Germany is doing well, I'm glad you asked. I learned a German phrase this week that makes me chuckle, a lot. A slang way to say that something is "really awesome" is to say "Das ist der Hammer", translated as "that is the hammer!" I'm not kidding; it's wacky.
One of my co-workers sent me this blog the other day:
http://nothingforungood.com/
It's about Germany from an American perspective and, from what I've read so far, this guy has covered a lot of things I myself have noticed. His commentary is a little over the top but it's funny and really covers a lot of the cultural nuances over here. I particularly liked the posts about sandwiches, toilets, and this graph:
You should take a look!
On to the pictures.
I went skiing again this past Sunday at Brauneck, a resort in Lenggris near the Austrian border. I had read that this place is a local favorite and much less touristy. I would say they were spot on. It was also cheaper that the Zuspitze; I think I paid half what I did the week before for lunch.
The snow was great and the slopes were really challenging. Most of them were covered in a good deal of loose powder and the more difficult ones had moguls. We skied twice down a black slope, the "difficult" class, which was a good 8 km long. It was so tiring. By the time I reached the bottom, my legs were shaking. I probably skied some 30 km that day. It was sorta unfortunate that we found the long slopes later in the day when we were very tired and being tired really makes your form sloppy but I made it through.
My friend Sam came along, which may have been a mistake, but it was an experience for him nonetheless. He has never ever skied before. I thought this particular place was one of the most difficult places I've ever skied. Add that together and you get a rather challenging first skiing experience. Sam was a good sport about it.
In no order, here are pictures:
We weren't as high up as earlier but the views were just as spectacular. The peaks of this ski area sit on the edge of the foothills so you could look out one direction and see the flat lands and look the other and see the alps going on for miles and miles. The day was spectacular as well, with blue skies and sunshine. I got a little sunburned. All in good fun.
A funny story from getting there: We got on a children train accidentally. Here's Sam in from of it:
Halfway through the train journey the train split up to go to three different end locations. We knew about this ahead of time but, when the time came to change cars, we weren't paying attention and no announcement was made. Someone realized we need to change and we rushed perhaps too quickly from our car to the front car. We jumped through the doors as they closed. As we caught our breaths we started to notice some telling signs that we were in the wrong place. This train was filled with middle school aged kids on their way to a smaller ski resort. As you can see in the above picture, the train was clearly labeled but we were too hurried to pay attention. The thing had teddy bears and flowers all over the inside and out. If we could have taken our time we would have known.
We had to go back a stop, which delayed us an hour, but it wasn't a huge issue. Thank goodness.
These other pictures are from Saturday, when we went exploring around downtown. We went to this modern Japanese products store, which was really wacky, as well as a really neat but rather crowded tea shop. I though it was pretty cool.
We also stopped in a church along the way, called the Asamkirche or the Church of Saint Johann Nepomuk. As you can see, it was really ornate inside.
And it had skeletons. I'm looking forward to seeing more of these old churches because the inside are usually impressive like this one. Sorry I don't have more inside pictures.
Beyond that I've been mostly hanging out doing little things around the StuStadt and whatever else.
We made pork chops the other day.
I also saw Watchmen, in English, on Tuesday night. I thought it was a pretty decent overall, though very very graphic; probably more graphic than reality. The story was pretty cool to follow, but really dense and complicated, which was probably my only issue with the film. It's probably better served in graphic novel form. Also, they used really odd and probably ironic music all throughout the film. If you see it you'll know what I mean; I never expected to hear the song "Hallelujah" in the situation in which it was used for this film. At the end of the day it was worth seeing but, like 300, was better at being an action movie than a profound piece of cinematography. Or more simply, it won't exceed any modest expectations for a superhero movie.
My goodness.
I'm gonna do cultural things this weekend. And sleep. That will be nice.
Take care team.
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