Toronto to Munich was a blur. I thought it would be a good idea to sleep deprive myself before leaving, so riding on 2 or so hours of sleep I boarded for the 10 hour journey. The food was suprisingly good for airplane food. I sat next to a large white-haired Bavarian with a ruddy Ted Kennedy complexion and exchanged probably a total of 5 words with the man the entire trip. We devoured our food at the same ravenous pace and both kicked back to a beer--Labatt Blues, albeit--after dinner. He was my kind of travel mate, and I hope that I didn't disappoint him in this respect either.
The sunrise heading east was amazing. The first indication of it was a light blue glow demarcating the horizon, which up to then had been indiscernible in the empty blackness of the night, and subsequently this line resolved itself further into a slow red haze that tapered off into yellow and on into a cool blue and was lost in the darkness that still largely enveloped the world. What a color gradient. I realized that we were not flying low to the Atlantic as I had imagined, but rather were scooting along high above a cloud cover with no protecting roof over our heads.
The German landscape is a patchwork quilt assembled pell-mell out of bright yellows, greens, and browns. There is not even the slightest hint of a rectangular grid to it--it is truly and wonderfully unplanned. Oddly enough, rather than single farms sitting lonely on their respective plots of land, the houses bunch together wherever there is a slight depression in the landscape. Going to investigate these places and their country roads as soon as I get the chance.
After some confusion I finally was picked up and showed around Startlodge, where I'll be living, by Brigette du Mesnil de Rochemont, the landlady. Too tired to really appreciate the peculiarities all around me. The smallness of all spaces is one thing that stands out. Yards, houses, streets are all quaint and confidential. The neighborhood I live in has wonderful greenery which I can only compare to the neighborhood Scott and I discovered at the top of the Incline Railroad in Chattanooga, Tennessee on our Spring Break road trip to the American south. Quiet and huge draping pine trees, flower beds, shrubberies, etc. Everything very well looked-after.
Feeling strung out and like going to sleep, especially since I want to be alert and taking in all this to its fullest, but have decided to stay up until nightfall here, which is a ways off yet.
Matt and Mark are the only two interns around. Both speak English much better than I speak German--which I've discovered is hardly at all--so that's what we converse in. It's a holiday weekend and their parents are going to visit beginning tomorrow. They decided to mow the back yard, as it's overgrown with tall dandelions and daisies. We laughed about using an antique hand mower for the job. The gas mower, however, turned out to be a grass vacuum in both size and speed, so they resorted to the joked-about hand mower. It was much faster. The yard is very small by Midwest standards and it looked like the first time they'd mowed it...two things which help explain why they had such a blast on the job.
Posted by Alan at April 17, 2002 12:00 AM