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

Did you see it to?

So we had a bit of a scare yesterday; we woke up in the morning to this bright yellow object just floating high in the sky. At first Erin and I didn't know if we should even go outside with this unknown object hanging ominously in the sky. We did however decide to venture out into the world when we saw other people walking around town. The first thing we noticed was that the yellow object provided more warmth then the normal gray sky that has been over our heads for the last couple of months.

We stopped an older gentleman and asked him if he had ever seen this yellow thing in the sky before. He said that he saw it once back in the 60's and that people had even started to call it "the sun", but that was a long time ago. He said that "the sun" would not harm us and that our usually gray sky would be back soon. The man was right "the sun" caused us no harm (Erin even commented how she like "the sun" better then the gray sky), but I was happy to see our comfortable gray sky above us by days end. I am sure soon enough that "the sun" will just be a distant memory that we can look back on years from now and remember the day that we to saw "the sun".

Our group braving the yellow thing in the sky

Hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas

Patrick

Blue Man Group and Air Force Bases

I just got the results back from my 3rd MRI. The short story is that the blood in my brain is gone (well not all of it just the stuff that’s not supposed to be there). I started climbing again/working out after the last 4 weeks of head injuries and being sick. It felt really good to get out of the house and exercise.

On a different note school ended last week! I ended up with a 4.0 and am now officialy a Junior! At this rate I might graduate sometime before 2020..

Last weekend I took Erin on a date to dinner and the Blue Man Group. If you have never been you should really check them out. It was the first time I had been to a “show” in the city and it was really odd, weird, cool, loud, interesting, creative, and totally worth it.
After dinner we went to this Austrialian grill that served Kanga (or kangaroo). They also served the largest cheese burger I have ever seen. It was the size of a regular plate and had a ½ pound of cheese on it or if you live in Berlin its more like a ¼ Kilo.
Two weeks ago Erin and I visited my cousin and his family and I must say that I have a really really cool cousin. I am not saying this to take away from how cool you think your cousins are, I am just saying this because my cousin gets to fly around in jets and blow stuff up for a living. Before I get to far into this Blogg I should clarify a couple of things; technically he is my second cousin; and currently he is taking a break from flying the A-10 Warthog so that he can “fly a desk”. I am told that everyone that plans on being in the Air force for 20 years ends up taking time out of what they normally do to “fly a desk”. Currently the “desk he is flying” makes him the assistant to the Major in charge of the US Air Force for all of Europe (yes all of Europe) and is stationed at Raimstein Air Force base about an hour south of Frankfurt Germany.
Eric has been married to his awesome wife Shannon for the past 5 years. In those 5 years they have been lucky enough to have two amazing kids. Both kids are amazing little people that have fantastic personalities that I am sure will take them as far as their parents have gone. It was a pleasure to get to know them and I hope to hang out with the whole family soon.
Erin and I have gotten used to going to our local German grocery store, walking, riding bikes, taking a train, not having a car, not understanding what most people are saying, not seeing Americans, not speaking English all the time, not having mountains in our back yard; we have done a pretty good job at getting used to all of it. Then we took this trip; I think we have done a great job at getting used to the difference from Germany and the states. That’s why this weekend was so interesting, because Eric picked us up in a GMC Yukon (a big SUV). This small thing might not seam like much to the average SUV driving American, but to us it was the largest vehicle by far we have seen in 4 months. Berliners just don’t have big cars; they really like the smart cars and other small cars that look like you could pick up. It was nice to be in a car with a cattle guard (it made me feel like running into something). We got to their house (also something we don’t see much in Berlin) and right away noticed some major differences in how they live. I think the biggest thing for us was the bed in the guest bedroom. Now most German beds are really just two thin mattresses pushed together. This joining creates a very noticeable “crack” in our bed. Erin has spent many nights smashed uncomfortably into the “crack” in our bed. Eric’s bed was a full fledged 12 inch thick pillow top American mattress that the very sight of had me saying the pledge of allegiance. Needless to say we slept well. The next noticeable difference was found when we looked into the fridge. It had American food in it, Betty Crocker, Coke, Land O Lakes cheese, Dryers ice cream; it was like we took a little vacation back to the States for the weekend. Erin and I felt a little silly walking around the grocery store on the base giddy because we could get simple things like American sticky buns, Montreal Steak seasoning, and real brownies. I am sure my cousin was thinking “what’s wrong with these two” but we really just don’t have certain things over here and its amazing how much seeing them can take you back to the States.
Erins mom Gayle has done a great job making us feel like we are not missing Christmas by sending us packages from Santa that we have put under a palm tree that we have decorated. Yesterday I went out to get some Christmas lights, tinsel, and fake snow so that we can make this house look a little more like Christmas. I threw the tinsel on our palm tree where the presents are, sprayed some fake snow on the windows, and plugged in the white lights. The white lights blow out in 5 seconds; just like in the states.
The next couple of weeks are very busy; we have some friends that we met in Brugge coming over to visit us on Monday, my Mom gets into town on Thursday, Erin fly’s to Whales on the 26th and then we go to Poland on the 2nd of January.

A Thanksgiving I wish I could remember

What happened?
What did I do?
Where is my gear?
How many hospitals have we been too together? (question to Erin)
Only two you’re getting off easy (my response to Erin)
Did you tell them I am allergic to sulfa drugs
This is the best hospital I’ve been to in Europe.

These are the questions that I kept asking every 90 seconds for the better part of the day this Thanksgiving..
This time a week ago I was driving south from Berlin to a small ski area in Austria; to say I was excited would be a major understatement.
The last thing I remember is getting gas north of Munich around 10 pm Wednesday night.
Thursday night I wake up long enough to wonder where I am, and realize that I am not dead because I can reach over and touch Erin. I smile and fall back into a mix of head injury and sleep.
I wake up Friday morning; notice my neck and abs really hurt; my eyes are slow to open and focus. I look out the window and see a mountain that looks like the mountains around Estes Park. One of my first thoughts is how did I get to Estes?
One of my next thoughts was what the hell happened to me?
Erin explained that I was skiing in a white out and feel about six feet; if it where not for my helmet the spots of blood that the cat scans found in my brain would be much larger. This news does not make me happy, but at this point I am just glad to wake up to my beautiful wife.

I quickly go threw my memory:
Parents names, day I got married, address back home, phone numbers, friends names, peoples faces, email passwords, bank accounts, its all there!!

Friday was spent taking EEG tests, heart tests, ultra sounds, and getting to know my two other roommates that I was sharing a room in the Neurological ward with. They told me their names, but I decided to call the one that had his head bandaged “Rio” and the one that snuck alchool into the room “Zach”. These guys are not nearly as cool as their namesakes, but they would have to do for the week.
I don’t really remember much from Friday, and in retrospect really was not doing to well. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been on Erin.

Saturday I woke up and felt good, not great but good. I was going to be OK. I still had to be in the hospital for 3 more days, but I was going to be OK..

I never claimed to be a smart man (something that has become harder with the loss of brain cells recently), but I have been smart enough to learn from my mistakes. So I decided that I would spend the next few days learning from this mistake. The problem with this objective is that I don’t remember about 48 hours of my life, and that where I had my accident was substantially below my skiing ability. My inability to learn from this mistake was really starting to bother me; after all if I could not learn from it then what was the point of causing this much stress in people?
This need has been with me for the last 5 days; at first I thought life was telling be to back off the adventure sports that I love to do, but then it hit me! Everything that happened this year the marriage, joy, success, pain, shitty times, injuries, the move, and general stress of 2007 happened so that we could slow day and same “Dam we are lucky” lucky to be alive, lucky to be married, lucky to have such great friends, lucky to have great family, lucky to have a job, lucky to have my brain, and lucky to have had so many experiences in life that have left me breathless and feeling very lucky.
So even though I was throwing up, getting cat scans, wondering who I was this past Thanksgiving does not mean that I did not learn to be thankful to call you all friends and to be alive.
In the words of our guide from Machu Picchu “everything is possible, and nothing is sure” so make sure you slow down a bit and realize just how dam lucky we all are this holiday season.

(Thanksgiving dinner?)

I have some dam good friends

So I woke up knowing that I have to submit my application to CSU and a bunch of school work I need to get done today. I open the computer check my email and see this http://www.myspace.com/flatpatrick1 (make sure you click on Patricks first adventure) in an email from Zach.
Now being thousands of miles away gallivanting around Europe isn’t always as glamorous as it may seam (although it is pretty cool) At times its really hard being so far away from family and friends especially when we are lucky to have such a great group of family and friends (great seams like an inadequate word for you all, maybe I will invent a new word to describe how lucky I feel to know you guys. How about a combination of super, great, fantastic, amazing, lucky, blessed) so here is the word that I feel is adequate of everyone’s "greatness" sufanamalucssed. I am not really sure how to pronounce it, but hey living in Berlin I have gotten used to words that I cant pronounce and have to many letters in them.
So back to the myspace page. It made me laugh out loud; I was literally coughing up my cereal it was so funny. It was just what the Dr ordered..
I can't wait to see all the adventures of flat Patrick over the next few months; lets just hope the guys can keep up with him on the slopes; after all I heard he learned how to ski from the real Patrick.

Berlin livin

Good morning America! How is everyone back home? I feel like all I do on here is talk about me, and the cool places we have been. So lets talk about you!
What have you been up to?
What’s new in your life?
Are you going anywhere cool for Christmas?
Any really interesting new year’s resolutions?
Or you could just email me and tell me how your life just hasn’t been the same since Erin and I left..
So feel free to email me at kayakclimb247@yahoo.com

Alright enough about you, it’s time to talk about what we have been up to.

We got our first snow in Berlin!!!

Incase you hadn’t noticed Erin and I have been doing our best to not be in Berlin much, and until last week we where pretty successful at that goal. I think I was only in Berlin 4 days the entire month of October. Well that has changed; like the gray cloud that has moved into Berlin we to have been hanging around a lot.
There is so much to see and do in this town that not leaving it just gives us a chance to explore the city we live in and the cool things it has to offer.
Last weekend we road to the huge forest that is close to our apartment in Zehlendorf. This forest is called the Gruenavald and contains the only hill in Berlin. For those of you that aren’t in the know, Berlin is the flattest place I have ever lived and the fact that there is a hill is odd because the geology of the area is all sand. So you may be wondering how did this hill get to Berlin? Well my friends that’s a great question that I can answer for you. Much of Germany has been shaped by the two world wars that it hosted; this fact holds true for the geography of Berlin. Berlin was the most heavily bombed area in the European front. Those bombs blew up 90% of the city leaving Berlin in ruins. The allies decided to take all of these ruins and pile them up in the South Western part of the city. This is how berlins only hill came to be, it’s literally made out of the buildings of old Berlin.
Now Berliners are smart people they said “hey we have a hill” what should we do with it? So in 1969 they got a bunch of concrete and poured mans first artificial climbing wall (they where very ahead of the times). Other parts of the hills provide a place to fly kites, mountain bike, fly remote controlled airplanes, and on top of the tallest one is an old CIA radar station.

They ended up pouring about 10 of these concrete structures all over the city. Not knowing my way around the city and being a climber I decided the only way to learn the city was to visit these structures. I have been to most of them and I have to say that they are really cool, some are old bunkers that in WW2 housed 10’s of thousands of people and other are just poured concrete that was poured for the sole purpose of climbing.

Thanks for reading the blogg; I need to get back to school work and planning some trips. Ruff life really..
Hope you are all doing well
Patric