HELLLOOOO.. did you miss me?

This blog site is called Erin and Patricks adventures, and one may assume that by the lack of posts that we may have stopped adventuring. Well if that's what you think, then you are sadly mistaken, if anything I have kicked it up a notch or 10 since getting back and have not had time to sit down and write a funny, intelligent, excellently written, Witty blog, until know. I am going to try and pack the last 3 months of adventure into a couple blog pages.

It started off with a trip I blogged about last, but man I just cant tell you how great it was to come back from Germany and go scare myself in a kayak for a couple days in my old stomping grounds back east.

The first adventure of the year was an academic one. I took my first class at a major college, and I rocked it! So that was nice.
One of the first adventures I had was a ski trip I took with Zach. We hiked in to a 13,000 foot pass and skied at 50 degree shoot(white line down the peaks face) that doesn't get done much, not because its all that hard, but because its not close to the road and the hike out requires hiking with your skis on your back threw some of the thickest forest I have ever seen, think hiking, swearing, getting whacked in the face by trees for a few hours to get out. It was a great trip, simply because I have not had a suffer fest in over a year.
It has not been all fun and games, I was in classes full time until July 13th ending up with a 3.7 a GPA I am happy with that and makes me feel confident for the 18 credits I am going to be taking this fall. I have also been doing all kinds of random work, fire mitigation (chopping down trees), safety kayaking (pulling rafters out of the water when they swim), and I also had the great fortune of spending 6 days on the Gunnison river in South central Colorado with a Hispanic leadership program that my friend Cree set up. It was great to be working with kids in the woods again, and this time it paid pretty darn well, so that helped.

Erin got back into the country on July 3rd and it was so great to have my wife back after two months of not seeing her. She was back in country for only one week and she already wanted to get out of town and see our great state of Colorado. So we headed off to Buena Vista so she could hike some 14ers and I could do some paddling. It was nice to hang out with her along side a river, and cook a nice dinner after a fun day of adventuring.

Last week there was the third annual Poudre Narrows race. I have always wanted to race but last year I was a little busy with the whole getting married/ honeymoon in Mexico/ moving to Germany thing that I was not able to race, and the year before that I had to work, so this year, this was my year. I did well for my first year running the race, I got the whole shot in my heat by taking a paddle stroke of a friends chest. All in all it was a really fun race that I am looking forward to running next year.
I have always tried to do something once a year that truly scares me, last year it was move to a different country, this year it was taking a motorcycle trip around Colorado with my friends Zach, Kurt(see gun toting redneck from last post) and Jay. Now you may be saying, wow I did not know Patrick road bikes, but hey there if a first time for everything. We were on the non plan, plan and really did not have a goal except to stay on two lane roads or dirt roads. It was really fun getting to some intersection on a dirt road in the middle of no where looking at the map and making the decision there. We did 800 miles, countless mountain passes, and river crossings over 3 days.

There were a whole lot of other things that I have written about, and I am sure I could spend the next two hours writing, but hey I live in Colorado and have stuff to do, so I am going to wrap it up. I hope you all have had a great summer and are as ready to get back to school, work, or life as much as I am!

Getting back on the horse

Good morning, afternoon, or evening,

I am sitting here writing this blog in the basement of our house in Fort Collins; 12 hours from starting my Colorado State college Carrier. Since that will prove to be the start to another one of lifes chapters I thought I owed it to my faithful blog readers (thanks mom) to close my last life chapter.

I said good bye to Berlin on the 29Th of April with surprisingly mixed emotions. I had grown used to my simple life in Berlin, made great friends, grown closer to my wife, realized just how much I love my Colorado life, and learned why Berlin is the most historically important city in the last 100 years.

2:25PM on the 29th of April I landed in New York City with a burning need to get out of the city. I jumped in a rental and high tailed it down to my Dads house in PA.

I spent the next couple days doing yard work, looking for a car for Erin, and enjoying being around my family.

My good friend Doug, from Idaho came out to the east coast so that he could join my friend Kurt and I on a tour of the classic East coast rivers. The stars aligned, the heavens rained, and I got to get back in a kayak after a 9 month sabbatical from the sport. For 5 straight days you could not have wiped a smile off my face. We ran 7 stretches of river in 6 days ranging from easy to pretty darn hard. Most if not all of this great trip was possible by this man here. He's a good guy just don't break into his house. I really owe him one for making this trip so great.

The kayaking trip had two major highlights. My friend Doug ran his first waterfall; a nice 20 footer nestled in the woods of West Virgina. The second had to be when we ran Red Creek; a stout run that rips its way threw the Dolly Sods wilderness also in W.V. Red Creek was a test of our groups ability because of its hike in with a kayak, snow on the ground, and difficult grade. It felt so good to paddle intelligently at my limit, run water falls, get a little scared, work hard, be tired, and paddle the river safely.

Upon arriving back in Colorado I kept busy with 10 months of life that has happened since I have been gone; mail, new kids(many of our friends had kids while we where gone), old friends, bills, cars, all helped to pass the time quickly.

Then today May 18th 2008 I went skiing for the first time this year; and the absolute best part was that I did not end up in the hospital (see old blog about my ski trip over Thanksgiving).

Rio took me to A-Basin so I can get back on the proverbial horse that bucked me off many months ago. The first few turns were a little tentative, but a few runs into the day I found a rock to go flying off of. I was back; and it feels great!!

I miss my wife immensely, but trust that the time will fly by with school, work, and visiting my friends in the mountains. It also helps that we are able to talk regularly because of SKYPE, and knowing that this weekend she gets to go to Italy.

I hope you are all doing well and please put my new phone number in your phone

970-691-3322.

Gotta go get ready for school now
Patrick

Croatia 2008

I will be honest; I am a little nervous its been so long since I last posted, and so much has happened that I am worried that my limited writing ability will not sufficiently sum up the dish life has delt to me over the last month or so. Then I realized that it doesn’t matter, this is my blog and if you have had the time or inclination to click on the link to my blog that you probably don’t really care if what I write is good, interesting, or even factual; just so long as its entertaining. So this is my humble attempt at giving you a quick understanding of what I have been up to over the last 5 weeks with a little humor thrown in for good measure.
My brother flew over on the 7th of March to hang out in Europe. I was really excited to have a little brother bonding in Europe. It had been to long since I spent a large amount of time with my brother and a week gallivanting around Europe was sure to give us plenty of time to catch up. Our first stop was to Raminstein Air Force base an hour south of Frankfurt Germany.
The trip started off with a bang! We went to the “officers club” on Raminstein Air Force base our first night in town. My cousin and his family are really pretty amazing; for example when you and I go to work we undoubtedly do interesting things that are deeply meaningful, but my cousin jumps in a fighter plane and defends our country. I never had a complete understanding of just what that means, involves, or requires, until I visited him for the second time of my European experience. Its really quite amazing!
So anyway there I was surrounded by my cousin, his family, my brother, and oh say a couple of my cousins closest two star general friends. My brother and I where doing our best effort of blending in among all the camouflaged Air Force people. We where having a couple of drinks at the old officers club with some two star Generals.. No big deal really (I am being a little sarcastic because these guys help control and defend the free world). So there I was rubbing shoulders with guys that have a direct line to the president. When for some odd reason my leg twitched; not usually a big deal, but then my leg connected with the light wooden table that was connected to no less then ten half empty beer glasses. My heart completely stopped as these half empty beer glasses started to wobble and sway and rotate due to my erratic kick! I wanted to crawl into a hole with each rotation of the swaying beer; each rotation the liquid threatened to spill on our two star generals, each rotation I had visions of my cousin no longer flying, but peeling potatoes in some far away Siberian out post all because his cousin had a leg twitch; each rotation I had visions of me being “taken out” by an Air force sniper because of my legs threat to national security. Fortunately I got really lucky and only broke one empty beer glass at the foot (THIS GUY) on the floor of one of the most prestigious officers club in all of the Air Force. Great start to the trip!
The rest of my brothers trip was spent in Prague and Berlin checking out the sights and sounds of both unique places. I would write more about this great trip with my brother if I hadn’t just been adventuring in Croatia for the last three weeks. It was a great trip and thanks again for coming over Steven.

Croatia March 16th to April 3rd 2008

Last night I went to brush my teeth (a habit I have been doing twice daily for the last 27 years) when I realized that my “stays at home tooth brush” feels odd and that I have grown accustom to the “stays in my backpack tooth brush”, because for the last three weeks Erin, Beth, and my friend from Ecuador “Martin” have been traveling around Croatia. Enough about my tooth brushing habits what you really want to read about was how was Croatia.
Croatia is a region of contradictions; its jagged tooth like Karst Limestone Mountains are only surpassed in beauty by the bluest, clearest, deepest blue green body of water I have ever seen in all my 27 years.
Croatian people are contradictions in themselves. 12 years ago the region was still just exiting 50 years of communism, or as they like to make it clear it was more like socialism, the dust was also just settling from 5 years of war that altered every nook and cranny of the country. Geopolitically speaking they make it known that they are and have historically been the dividing line between the mostly Catholic Western Europe, and mostly Muslim East Asia. This dividing line is the reason that the region has be in constant conflict for the last few hundred years. You can see the toll that this dividing line has taken on the country when you look at the weather worn faces of the old women. Their faces look as hard and tired as the weather beaten rock that covers almost every inch of Croatian land; these people have survived something and have the scars to prove it.
There I go trying to use a little poetic license to describe a country who’s beauty needs no help. This country was designed for adventure, designed for mountain bikers, designed for climbers, designed for kayakers, designed for beach goers, designed for eco tourism, designed for perfect sunsets, designed for me; it just has not realized it yet.
In the interest of time both mine and yours I am not going to go into great detail about the daily adventures of finding a place to sleep, kayak, climb, eat, cook, grab a bus, but rather
I will stick to mostly just the facts for a little bit.
March 16th:
Hopped a flight out of Berlin to the Zagreb, Croatia. Rios sister Lolly picked us up at the airport and took us to her house in Zagreb. That we cooked up a feast of “mixed meet”, bread and a little wine thrown in for a good time.
March 17th:
High tailed it out of the city so that we could go to Paklancia National Park, or as I like to call it the climbing national park because I can pronounce any Croatian Words. By 2pm on the 17th I was finally climbing outside after so many months of pulling on plastic at the Gym in Berlin. I rediscovered my outdoors smile, it felt so good to climb hard, in the sun, outside with views of the Med.
March 18th
Climbed, got kicked of a route because a big storm blew up right over our heads. The lighting sent us rappelling/running for cover. God it felt good to get scared again!
March 19th:
Climbed some more, relaxed in the sun!! Life’s pretty darn great!!
March 20th:
Watched it rain
March 21st:
Climbed and watched my climbing partner Martin climb a lot harder then I ever needed to.
March 22nd:
Headed to Krka National Park. I called it the waterfall national park not because I can’t pronounce the name, but because it had a butt load of water falls. Illegal to kayak there, but that did not stop me from thinking about what it would have been like. Falling water has a certain smell to it that I had not smelled in a long time. The smell got me excited to my east coast trip next month.
March 22-23rd?
Hung out on my friend Rio’s Island in the Mediterranean. His family is from Croatia and has had a house on the island for the last 300 years. We stayed in their new house about 100 yards from the sea and watched it rain. I could not think of a better place in Europe pass the time while it rained. I can’t wait to go back there when it’s a little sunnier.
March 24-25th:
Went to another Island called Hvar. This is a picturesque populated island of the coast of Split Croatia.
March 25th-29th:
The days where filled with trying to find a room, watching it rain, and wondering why the only thing on Croatian TV is reruns of 90210 and Grays Anatomy.
March 30th:
Erin’s 30th birthday! Little Champaign breakfast on a terrace over looking the sea.
March 31st:
Woken up at 2:14 wondering why the room was shaking. Turns out it was because we had just experienced a 4.6 earthquake 5 miles from our place in Dubrovnik.
Toured Dubrovnik; beautiful old city in the south of Croatia
April 1st:
After 8 months and 4 days I finally got to go kayaking again!!
April 2-3rd:
We spent on busses, planes, and trains getting back to Berlin.
For me its always a bit of a disappointment when I am done writing one of these blogs, I will have undoubtedly failed at conveying the feeling of being in a place. Sure my words might be adequate, insightful, and even mildly interesting, but they will surely have failed to paint an exact picture of what it was like to really be there, rappelling for your life off the side of a 1,000 foot limestone cliff as the lighting and hail got a little to close, sitting in the warm sun on the side of a rocky crag fingers bleeding from climbing to hard, being woken up at 2:14am to your first earthquake, just being in the warm sun after so many months of gray Berlin, trying to fit you and your 14 foot sea kayak threw a hole no taller then 20 inches as the sea bobs up and down just so you can get into this really amazing cave on the side of sea cliff. All I can say is the next time you have a couple thousand dollars burning a whole in your pocket and you are itchin for an adventure GO TO Croatia!!

Sorry its been so long

I am sure most of you have come to rely on the semi weekly updates of our life in Europe, that’s why I can understand if some of you are upset with the lack of communication from your friend across the pond. Please forgive me friends for its been 16 days since I last bloged.
I have a lot to say so go grab your favorite refreshment and get comfortable because this one might be a long one.
You might remember our last blog ”Its all a lie” that told about our factious trip to Athens. After all that excitement we had from that fake trip we had to take some time off from traveling to hang out in Berlin (Real reason was because we ran out of money). You might be wondering what one does while one is hanging out in Berlin in February. Well for those of you that where wondering that question fortunately you have a friend that has been in Berlin during February and I will fill you in. I have been keeping busy trying to get so far ahead in school that I can basically take the month of March off of school so that we can travel to Croatia and I can hang out with my brother in Prague, Frankfurt, and Berlin. The other thing I have been doing is hanging out with Aleena (the two year old that I get to hang out with twice a week).

I have also tried and get to the climbing gym 3-4 times a week so that I am in some kind of shape for my upcoming trip to Croatia. I am pretty excited about this trip. I have been climbing with this 18 year old kid from Ecuador that climbs really hard. He is an exchange student in Berlin for a year. I was able to talk him into joining us in Croatia for a week so we can get some climbing done. There is an entire national park that’s set up for sport climbing; we are talking 1,000 foot limestone routes that are right at the grade I am climbing at right now.
The last thing I have been doing is kicking butt at cribbage. For those of you not in the know; cribbage is a card game that’s great for passing long winter nights in Berlin. There are about 5-7 of us that play regularly; recently we had the first annual Z-Dorf (the town we live in) cribbage tournament. While I was robbed of the overall victory I will say that I did have the victory of my young cribbage life when I handedly beat our friends Bob and Katy Williams. This was a particularly monumental win because they taught me how to play, and in turn I have now taught them how to loose.
The other thing that has helped us pass this month of gray is the two friends that came to visit. The first one was our old roommate Mari-Jane who is living in Scotland for a year. She shot over for a five day trip; it really helped to break up the monotony of the weeks. It was really great to see her again and we are excited that she might move back into our house when we get back to the states. The second friend that was a bit of a surprise was Erin’s long time friend Lori from Minnesota. She emailed a week or two ago and said she was coming on the 18th we told her that if she was coming then she had to go to Venice (as in Italy) with us for the night of the 23rd. It was not to hard to twist her arm so at 5:30am on the 23rd we met our friends Andy and Amanda to go to our local Flughafen (German word for airport). We landed in a foggy Venice about 9:30 and set off to find some Pizza, Gondolas, wine, and a good time. Being Italy finding those thing 4 things did not prove to be very hard, and unfortunately finding the wine proved a little to easy, because some of us woke up on Sunday with their only shirt wine stained, an upset stomach, and a headache.
So what’s next for us?
Well Erin’s best friend Beth lands in 9 days. She will be with us in Berlin, and hopefully for most of our trip to Croatia. My brother fly’s to Germany on the 7th. We are going to visit m cousin in Frankfurt, check our Prague, and tour Berlin. I am really looking forward to seeing parts of Europe with my brother. Then on the 16th of March we take off for 20 days of climbing, sea kayaking, hiking, and traveling in Croatia!!
I need your help though.. I think my email might be kind of messed up. So what I need you all to do is email me and say hey Patrick your email is not broken, oh and while you are at it you could fill me in on what you have been doing recently, and how much you miss me…
Hope you are all doing well

Patrick

I really hope we do

I could listen to this guy all day

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

It's almost Super Tuesday!! Are you voteing?
Patrick

Its all a lie!!

We need to come clean; Erin and I have not been traveling Europe for the last 6 months. We have actually been held up in Wimberly Texas. We truly wanted to get away from it all and experience something different so we googled "small town in texas" and found this lovely town called Wimberly Texas (http://www.visitwimberley.com/). We really did not want to tell you guys, because we admit that it does sound kind of odd so we invested in a bunch of back drops so that we could take pictures in front of them and claim to be at these amazing places all across Europe.

A good example is this back drop that we shot this weekend. It really looks like we are standing infront of the Acropolis, but in reality we just got back from a lovely picnic with our neighbors Ned and Elda. Ned runs the local gas station here in Wimberly and Elda is a retired school teacher that just loves to knit.

You may be wondering what we have been doing to pass our time while in Wimberly. Well I have been spending lots of time on the net researching these places so that I can write convincing trip reports (all this research has shown me that it would be really nice to be able to visit these places, but considering that the Dollar is getting killed by the Eruo it just does not seam prudent). I even wrote one for our imaginary Greece trip, and in the interest of not wasting my hard work I will still publish it.

Hello from SUNNY Greece; I pitched this trip to Erin on Christmas day after I found 2 round trip tickets to Greece for about 150 Euros. It was really easy to ask the question of "when are we ever going to get to Greece for around 150 bucks" it makes it easy to say "yes". We booked the tickets and a couple of weeks later we where staring at the clear blue Ageian sea. Not to brag but I have gotten pretty good at finding really good cheap places to stay. This room in Athens was a great example, it was blocks from the Acropolis, in a part of town that did not allow cars, and was 135 Euros for 3 nights. Its true that you could feel every spring in the bed, but hey we where blocks from the Acropolis.

So our goals for the trip where simple, we wanted sun, I wanted to climb, and see all the acient history that Athens had to offer. I would say that it was a success!

Friday:

Erin ducked out of school a little early and I got done being "Manney" (read the last blog post) and we are off to Athens.

Saturday:
Woke up and realized that the acropolis was literally in our back yard. Or first goal was to go get some sun by the sea. We took the a tram ride for about an hour threw the city and ended up at the Agean. Honestly the beach was dirty and had one to many fat men in Speedos, but and this is an important but, the Sun was warm. We sat there soaked up the sun and read our books.

Sunday:

I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do something adventurous in Europe and not end up in the hospital. It's for that reason that we spent most of the day sunday completely lost, riding wrong buss after wrong buss, in search of this climbing area on the outskirts of town. Now for those of you that have never been to Athens you should know that the city sprawls and I mean SPPPRRAAWWLLLSS. Its no wonder that it took us 5 hours of dusty buss riding to get to this crag. Erin said that she really enjoyed this part of traveling, and I can honestly say after 6 months of less then average adventure, that this was the first time I wanted to jump into my pick up truck and just drive to the crag instead of ride this bus all over Athens. Eventually around 1ish we made it, climbed a couple of routes, and headed home glad that we made the effort to try and find this place.

Monday:
Checked out a bunch of old stuff. I have read several rather large books lately on WW2/Germany history. I could even go as far to say that I have a fairly good working knowledge of the country I live in. Going to Greece taught me that I have so much more to learn about so many cultures out there. They where building impressive monuments to the gods 3,000 years before Hitler got out of Diapers. It definitely motivated me to learn more about Athenian history.

Well thats about all I have to report, go check out Athens if you can look past the smog, sprawl, and noise, it has something valuable to offer at every turn.

So there you have it, my most recent well researched fake blog about how cool Europe is. All the while we have been hanging out in Wimberley Texas with Ned and Elda just sitting on the poarch gosipping, sipping tea, and knitting warm ski hats so that next winter when I am skiing the steep and deep again with my buddies my head dosent get cold!

Don't forget to check out the next two Blog post. I have not emailed you all since I last posted.

Note: Any spelling errors in these pages were indroduced intentionally to demonstrate new and improved ways of spelling old, worn-out words.

I am a Manney

So a year ago I spent most of my days living out of my back pack.(see picture) After a sabitical from work (i.e can't get a job in Germany) I have once again picked the backpack back up. However this time it's not to go into the Grand Canyon, but to a play date and the pack contains a 19th month little girl. Yes what you are thinking is true, someone has intrusted their little girl to me; can you beleive it.

I have graduated from a "Hausman" (made up German word for a guy that does not have a job) to a "Manney" or a Man/nanney. While some men would consider it a major blow to the ego to

A. Not be able to get a job and

B. Be called a "Manney"

I have decided to take a different approach for a couple of reason.

1) This little girls is really very cool

2) I have not laughed this much at work in a long time

3) I get to take a snack break

4) Her books are at my reading level

5) If she has nap time that means I have nap time

6) She is really funny

7) I get to play hide and go seak

8) Old ladies smile at me and say what I think are nice things to me in German when I take her out on the town.

9) They have a killer 401 K plan.. (not really)

10) I get to ask questions like "are you poopy"

So normaly I write about whats going on in Europe/our life over here. Today we are going to take a little time out from all that fun stuff to get more educated about the world we live in now and in the future.
The first one I am going to call my tree huggin moment of the day. It deals with Global warming; now don't be scared, just watch the video its worth your time.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI

The other link could help you figure out the dizzing world of our 2008 Presidintail elections. Its really kind of interesting, and could get you up to speed on the issues if you have not been doing your homework on our very important up coming elections.
http://www.speakout.com/VoteMatch/senate2006.asp?quiz=20

Sorry for the lack of pictures this week, but both of our laptops have now blown up. Fortunatly last week I went out and bought and external hard drive so it was not a total loss.

And don't worry this Blog will turn back into "Where in the world are Erin and Patrick" next week when I give you an update from our adventure this weekend in Greece. Cross your fingers I might get to go climbing outside!! I just hope I don't test out the Greek hospitals!!
Hope you are all doing well

Patrick

Note: Any spelling errors in these pages were indroduced intentionally to demonstrate new and improved ways of spelling old, worn-out words.

Y2K+8

Have you ever had something that you keep putting off and the longer you put it off the harder it seams to do? Well that's how this blog has been for me. Erin and I have been busy (by Germany standards) and I just kept putting off writing this blog. So I am sorry to my faithful Blog readers. I am sure it seams like last year when I last posted.

Anyway onto what we have been up to...
December 17th:
Went to the airport and picked up some friends that we met while traveling in Belgium (I know that must sound very exotic). These guys are great they don't have a home because they are in constant travel mode. They work as Flight attendants so when they are not working they fly off to another country (for free). This time they flew off to Berlin to hang out with us; how cool. It was nice because I was able to brush up on my tour guiding skills so that I would be on my game when my mom got into town. The fact that they pretty much have to fly some place on their days off means that we should see them sometime soon hopefully in Colorado.

December 20th:

Dropped off our friends at the airport and picked up my mom 10 minuets later. The last time I spent Christmas with my mom was some time last millennium; needs less to say that this was an over due visit. It was great to see her and show her around all the cool things Berlin has to offer (good beer, brats, and lots of historical stuff). My mom must think that all we do is go to parties at friends houses, drink wine, eat fatty foods, and go to museums, because it was truly a marathon of Christmas parties and food.

Christmas Day:
Santa made the trip all the way to Berlin! In all reality Erin's mom made sure that we would not feel left out from the normal Christmas festivities of the States (Thanks Gail). It was nice to wake up and have Christmas with my two favorite ladies (Erin and my mom). They day was pretty relaxed, we slept in, opened presents, made real American sticky buns, and went to a very nice (by nice I mean it had lots of different forks to use) dinner at a friends house.
Erin headed off to Whales on the 26th and my mom headed back on the 27th. So if you are doing the math on that one you will realize that I was all alone in Berlin. I would like to say that I did something really cool while Erin was gone, but in all honesty I played a bunch of cribbage and filled out scholarship applications. I did however have one crazy night.

It all started a couple of days before New Years. I was walking to the local grocery store (the Ledil) to get some food. As I was walking out I passed some 10 year olds with a twinkle in their eyes and some serious fireworks in their hands. Now I am not one to be out done by a couple of ten year olds so I promptly walked in and bought the "mega party pack" and something called the "Big Crackles" all for 10€. Now I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania; every year 4th of July Mr. Mason would put on a very nice fire works show in our local park. I was pretty sure that I would out do his shows with the firepower I had just bought.

(Check out the Big Crackle I set off in front of our house: HIT PLAY)
Its 3am on the 28th and I wake up to 1/4 sticks of dynamite being blown up a few blocks away. No one else seamed to think it was odd that people where setting off bombs at 3 am. The next night I fell asleep to fireworks blowing up every few minutes.

December 31st: its 5pm and people are already setting off fireworks ever 20-30 seconds. Its going to be an interesting night because I am heading down to the center of town to hang out with a million of these pyrotechnic lovin Germans; I can't wait!
It's 8 pm the excitement is really starting to build so we head off to the center of town amid a now constant attack of fire works. It really seams a little dangerous. Hanging out with a million people in one place was really pretty cool, we hung out eat some brats, drank some beer, wrestled in the forest, counted the seconds until midnight, drank some more beer, watched fire works go off; you know the usual New Years stuff.

On the way home is when it got a little weird. We had to walk home via the Teirgarten and people where blowing up fireworks right and left. The constant explosions from the 1/4 sticks and the smoke they created really made me think about the scene that I would have seen in this exact location 60 years prior. 500,000 Russians died in pretty much the same place I was walking trying to take Berlin; in all honesty the fireworks made it all a little spooky.

Erin got home on the 1st just long enough to wash some clothes and repack so that we could head off to Krakow Poland. Our neighbors had invited us to their little cabin about 35 kilometers outside of Krakow. It was so nice to be outside of a city! It was also interesting to see the difference between Germany and Poland; both have felt the grip of communism, but one (Germany) has seen alot of international money so that it could rebuild when the wall fell. The other (Poland) is doing its best to try and get out from under the mess that 60 years of socialism has created. I would say if you are ever in the area Poland would be a great country to see, for the beauty of its people, for its amazing country side, and to witness the spirit that allowed them to survive Socialism.

(Hanging out in Poland)

WOW! I hope you survived this long blog.. I will try to do a better job at keeping you all updated. Up next for Erin and Patrick is the search for some more sun. We booked tickets to Athens Greece for a 3 day weekend in January. There is also a rumor that I might be able to find some rock to climb while I am in Greece. So keep your fingers crossed for me.

Live from Berlin Germany

Patrick