Home Again, Home Again, Jiggidy Jig...

Well, I'm back. Back in Arizona that is. Being here is almost surreal. I had a long and gruesome series of flights back home. I was offered $200 in flights from Delta for giving up a seat in Georgia for a flight. I took it. As a result, my luggage was lost AGAIN (shortly after I got it back). Luckily, I eventually found it in a glass case sitting to the side. If Lamb who picked me up at the airport hadn't seen it, I'd never know.

My fist night back was Sunday. I was tired. Lamb hung out with me at my house for a while and I looked through some of my sister's pictures. I went to bed at 10:30, but it felt like way past 2am. I woke up at 2am, and it felt like 10am. I forced myself to stay asleep (or in bed atleast) till 5am when I gave up and started cleaning my now over cluttered room thanks to my parents' and sister's storage need. I decided to go to my old station KFYI to say hi to my old friends and see what was new. I got there by 9am and before I left, I had TWO jobs!

I had already pre-arranged to get some small pickup hours at WestStar this summer. Seeing Barry had confirmed that. Then, just as soon as he said hi, Chirs, my former supervisor, had asked me to start work. I was working at both places the next day, and am writing this from KFYI right now, while working on the Rush Limbaugh Show.

I also enjoy seeing my family again. I saw Wendy and Rob's kids yesterday. I joined Connor for his first coach pich baseball practice. While sitting there on the bench with his father, the "team mom" comes up to us and asks,

"Are you Connor's parents?"

She was very accepting. We declined to go with the joke...

Being home is nice, but like I said, surreal. As much as I like it, it has occured to me that Arizona is no longer my home. I come here for a break, like a vacation spot, but it's just not my home anymore; it's where I'm from.

After I graduate, I have no idea what I will do or where I will go. If I do get married, then that will greatly effect my choice of locale. Also, I will likely go where the money is. I will apply to some stations in Hawaii. I also get the feeling that if I ever need it, I can find jobs here in Arizona without much effort.

For now, I sleep on storrage boxes and soak up what fun and memories I can while I can. And it is good...

Uno Memento Pourfafour...

Nothing makes you feel like you are better at adapting than your own family.

My mom is the closest thing to the real Peggy Hill from "King of the Hill" that exsists. She's a teacher, she has big feet, and she speaks a broken Spanish that she assumes all others can understand. The big joke of our trip was that she would go around Europe speaking Spanish to everybody. In German you want 1 of something you say, "Eine". Please is, "Bitte". Mother would walk up to strangers and say, "Uno, memento pourfafour..."

"Mom, they speak German here. Spanish is of little help."

"Well, it sounds close to French."

"Then ask for it in French, but they'd speak English before French in Germany."

We had that conversation many, many times. She would eventually give up. I took two years of German in high school and know some very basic phrases. When she wanted something and didn't want to start a conversation in Spanish she'd turn to me. "Can you ask her for 3 of those danishes?"

"Sure." (To the worker) "Ya, I'd like three danishes, please."

She forgets that every single person in Germany took English in school and they can atleast understand our number system...

Gotta love her.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles...

In the last 3 weeks, I have traveled by almost every known form of transportation known to man, and numerous times.

• Planes
  
• Trains
  
• Automobiles (and on the Autobahn as well)
  
• Trams
  
• Trollies
  
• Subways
  
• Escelators
  
• Motorized walkways
  
• Buses
  
• Boats
  
• Gondillas
  
• Ferries
  
• Car Farries
  
• Cable Cars
  
• and of course, Feet.

Rossie O'Donnel was talking about her spoiled child once and asked him, "What it is you want so bad in your life that you have never gotten?"
His reply, "I never got to ride on a Submarine!"

I think I know of one more form of transportation I need to make this trip complete.

Berlin...

We are staying in Frankfurt mostly, but we make day or 2 day trips accross the country or into others. We recently went to Berlin. If you have never been there, you should. If you have, you need to go again because you won't recognize it.

So much history has happend there. Both world war 1 and 2 started and ended in that one city. As a result, much of the old buildings do not exist. The ones that do are most likely rittled with bullet holes. Everything of real note happend in a short amount of space and traffic is horrible, so we took a walking tour. It was really the way to go.

We met up with a group and the tour guide took us to all of the important spots. It's a good thing we went with that plan, you can never see all there is to see without help finding it. First you walk through an insignificant looking park which is where the swampy farm village began. You walk to the old capital, you see the giant holes that Hitler had dug for his great momuments that never got built. He panned on making a building resembling our white house, only over 5 times bigger. He also broke ground on another site chosen for a new Arc de Triump that would be 49 times larger. That's stinkin big. We walked to the infamous Berlin Wall. Where ever the wall once stood, the government will have a line in brick or concrete to mark the spot. We walked along it and accross the once fortified terrain. We walked to where Hitler's bunker lay. We stood on the very ground were he ended his life.

There is no marking. There is no monument. There isn't even a plauqe. There is a sidewalk over it and cars carelessly parked next to it. Had you not known, you'd think it was a sidewalk like any other. The bunker has been destroyed, only 2 metal floorboards now burried remian. He shot himself down in that bunker, his freind carried him and his wife - both died of suicide. He of a bullet shot to the head, her of a poison, which was used two days prior on thier dog to make sure it would work. All three of the Hitlers (dog makes three) were brought up to the surface above the bunker and lit on fire. They were torched so well that they needed Hitler's own dentist to declare it them. The friend who burnned Hitler died just 4 months ago.

The spot is barren, by a dead end street. A fitting end to a dead end man.

Checkpoint charlie is now a spot for Indians to sell fuzzy Russian hats, and that is about it.

The city is now in a rebuilding phase. East Germany is still dark and drab. You can feel and see the dramatic change between the two halves even if they are politically one now. You see an old building with part of the Berlin wall standing, and a brand new one, all glass shinning accross the street. Old parts are being torn down or restored, new commercial is moving in. Things change so fast, even the tour guide was amazed, pointing out a building that was about to be destroyed here, and a hole in the ground Hitler had made, being being developed for good with a building going up next week.

Berlin is a dicadomy of itself. Old fighing new. If you want to see Berlin, never wait for the right time - changes faster than it can keep up with.

A Little Bit...

I have spen't nearly one week in Germany now. Everywhere we go, the people speak German, obvously. But most everyone also speaks English. It is required of school kids and essencial for buisness men. I have deduced the very first English phrase they teach.

Try this expirement and you will have no doubt in your mind that I am 100% correct. You walk up to any German, young or old, male or female, homless or wealthy, and ask, "Do you speak Enghlish?"

Swift will come the reply, "A little bit..."