Keeping busy

Well I suppose it's about time I cleaned the dust off this thing again. I have actually been quite busy since the start of the semester, traveling and trying to keep up with all my classes.

I spent a cloudy, but fun weekend in Paris while my brother was there, and then he came to visit Munich. I also spent a beautiful birthday weekend in the beach resort of Rimini, Italy with 6 friends after I found dirt cheap round trip airfare back in February. It was still off-season, but we lucked out on weather and therefore had the beaches all to ourselves...couldn't ask for a better way to celebrate turning 21.

But, it's not just all fun and games; I am taking 4 engineering classes in German, instead of just the 2 I did last semester, plus my German review course and a Portuguese course, which I decided to start taking.

As my time in Germany begins to count down however, I'm becoming quite a bit more reflective on my experience thus far, and I thought I might use this blog as at least one place to share and/or save some of my thoughts and observations.

Where to begin...

Well, everyone here is convinced that global warming is really starting to set in because spring has just been way too nice and sunny, apparently. I'm just wondering what all the northern Europeans complain about so much...take a trip to Chicago my friends. Anyhow, the coming summer should be interesting for me, seeing as how this is the first time in about 15 years that I've seen much of anything but a dry Mediterranean version of the season. So far we've already had a few intense flash thunderstorms, which is certainly not what I'm used to. I've had a taste of such things early or late in the school year at Northwestern, but I think I end up spending more time outside here, making it all the more apparent.

One nice thing about the good weather is how many more bikers and people walking around there are...it makes quiet little Munich feel more alive, which is a big plus. I have also had a chance to really, completely fall in love with the English Garden, which begins only about 2 minutes from my dorm and is simply fantastic. Not full of sports fields or museums or zoos or any of that junk that a lot of big urban parks in the U.S. cram in, but rather just a few biergartens, bounded by seemingly endless trees, meadows, streams, a lake, and a river. And when the weather is nice, everyone in Munich flocks there to tan, grill, run around, drink, and just generally let their (normally carefully restrained) proverbial hair down. It's really amazing to have such a place right next door, and I can even bike through it on my way to the university.

My view in the English Garden while spending an April spring day laying in the sun

Now, I have to get back to preparing for a presentation in my German class tomorrow. On Friday, I head off for a long weekend in Vienna with my program, and that will probably be the end of any major traveling until the semester is over at the end of July.