Knee. Knee. Knee.

So, if you haven't already heard, I'm back in the states a bit prematurely. I woke up in the middle of the night in Berlin to feel my knee go *pop* and a familiar pain come back to me. So I crutched to the hospital and back to my grandparents, got a new flight home, and the doctor here confirmed what I knew all along: torn medial meniscus in my right knee. I'm waiting to get my MRI, and that will probably confirm that I'll need surgery. Hopefully I can get that out of the way sooner rather than later, because I currently can't fully extend my leg, nor fully bend my knee. But, so goes life.

Birthday in Berlin

Well, its now getting closer towards the end of January, and that always means its time for my birthday! I didn't really do anything too crazy (does sitting on a couch watching home videos of me throwing apples at ducks count as crazy?). Today was a bit more exciting - I went to the "Gruene Woche" aka the "Green Week" here in Berlin, which is apparently the world's largest agricultural/food/home products expo. It was pretty fun. Basically, the rundown went like this: There were huge halls with all sorts of stuff, but the main attraction was a lot of countries had sent some folks who were slinging out loads of their traditional foods. Its actually quite easy to talk about traditional foods. It sort of went like this:
Germany: sausages, cheese, and beer
Austria: sausages, cheese, and...sausages (I bought some wild deer and mountain goat sausage, and stinky mountain cheese!)
Switzerland: cheese, cheese, and cheese
Belgium: chocolates, chocolates, chocolates (apparently Germans don't care for Belgian beer)
France: sausages, cheese, wine
Italy: sausages, cheese, wine
Spain: sausages, tapas, wine
Hungary, Slovakia, Czech, Poland, and the rest of the East Bloc: sausages, beer, and vodka
Russia: caviar, beer, vodka....OH and one of the most interesting things I sampled: reindeer ham! Of course, followed by a shot of vodka.
Norway: little slices of bread with fancy looking caviars and meats and sprigs of dill, vodka, and aquavit
...basically, there was a trend there: everybody had sausage (there was one single stand at the entire place which offered only vegetarian food) and everybody had booze (beer, wine, vodka, aquavit, sherry, champagne, schnapps, uh...). Most folks also had cheese.

And to show off my awesome photographic skills, I made sure to take only one single picture.....

...of a chainsaw with a HUGE bar!

It only costs 1700 Euros!


Other things I've seen in the past few days include the Frauenkirche in Dreseden:

And I also went to the Czech Republic, which as earlier mentioned, is known for sausages and beer, so I had to try some ACTUAL Budweiser. Yeah, the stuff from Budvar, not St Louis:

Oh, and the thing that the Czech Republic (sadly) didn't mention at the expo was that they also have such things as:

Yeah, kinda weird I guess...



Just so you know, early next week I'll be going here:

..and it's been snowing there.

Family

So I'm currently in Marktredwitz which is where most of my family lives. I'm staying with my grandparents, but have also visited cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Yesterday, for example, I went "bowling." With quotes, because it's distinctly different than "kegeln," which is the normal German word for bowling. "Bowling" specifically refers to 10 pin bowling though, rather than "kegeln" which is what we would call candlepin bowling. Of course, it then has to be pronounced with a Germlish accent, which is always entertaining.

A big thing for me here is also food, and food and family always go together. Upon arriving here, my family celebrated my grandma's birthday a bit belated, and so we went out to the Marktredwitzer Haus, where we feasted. I had schweinebraten mit sauerkraut und boehmische knoedel (a roast pork chop with sauerkraut and a...uh...boehmische knoedel, you know?). This happened to be the same meal I ate four days in a row, and I have to say, my grandma's with a wild mushroom sauce was the best. This is what the scene looked like at the Haus:

Also, sidenote: Andreas, I have a boot for you. It's a half-liter in size, and Stefan made me try it out. For those of you who don't know, don't worry. The short story is that my mom's cousin made me drink my first boot of beer.

Between reading German books and playing Chinese checkers with my grandma, I've been entertaining myself with long walks through town, the fields, and forests of the area. This is the lovely view in the area (Mama und Papa - das ist Richtung Thoelau, beim Tunnel unter die Eisenbahnstrecke hinterm Eigenheim):

However, the scene was different today, because it finally started to snow again!!!!!!! (Sorry, couldn't get it to turn)

I think that's all at the moment. Off to go relax in the sauna. (Yeah, life's tough)

Zurich Airport

Well, I have made it this far. My plane got in without any issue, and right now I am waiting for my train, which departs in about an hour. From here I will be going to Munich, then Nuremburg, and then Marktredwitz, where, with any luck, I will arrive around 9 pm tonight.

Currently, the weather is a bummer - 5 degrees C and a chance of rain showers, not what I am hoping for in the mountains. But the freezing line was around 1500 meters, so there should be a chance that any precip in the mountains will be falling as snow.

Mom and Dad, I have already eaten my first Kinder Schokolade as well.


Also, did I mention that they sell cans of beer at the airport convenience store? There is a choice between Heineken and "OK" brand beer, which I believe is the equivalent of walking into a Cumberland Farms and getting Cumbyd brand beer. Weird. I don`t know what`s better though...that or drive-thru liquor stores in Colorado.

Packing the bags

Well, it's all set now: my flight is booked for the 11th, so I've only got a week to go. Still have to stock up on last minute goods, think about shaving before I leave, and then it's off. Off to home? Off to Germany? We'll see...I've got lots of questions to explore about a place I haven't been in 6 years, a place I like to call home. I'll try to keep up-to-date on this blog here, to make things convenient. Maybe a picture here and there, and some words to let you know my mind's still functional.

For those of you who've never been, I'm off to explore a world that looks like this:

(If it's black, check back in a few hours. Time zones will do that to you.)