! Turn it off!' Of course, it wasn't all that bad. The test was kind of fun really.

I got to thinking about pain. There were times when my arm was incredibly uncomfortable, my face would wince, my arm muscles contract. Yet I was always ok with it, because I knew that the pain would be over in less than 3 seconds. Imagine how wonderful life would be if only we knew how long we'd be experiencing pain! Having an end point in sight made, in this case, a remarkable difference in my level of comfort. Think about it. Your cold will end on Sunday night at 7 pm, you'll be sad he dumped you for two weeks exactly. Actually, think of it in another way. You're in the sun and you risk a sunburn (clearly this isn't meant for you, Craig), but it'll be gone by tomorrow at 4 guaranteed. Would you spend your afternoon surfing then? Yes! Well, no, not me, I can't get a sunburn because I worked at Island Dermatology and now have a paranoia complex about sunburns. But it works for other people. We'd be so much more willing to take risks if we knew ahead of time what pain we'd feel!

In Tuesdays with Morrie (wonderful recommendation from my beloved friend Cheryl), he talks about feeling pain, how everyone is afraid of pain and does his or her best to push it away. In my humble life I have discovered that if the pain is there, I'll feel it one way or another, and that it's never really possible to push it away. So I have been working on feeling all of my emotions, whatever they may be, give them their proper time and effort. Overall it work much better than trying to hide or change them, I do believe.

This entry is rather sad, I feel. I will soon write another entry about my current life in Thonon-les-Bains, France, where I am spending two weeks at the home of my friend Krystel and her 12 year old daughter Célia. Life is so funny here, such wonderful observations to be made.

What have I gotten myself into? At the Neurology department they're looking for volunteers and for some reason I volunteered to be part of a pain study. They'll be collecting me in a few minutes. If I have dexterity left after the experiment, I'll let you know how it goes.

Here I am in Hamburg, writing from the distinguished Neurological research department at the University of Hamburg, office of Dr. Ulrike Bingel. Many important discoveries in Neuroscience are occurring all around me, and I'm sitting in the office corner blogging about things like 'Hamburger Bank.' I'm STILL laughing about it. Remember the Hamburgler? I just read he is responsible for the pickle mutiny of 1932 and heisting millions of Hamburgers from the McDonalds archive. I had no idea. According to a reliable web resource, mockingword.com, the Hamburgler has contracted Mad Cow Disease. Such a tragic life. Please read for more information: http://www.mockingword.com/brief-mockery/hamburgler-mad.html

This is the first time in a while I've had the opportunity to share photos. The ones you see here are a scattered mixture from my week skiing in Hintertux, my several days in Vienna, and Hamburg. Let's go on a photo adventure!

Check out this guy's sweater! Is he Norweigen or what? I had to chase him down the mountain to get a decent shot. Well worth it, don't you think?










Austrians! Love em to pieces. I can't get this photo to align itself on the left of the page. It's driving me Crazy.








Vienna Choir Boys. They are so little!








What would Austria be without fur? Imagine the protestors surrounding THIS store if it were in the US? These coats make me think of the Baronness in the Sound of Music.






Things I love about Austria: Sausage and Cheese!


I'm growing very frustrated with the computer so I have to go eat some brötchen and calm myself before I continue the stories of my adventures. Acutally I probably won't eat brötchen, it's a breakfast food, I just wanted to use the ö letter.

I realize in my last entry I didn't distinguish what I love about Germans. I'm in Austria so I can't comment on Germany, per se. But the Austrian/German culture by which I'm surrounded has much to love.

First, I love the assertiveness, everyone talking at once when we're ordering at a restaurant. I quietly and shyly await my turn for the server's attention, searching for her eye contact while I repeat in my head over and over the right way to pronounce whatever it is I'm about to order (freakishly long words, I know they do it so they can laugh at Americans pathetically trying to speak German). Everyone orders and the server begins to turn away before I realize I'm just supposed to SAY what I want, rather than expecting her to coerce the words out of me. OK, this method makes sense; say what you want when you want something. My friends make me laugh; they cheer when I prounounce something correctly. Thank you, thank you very much.

The German sense of humor is wonderful, something I've connected with immediately. I only wish I spoke better German so I could get the jokes. If you're familiar with my own sense of humor, you'll understand why I'm very in synch with Markus as his philosophy behind joking is "Better to get the joke right and lose a friend." It makes me think of my dear roommate Adam November, and how our best moments are spent making fun of each other. Miss you Adam.

Next, I LOVE SAUNA. I can't believe it's not more popular in the US. Oh wait, yes I can, Americans have uptight Puritan traditions and can't tolerate the idea of being naked. I do like the German mentality about nakedness - it's ok that you have skin, that you're male or female, that you are a human being. There's no sense of showing off or embarrassment, the sauna is about the SAUNA, no one creepily stares or worries about being looked at the way Americans worry. Fabulous, I think it's a great. And when in Rome...

I'll walk you through it. Shower, sit in the hot tub for a while if you like, then get ready for the sauna because it's a 'hell' of an experience. Water is poured onto the hot stones, the steam rises, usual sauna procedure. Then, the 'Aufguss' begins. The Aufguss master waves a towel in the air to spread the heat, then he/she waves the towel several times at each person so you can have your own individual wave of excruciatingly hot air in your face. This happens again, more steam, more Shaharan heat waves. WHOA, no wonder the Germans were able to take over Europe, these people are intense. The air got so hot I thought my skin was burning. That's no exaggeration. My first Aufguss I thought I was going to die, but over the week we'd go every afternoon and I really enjoyed it. We spent the entire day on the mountain, the wind blowing snow and ice, burning any microscopic morsel of exposed skin. I was miserably freezying, but it seemed as if my friends hardly noticed the inclement weather. They noticed, they just didn't complain, that was the difference. Once I stopped focusing on the cold, I had such fun. Peer, Axel, Annette, and I practiced deep snow skiing but I stopped long before they did since I was falling so much and I'd take so long to dig my buried ski equipment and body parts from the snow. Freezing fun ski days, hot fun sauna evenings. Couldn't be better. Thanks Suse, Andreas, Uli, Peer, Annette, Markus, Michelle, and Axel for the ideal ski vacation.

I'm currently writing from Vienna. Lovely, hope to see the Vienna Boys' Choir tomorrow at Sunday mass. You know me, I never miss a chance to go to mass.