Not much

Little to report. I've had a 1/2 finished blog sitting in the bin for a week. Just can't seem to find the time or motivation to finish it.

A tad depressed today. Not sure if it's the weather, school feeling too tough or that I already feel my friends in K.C. slipping away. Not a guilt thing at all, I've been there before, when I worked nights. Eventually, since you're out of sight, you're out of mind... people quit calling. Can't blame them. I'm sure, in some cases, it'll work both ways.

We've been running about every other morning. It's good. Dark and cold, but good.

Christmas Markets have opened, we've partaken in 4 just last Saturday. This weekend we're heading to Nurnberg to see the most famous one in the world. I'm sure that it'll be a zoo. Pretty, but a zoo.

Here's my dinner....

Schnee.. schnee!

This is what we woke to this a.m. Nope... doesn't suck! It's now 3:30 p.m. and it's nearly gone. Ah well, it was beautiful while it lasted.


As I've mentioned previously, today was essentially, my last day of Level I Deutsch class. Monday is a play day. Sometime next week I need to go buy books for the next class. It's amazing how inexpensive text books are here compared to the U.S. Both books in total come to about $25.

Here are a couple of pictures from my class.


This is Suhbe and Amien with a couple of girls from class III watching Belly Dancing on Amein's computer.






Here are some of the girls from class gathered around doing.... I'm not sure.





Kera's company announced today that her part of the company had been sold. We'll see what that means for us at some point. Her guess is that we won't know much for many months down the road.

That's it! Have a great weekend!

Wochenende passiert (weekend past... I think)

So, we managed to pull off going to the Track races on Friday night, a road ride on Saturday; kind of and a mountain bike ride on Sunday.

Attached are photos from the track racing event. The highlight of the night for everyone else was that Eric Zabel was racing or the 300 lap "fling" race. Can't remember the real name but two man teams work together and fling each other forward every lap. Hard to explain.

For me though, it was the event that the photos are taken from. This was an event where each rider is coupled with a fat little man on a pedal scooter. He rides behind it and they work together to ride as fast as they can. Odd but a lot of fun to watch. Not on that, when you're sitting up in the stands, you get to breath the 2 cycle exhaust fumes. Woo-hoo!

It's in Deutsch but here's the official 6 day web site... http://www.sechstagerennen.info/ Looks like Zabel and friend won the Munich overall.

Sat. we were planning to go to Garmisch to ride with our friend Kit. However, once he and I spent an hour plus attempting to ride the borrowed rack, I realized that Kera would fret about her/our bikes all the way there. Also, I didn't want to worry about damaging Kit's car.

So, after Kit left Kera and I went on what was supposed to be a road ride in reality, it turned out to be a 120psi road bike gravel road ride. We only went a little over 20 miles in total, but between dodging people, dogs and all the potholes, we were pretty shot by the time we got home. Kera nearly got hit by a car door when a woman threw it open without looking. We were glad we had gone, but it was kind of brutal.

On Sunday, we met our friend Baxter for a mountain bike ride. He took us up the double-track on the west side of the Isar river and then to what's known as Windmill Hill. The "Hill" used to be a landfill many moons ago. It's been long enough that it has fully grown trees on it. You climb up a gravel road with many switchbacks and at the top you're supposed to be greeted with an amazing view which theoretically includes the Allianze Arena, the Alps, the whole city of Munich and a lot me. However, on this day, all we could see was fog/clouds. We couldn't even make out the arena which is only across the road.

From there we went further up the west side river, then crossed and intermittently rode single and double track all the way back to the East side of the English Garden. From there, it's only a couple of miles back to our apartment. By the time we got home, I was hungry and pretty spent. I also realized that I need to change my gearing to be able to effectively ride the really flat trails that are in the city.

Other happenings include that I now only have two 'real' days of Deutsch class left as Monday is essentially a play day. All three language classes are going to spend the day playing games and talking. I then have a week off before Deutsch 2 starts. Guess we need to go get me the books.

We've; mostly Kera has gotten most of our stuff put away in the apartment. We still need a shrank/wardrobe or two for the rest of our clothes. Along with that, we are supposed to be getting at least a temporary storage space to put our patio furniture in. Our balcony is too small to use more than a couple of the chairs and a small table here. However, it'll be really nice to have them come summer. We still need to ask the landlord if she'll let us use the grill here.

That's probably update enough for one day. Talk to you soon.

Little bitty midget update.

Just a note to tell everyone that I managed to get nearly everything put away in the kitchen today/tonight. I think I managed to empty something like 10 boxes and put things in their places throughout the apartment.

Believe it or not, it's slowly starting to resemble something other than a disaster zone.

Got registered for another semester/term of school yesterday. I'm really realizing that it's going to take me getting off my butt and studying for me to get through the next one. I've got two weeks left in Class I and then a week off... again. I think we get 3 weeks off in Dec. and Jan.

Anyway, sat down with my classmate Svjetlana and went over the "infamous" Die/Der/Das nouns. Basically, it comes down to Feminine/Masculine/Neuter classification. It changes the verb/adverb conjagations and more. I won't bore you. Suffice to say, after 2.5 hours of writing down various rules I'm starting to learn them.

Now, it's up to me to actually start using the language which is the best way to plunge in to it.

Kera gets home from London tonight, late. There's flowers in the new kitchen for her. Have to be the good guy once in awhile.

O.K., night.

Lazy Sunday

A couple of pics from the photos I took over the weekend.

I think I've mentioned this before, but nearly everything is closed on Sunday's in Germany. It's mandated by the government. Therefore, it's rather difficult to get anything done outside the house/apt.

That's pretty much happened with Kera and me today. Our shipping container from America arrived on Friday. It looked like a box bomb had gone off by the time the movers left. Tough guys... 4 floors, no elevator and a lot of stuff that included a large number of heavy wood furniture pieces. Almost everything arrived unscathed.

Anyway, my back's been bugging me for some reason and the heavy lifting probably hasn't helped at all. So, today, I tried to take it easy and Kera puttered around putting a few things away. Puttering meant I think she cleared 10 or so boxes. I helped a little but spent a fair portion of the day working on homework.

We went out for a bit to eat a late lunch and walk around a little. Kera got her stuff ready to leave on a 2 day business trip to London and I did more homework. After some serious thought and discussion, I've decided to continue with the next level of class. Along with that, I think I need to force myself to start speaking Deutsch a lot more often. It's tough as I don't like looking like an idiot... except when I mean to.

Kera left around 5:00 for the airport. After she left, I finished homework and the Dave Chapelle DVD's we'd rented. I went out after finishing only to find that the video store is also closed on Sunday night. Ugh. I then took a little walk in the drizzle just to get some fresh air and see if I could dig up a late dinner. I ended up picking up a yummy pizza from the corner pizzeria and playing at home.

Tomorrow, it's school registration and a new kitchen. Wish me/us luck!

test - photo upload gone wrong.

Day or two late but I love the photo. Thought it fitting for my profile pic as I can't seem to get 'real' photos to load.

Hmmm.. little to report actually

Remind me that sleeping on an air mattress sucks if I ever happen to comment otherwise.

I didn't sleep well last night, so Kera got up and did a long run on her own. I woke up slightly before she got home. After that, I did a quick grocery run so she'd have breakfast and then went for a run after she left for work.

The English Garden is only about a 6-8 minute run from our house. A pretty spectacular place to run or hang out. It's basically a long forest running through Munich for miles. I couldn't tell you how many beer gardens or restaurants it contains. At any one time though, there are hundreds of people there doing something (walking dogs, playing with kids, running, laying about in the sun, etc.) like any big park.

Anyway, Kera and I had lunch together and then I went and wandered about the city with my new friend Christian. We were specifically looking for a front brake and lever for my fixed gear. If you've never ridden one or know what they are, think track bike. If the wheels move, the cranks move. Mine's like that with no brakes. In a city where so many people ride and walk, most without a clue; it can be rather dangerous.

We ended up going to a half dozen bike shops and covering a good part of the city on foot. Pretty amazing how a city shrinks as you figure more about it. Munich, proper, seems so much smaller than K.C. when you start wandering around. I think what makes it tough on some levels is that you can't see landmarks when you're amongs all the 5-6 story apartment buildings, which are everywhere in the city.

When you look in bike shops here it's very different than in the states. Most have commuter bikes as their "bread and butter". After that comes mountain bikes and a select few do some road stuff. It's a completely different thought process than in our part of the midwest where bikes are for a select group of people and then it's almost completely mtb or road oriented.

Found out that our furniture is to arrive at 8:00 a.m. on Friday morning. Our washer/dryer and TV are all slated to arrive the same day. Woo-hoo!

Talk to you soon.