Saturday, October 20, 2007

Yay, Germany!

After 10 days in the U.K., I've made it back to Germany. I've got at least a couple posts about the trip and other stuff to be blogged soon. Unfortunately, even though I had a lot of fun on the trip, England appears to be full of sick people and now I have a cold.

On Thursday evening, I was pretty much running on fumes when I arrived at the Manchester airport for the flight back to Bonn. And the airport was a real hassle with finding the right terminal, disorganized waiting lines to check-in (and in the U.K., the home of the queue!), very restrictive carry-on baggage rules, and not a lot of food options. And I was worried about catching one of the last buses from the Cologne airport to Bonn, but, I forgot, it's Germany (and not the U.K., nor the U.S.). The plane landed in Germany at 11:01pm. After a shuttle ride from the plane to the terminal, passport control, baggage claim, customs, the walk down to the end of the terminal, and a quick run when I saw the line of people getting on the bus, I was on a bus and out of the airport by 11:22pm. I was surfing the web in my apartment a little over a hour after landing. God bless Germany.

Anyway, stay tuned for a long-delayed post on Amsterdam, pictures from Cambridge, a story or two on Manchester, and maybe some musings on the mysteries of passport control (the woman at the London Stansted airport was seriously considering denying me entry). Also, I'm going to be in the U.S. from Nov. 10 to the new year. Make a case for why I should visit you while I'm Stateside in the comments.

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Friday, October 05, 2007

Baseball Playoffs

In 2003, when the Cubs last made it to the playoffs, I lived in Chicago. In 2007, I live in Germany, and I have to wake up at 6am to catch the end of the game on a 4 inch window on my computer, using mlb.tv (which is actually kind of cool).

Still, not as cool as this: Saturday, October 4, 2003, I'm leaving my parents' house and the Cubs are losing the 4th game of the National League Divisional Series with the Atlanta Braves, when I get a call. Game 5 is Sunday night. In Atlanta. Tickets have been purchased and there's a spot for me. We leave at 5am, drive 13 hours to Atlanta, straight to the stadium. The Cubs win 5-1, Kerry Wood is the winning pitcher. Afterwards, fans mill around the Cubs dugout and cheer. When we're done, we get right back in the car and drive 13 hours back to Chicago.

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Wednesday, October 03, 2007

More Blog Neglect

I don't know how I convinced myself of this, but I really thought that once summer was over, I'd have a lot of time on my hands to blog. Instead, my parents came to visit (eventually, I'll put up pictures of Amsterdam), and now I'm going to the U.K. next week (severely cutting into my baseball playoffs watching). I'm not even sure my digital camera is functional. It'll all get blogged ... eventually.

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