More Munich, Salzburg, Southern Germany Castle Hunting, Vienna, Barcalona, London

Wow obviously timely blog updates are not my cup of tea.

I believe I left off having arrived in Munich, but having not really left it yet for any trips. That was about 2 months ago and since then I've...
- been on 6 weekend trips in 5 countries
- started classes and am already nearly halfway done (scary)
- met more Germans and folks from 6 continents...still looking for a friendly penguin from Antarctica
- bought and enjoyed an awesome bike
- been to a circus
- and so much more...!

Lets talk trips first. Its only about 90 miles from Munich to Salzburg, Austria. If you have enough people, you get a special deal called the Bayern ticket, so its only about 6 euros to get to Salzburg via a 2 hour train ride. A couple weeks after I arrived in Munich, 16 of the exchange students went down there for the weekend (weekend of March 20 I believe). Who went? I will steal that info from another person's blog! It was...
Katherine (Wisc), Stephen (Wisc), Scott (Wisc), Vanessa (Wisc), Tim (Cali), Jared(Cali), Garrett (Cali), Spencer (Cali), Logan (Arizona), Skyler (Colorado), Danielle (Holland), Heidi (Finland), Kate (Australia), Linsay (Canada), and Cristina (Spain).


Salzburg (Salz - salt, burg - castle) has a big castle where salt used to be stored (what a creative name right?). We checked that out on the first day we arrived.  It was quite a climb to the top, and totally work it for the great view from the top. See picasa for pictures. The city of Salzburg is touristy, but nice. You see a lot of stuff regarding Mozart (from Salzburg) and The Sound of Music. That night we went to an Irish pub and slept in our "hostel" which was more like a hotel. Our own bathroom? Amazing!

The next day was probably my first (of many) crazy adventure in Europe. From the castle, we could see a sweet looking gondola that brought you up to the top of a giant cliff. We decided to find it and ride it. After a long bus ride way out of the city, we arrived. And realized it cost something like 20 euro to ride the gondola. Nooo thank you. Anyway, the best adventures are free, we said. At the base of the aforementioned cliff, was a pretty fantastic looking waterfall. "I want to go to there" we said (30 rock anyone?). So we did. Between us and the waterfall was a surprisingly large amount of personal property, so a few fences were hopped. After a long walk through a steep, pathless forest, we reached the base of the giant cliff. After a minute or two of rest, we started heading toward the waterfall. Ahh, then suddently "Bang, bang....splat." Rocks are falling a hundred feed or so from the cliff and landing frighteningly near us. Nothing like that feeling of impending death to wake you up! We dove behind trees, waited a few minutes and kept going! And gosh darn it, we made it to that waterfall, took some pictures and ran away. Again, see picasa for the pictures! And that, essentially, was Salzburg.

Next up, a trip across Southern Germany. It turns out renting a car, at least a tiny little car, is quite cheap. Linsay and I reserved a car for Saturday and Sunday (March 27-28). There was plans for skiing on Friday, but train issues meant we learned we couldn't go, after getting up at 5.30am. We sort of spontaneously called Enterprise and asked if we could pick up the car a day early. We could! We called Christina and Kate and asked if they wanted to go. They did! I'm glad everyone is up for impromptu adventures. So basically, we had a map and plans to see castles in Southern Germany. And that was it.

So, in case anyone was unaware, there are a lot of castles in Germany. Like 10,000. The vast majority of these castles are "ruins." The secret is, ruins are the best type of castle. A ruin isn't kept nice on the inside. It's also free, and generally void of tourists. You are free to explore wherever you want, climb around, and get freaked out in pitch dark cellars. Its much more interesting. So we were driving along, and saw a castle at the top of a hill. This was in Bad Urach, near Stuttgart. As we parked, it started to drizzle, but we decided to go for it anyway. After walking along a random trail for awhile, we realized we weren't really heading up, towards the castle. So we walked straight up. It's always more satisfying to reach the top of something if you've struggled on the way up. Lets just say we were really satisfied once we finally made it. We later realized there WAS a nice trail directly to the top. Oh well, live and learn. Or not. (That's foreshadowing!) Anyway, it was well worth it. We were the only people in this giant castle, exploring dark rooms and climbing to the top of towers for great views. The one plaque said it was once a prison. An old abandoned prison. Niiiice. Anyway, good times.

This being a spontaneous trip, we had decided not to book any hostel, bring sleeping bags, and just see what happened. So we saved some money, and slept in the car! We found a vineyard near, I think, Stuttgart, drove in, and went to sleep. Well first watched one guy run past our car at 1am, then two more people run up to our car, bang on the window, say something in German, and keep running. We locked the doors, kept the key in the ignition, and then went to sleep.

Waking up the next day at dawn, we decided we didn't want to go that again the next night. Hmmmmm. Oh, Linsay's grandma (ahem, oma) lives near Lahr, a tiny town at the top of black forest and only a hour or two from where we were. So we called her up, and got a place to sleep! To be honest, I only remember one thing we did that day before we arrived in Lahr. That would be getting an amazing McDonalds breakfast with lots of coffee (I've started liking coffee everyone).

So Linsay's grandma speaks no English at all. Kate, Linsay and I essentially can't communicate in German. Christina speaks Spansh, English, and German. Phew. After a very slow and gesture filled conversation with the grandma (I don't think I ever actually learned her name), Linsay's aunt, uncle, cousin, and crazy other uncle came over. The aunt spoke a little English, so we had another translator. We sat around drinking champagne and teaching each other funny words in each other's language. Good times!

The black forest is very cool. We drove home on tiny winding roads through villages built with very traditional German architecture. Lots of exposed timber beams and steeply angled roofs. Maybe I'll build myself a house like that when I get home.

And we were back to Munich!

The next trip was actually very similar, but still very cool. We rented a giant 9 seater van and again traveled around southern Germany. Actually, we ended up getting it free an extra two days, so we went on two day trips before actually leaving. The first was to Ikea. Awesome. Cheap food. The next was to Starnberger See, not a sea, a lake, 30 minutes from Munich. That was quite nice, we just walked around and checked out the countryside near Munich. 7 of us went on this trip. This time it was Jarad, Spencer, Garrett, Marietta (Hungary), Jasmine (China), Karla (Equador) and myself. We again only had a few plans. We were going for two nights, but only booked a hostel for the second night, and were mostly just castle hunting as well as hoping to check out a few cities. Ok so the castles and small towns are all starting to blur together. Here's what I remember. We checked out one "unruined" castle which was pretty cool. It was dark before we found a place to park the car and sleep. I slept in the back of van, I mean the very very back. At one point I woke up claustrophobic and freaking out and had to get out for a little while. Hah. Anyway we woke up in a beautiful orchard, which was quite nice.

This turned out to be Easter morning! We spent Easter continuing to castle hunt, eventually finding another great ruin to explore. Right as we were about to go, we found one more room which turned out to be...wait for it....a little pub. In a castle. In this undeveloped bottom room of this random castle, where we were nearly the only ones there, on Easter, we find an open pub. We went in and had dinner (we were the only ones there) and our waitress invited us to a party that night! So random. Anyway, a really good place. Hopefully we'll be going back to have a party (for someone's birthday or something, we'll find an excuse). We had to decline the party because we had to make it to Heidelberg where our hostel was. There were some minor car issues. We tried to park the very tall car in a parking garage with very low ceilings. Spencer and I ended up "walking" the car out by standing on the back bumper and pressing on the ceiling while Garrett slowly drove. Anyway, we made it out with only a few small scratches, which Enterprise didn't notice on return. Nice.

Heidelberg is a beautiful, if a bit touristy, town. We spent the morning checking out the city. We also bought a bunch of mandarin oranges that turned out to taste terrible. So we all started juggling them. I tried to get a "clown" on the street to juggle with me, but HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO JUGGLE. What kind of clown doesn't know how to juggle? Ridiculous. Anyway, I now have plans to get really good a juggling and make some money as a street performer in Munich. We'll see how that goes...

So driving home, we saw another castle and decided to climb up to it. Just like last weekend, we decided not to take the trail, but go straight up. Once we made it to the top, things started looking very familiar. Maybe all the castles were just blending together in my head? No, it turned out, this was the very same castle I had been to the weekend before, and I didn't even realize it until I'd been walking around it for awhile. We watched the sunset from the top and headed home!

Vienna! The next weekend, we were off to Vienna, Austria. Its only about 4 hours away by train. Its pretty sweet how close everything is to Munich. It was really nasty weather so we mostly stuck to museums on the first day. We visited the Natural History Museum, with the largest collection of stuffed animals I've ever seen, and some other museum I forget the name of, with lots of paintings and armor and spears and cool stuff like that. The next day we checked out some really cool gardens and walked around the city. Good times.

Barcelona. We flew to Barcelona just as the Volcano in Iceland started its eruption festivities. Once we arrived we noticed almost all the other flights were canceled. We barely made it! Barcelona is a very cool city. We stayed in a cool hostel called Kabul (no idea why). It was crazy, the whole place was run totally in English. Its quite convenient how English is the new Latin. Anyway, we checked out the maria area first, which has recently been very built up, it even has a full mall out over the water. Picaso lived in Barcelona for parts of his life and there is a giant museum that we checked out that has lots of his paintings. One room is full of about 30 paintings, which we realized after about 10 minutes were all actually of the same thing, just in completely different styles. He was one crazy cat. At the hostel we met people from Mexico, Canada, and Australia and did some adventuring with them. Antoni Gaudi, a famous architect, lived in Barcelona. We saw some of the buildings he designed and went to the Park Guell, which is I guess dedicated to him. Its a giant park with a great view of the city from the top. On our last full day, we headed 20 minutes out of the city to a little beach town and hung out on the beach. It wasn't quite beach weather, but it wasn't too cold. I went swimming in the Mediterranean! Only for about 30 seconds, but I did! On the last day we went on a walking tour - and realized its probably a lot better to do tours on the first day in a city, not the last. It was mostly in the Gothic quarter, through tiny alleyways that have been around for hundreds, or maybe even a thousand years.

Last but definitely not least, London! A few people had told me London was just a big city, without a lot of character. From my experience there, its the complete opposite. It was great to see all the famous sites - Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards, the huge London Eye Farris Wheel, Big Ben (which is actually just the bell, not the whole clock tower), Hyde Park, the Tower Bridge, and Shakespeare's Globe Theater, to name a few. We went and saw Macbeth at the Globe, which was probably my favorite experience in London. The Globe is an open air amphitheater. The actors don't use mics and its a very "up close and personal" experience. You could buy nice seats for 35 pounds, or pay 5 for the "yard" seats, which is standing room only. We had heard this was more fun anyway, so we went for the 5 pound tickets. What a good decision. People stand right in front of the stage. To keep people separated, they cover this area with a big piece of fabric with head sized holes in it. So you crouch around under the fabric until you find a hole, then pop up. Once everyone gets in, all you can see are a bunch of heads poking through this big black cloth. It made for some good pictures. The show started with the Three Witches running around under the cloth pretending to try to steal stuff from you. I'm not sure if they were actually pretending though, because they jumped on stage with a wallet. Whatever, they didn't get mine. Anyway, the show had lots of blood, some splattered on the audience. Halfway through, it started to rain and all the standing people, and the actors, got soaked. But it was fun times. On our last night up with a guy that knows Skyler's dad. He showed us around to some of the 'local' pubs, and I think must have spent a couple hundred pounds buying us all drinks. Cool guy! Our flight left at 6am the next morning, so we had decided to cancel our hostel for that night and just stay up all night. It was an interesting night. It was raining, so after we left the last pub, we just wandered around the city. We tried to see a movie, but it was too late, and then we tried to get some chicken at KFC, BUT THEY WERE OUT OF CHICKEN. How is that possible? KFC out of chicken? Madness. We finally made it back after a not so fun bus ride, plane ride, and train ride. And I slept all day. Good times.

So that's the trips update. This weekend is off, next weekend I go to Prague, and the weekend after (or so) I'm going to Rome to meet up with my grandma and uncle who are there for the world boomerang championship. Fun stuff.

What have I done while in Munich you ask? Well let me (very quickly) tell you. Classes are basically ridiculously easy. There isn't much in the way of homework, and classes generally meet just once a week for an hour and a half. I'm now really taking 4 classes (plus a block class) for a grand total of 6 hours of class a week. Most of those classes I don't think I'll get credit for, so I'm probably looking at only about half a quarters worth of credit from this trip. Which sucks, but that's not why I'm here anyway, so I'll live. Like always, some of the classes are interesting, some not so much. Three I like are a class about the economic and cultural workings of the EU, a class about human-machine communication (weird) and the "physics of logic" (really weird, about universes, multiverses, black holes, worm holes, and other crazyness).

Ohh I went to Cirque du Soleil at the Olympic Stadium, which is a 10 minute walk from where I live. It was crazy to see how strong and flexible everyone is. I've also started swimming at the Olympic pool. Its cool to be able to swim in the same pool that Olympians did. 50m pools also make me feel intense. I got a sweet road bike. I bike around the city a lot, and almost always ride it to school. It takes about 15 minutes to get there, really not bad at all. The weather is terrible right now, but I hope to go on some rides outside the city soon. There seems to be some sort of party, either through one of the many universities here, an international club, or just people getting together just about every night. They are pretty fun, but get expensive fast. Germans are crazy party-ers - staying out until 6 or 7am is no big deal. My German is...not great. I'm trying to keep learning, but with everyone speaking English it makes it difficult. We'll see what happens.

Ok, if you've made it this far you are probably tired of reading, and I am definitely tired of writing, so lets call it good! Next is pictures, so hopefully there will be some up on picasa soon!

The End of Geneva and the Start of Munich!

Here we go! It's been awhile, and there is much to tell. There a few pictures on here, but check out http://picasaweb.google.com/willieblackmon for many many more pictures and videos.

First though. Contact info for those interested.

Address:
Helena Mayer Ring 7  A1123
80809 Munich
Germany

Phone:
+49-151-553-76-456

Since my last missive, I spent a week with my...lets just keep it simple and say...second cousins... Mark, Anne, Andrew and Eleanor Fitzpatrick in Geneva, Switzerland. On March 8th I took a train to Munich, and started school on the 15th.

Lets start with Geneva. It was great to see the Fitzpatrick family, some of whom I'd met a long time ago, and others I believe I'd never met. Mark and Anne both speak French fairly well (or so they say, they could be fluent for all I can tell) and the kids are fluent, having grown up speaking it at school. Anne was my personal tour guide for the week, taking me to CERN, a castle, and many other places around the city. Mark took Andrew, Eleanor and I to the Geneva car show, and later skiing in France!

CERN is a European organization for particle physics. It mostly carries out experiments in a giant, 27km long tunnel constructed 100m below Munich and into France. I took a tour, but won't pretend I really understand what's going on. Basically though, they use magnets to accelerate and guide tiny pieces of matter - protons, atoms, or other stuff - around this giant underground tunnel. They accelerate matter in two different directions around the circle until BANG, they hit each other, both going nearly the speed of light. And apparently, within that BANG we can find stuff not seen since a fraction of a second after the original big BANG. It was pretty cool. This is me with a section of an old part of that tunnel. You can see the crazy amounts of wiring needed to set up the guiding magnets.

So Blogger formatting sucks. This looks perfect in the editor, but previewing it looks terrible. So sorry about any ugly formatting.



It was Mark's birthday while I was here, so I got to join in on the cake eating festivities. We also went on a fondue dinner boat ride on Lake Leman, which borders Geneva. Pretty awesome.

I'm not sure if everyone knows, but we are gangsters.

The Geneva car show is apparently the biggest in Europe. Its pretty crazy huge. Its probably the most people I've ever seen in one "room." Its actually a series of giant warehouse rooms filled with the newest car models and (more interesting in my opinion) concept cars. Also thousands of people taking probably millions of pictures.

Teaching Eleanor and Andrew how to drive a stick. I think they are ready for the road!

About 45 minutes out of Geneva, on the edge of Lake Leman, is the Chillon Castle. Its pretty amazing. I had fun running around trying to find every room, and get to the top of everything. Good times. Also amazing views of the water and mountains from a freakin castle window. Sweet. I definitely have castle fever, and will hopefully being checking out many more in Germany.

More castle.

These are the royal toilets. Its amazing, the castle was designed with these 50 foot drops into the lake for you know what. I'm very impressed.

One of many great views from the castle.

On the fondue boat for Mark's birthday! Ahh even writing this is making me hungry.

Awwwww

People played giant games of chess at one of the parks. Very cool.

Skiing in France is quite the experience. It took us awhile to actually get on some slopes - the place we were intending to go turned out to be closed due to winds. Starting off was a big weird; it was reallllly cold and the snow seemed really...slick. It was funny. But after a few runs I got the hang of it and the rest of the day was awesome. I had fun learning how to ski in powder, or "off pist" as apparently the French call it.

Fantastic views.

On the final run, Mark and I split up and I ended up going down this amazing run, completely by myself. I mean I didn't see anyone the whole time. Which turned out to be a bad thing, because they shut down the lifts, and I was headed down the wrong side of the mountain, where you can't actually ski to the very bottom. So this picture is of me once I finally made it back to Mark, after a very long walk through the snow. 

And now, Munich! It was about a 7 hour train ride, with interesting scenery. Not bad. Crossing from Switzerland to Germany included two undercover cops (or something) interrogating an old woman sitting across from me but not saying anything to me. Weird. My "buddy" from the university met me at the train station and showed me to my dorm room. Honestly, its a pretty nasty room, but its in the same building as a lot of other international students, and is close to school, which is nice. I'm on the 11th floor of a 16 floor building. This is my room. I also have my own (tiny) bathroom. We went to Ikea a couple days after I arrived to spruce up the rooms. Notice the plant and rug. Classy.

Its crazy how many people you meet doing the exchange thing. This is a group of Americans and Brazilians at (the very German) Pizza Hut. Come on, it was all you can eat, who can say no to that? Anyway, from left to right is Frederico, Raphael, ohhh no I forgot, (All Brazilians), Spencer (Cal Poly), me, Vanessa (Wisconsin), Tim (Cal Poly), and Marcello (Brazil). 

Its finally getting decently warm, but for the first few days, it was pretty cold. Maybe 15 F was the coldest it got. This is a fountain at Marienplatz, a main square in Munich. FROZEN.

We went up in a big tower. I took a picture.

Not really sure why I am including this picture. Me and Lindsey from Canada.

Starkbier (dark beer) fest. Random German guy named Nicoli on the left, Jarad from Cal Poly on the right. What a crazy, fun atmosphere.

A cool sunset from the balcony of my room.

What else has happened in Munich? So so much. When we arrived, nobody had much in the way of bedding, cooking stuff, etc etc so we went to Ikea, which is always awesome. We had a few days of school orientation, which was quite helpful. There was quite a bit of bureaucracy to get through, to get registered with the school, and the city, and the athletic places, and get a student transportation pass, get a bank account, set up deposits for rent, tranfer money, and the list goes on. I'm getting closer to done, but still have lots to do. 

Getting used to living in Germany, and in a big city, has been interesting. I've got the public transportation down pretty well, and its generally easy to use. Almost all transportation stops from 1:30AM to 4:30AM which makes for interesting nights if you miss the last train. Other strange things in Germany include strange business hours. Many things - like the city hall - are open only from 7am until noon. Grocery stores all close by 8pm. There's no drinking fountains, and water is really expensive in restaurants. Its crazy stuff. I've gotten good at remembering to bring a water bottle anywhere I go. Cool things: escalators the go either direction, depending on which way you are going, bike lights powered by your wheel turning,  

Classes: Many classes don't start until next week, but as of now I think I'm taking Ergonomics, Finite Element Method, Physics of Logic, Human Machine Communication, and a German class. Should be good! I think I have Thursday and Friday off, which will be nice for trips. Tomorrow I'm leaving for a 1 night trip to Salzburg, Austria, and next weekend we'll hopefully go to Prague. 

Today I went ice skating, good times. Yesterday a group of Americans played soccer with an Indian and two Iraqis we met at a park. It was a little awkward when we said we were Americans, but its pretty cool we could just...play soccer!

Two days ago was Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. It was quite an experience to see the furnaces and walk into the room labeled "Showers" but was actually a gas chamber. The gas chamber was never used at Dachau, but was similar to others used at other concentration camps. It was amazing to see...how well thought out and designed this mass killing devise was. A strange combination of insanity and total logic. Pictures of that next round.

Although I've been mostly speaking English, I have met quite a few Germans, as well as lots of French, Spanish, Finish, Australian, and Brazilian folks, to name a few. 

Alright we are off to Augustina, a restaurant and brewery for dinner, so that's all for this time. I'll add captions to the pictures on picasa soon, so maybe wait a day or two to check those out.

bye now

Geneva, St. Gallen, and back to Geneva

Alrighty, lets do this thing. So there aren't pictures here. Sorry, its sort of a lot of work to get them on here nicely, so I'm just gonna say, at least for this one, just go to picasaweb.google.com/WillieBlackmon to see pictures. Go! Now!

I left Seatac around 6:30PM last Tuesday and headed to London. I had the fastest night of my life. Actually it was pretty funny, they served dinner, then like 5 hours later, served breakfast. I flew British Airways, and they served tea, which I added milk to, and felt very British. I also had an interesting epiphany: British accents make all women more attractive and all men resemble Michael Caine. Its amazing.

Yep, spent 45 minutes in Heathrow Airport, then off to Geneva, Switzerland. After I landed, I headed through customs (He literally said nothing to me, no questions at all.) and to the place I was supposed to meet Bert, a friend my aunt knew long ago. He wasn't there, and I went through about 5 minutes of rising panic before he got there, and all was well. Bert and girlfriend Claudia are 50-somethings living in an apartment on the edge of town. He works for a human rights organization and she works for the UN. He speaks two languages fluently, and she three. They both are required to for their jobs. And that seems like a somewhat typical setup in Geneva. It's an international city where 40% of the population are foreign born. They don't have kids, which seems common. Often, apparently, women have careers, or have kids, not both. Childcare isn't easy to find, and kids get two hours off of school for lunch, plus no school Wednesdays. Sounds pretty awesome to me, but it does present issues for two income families. Anyway, Bert and Claudia were great about letting me into their home, feeding me good food and trusting a complete stranger with a key to their apartment.

Jet lag gave me an awesome few days of easily getting up at 7 or 7:30AM. It was amazing. On my first full day in Geneva, I ventured into the city to explore. I came prepared with a little background of German (very, very little) but was fully unprepared for the French speaking Geneva. I practiced saying "bon-zchour," "mer-see," and "par-lay voo onglay" a few times and went for it. Geneva has a fantabulous public transportation system. I paid 7 Franks, about $7 for a day pass (cheap considering everything, cost of living and wages, are much higher than in the U.S.) which gave me access to intense double accordion buses, trams, trains, and even boats.

I checked out the UN in Geneva. Although most politically important UN stuff happens in New York, most of the "behind the scenes" organizational stuff happens in Geneva. The tour was alright, nothing amazing. I mostly just walked around, learned how to use the public transit and took pictures of cool looking things. Because I didn't see the key to the apartment Bert left me, I had to stay out until 7PM when he would return, which meant I had quite a long day walking around, and ended up just taking random buses out into the countryside and back to stay warm, which was actually interesting.

Next day headed out to a city near St. Gallen, which is 5ish hours by train. The Swiss, as well as the Germans apparently, are amazing with their train schedules. I arrived on time to within 1-2 minutes of when I was supposed to, on a 5 hour trip. Its really quite impressive. Julian, a friend I met while he was studying abroad in Vancouver BC, met me and took me to his house where I stayed for two nights. I met his family, who all speak at least some English. Again, they were amazingly nice about setting up a nice place for me to stay, making food, and buying way too much for me. We went skiing in some local mountains the next day. The weather started off perfect, and it was some beautiful scenery. In the U.S. in by no means a great skier, but I'm probably a little better than average. In Switzerland, I am terrible. Little kids whizzed by me. But whatever, it was awesome. As part of a traditional Swiss festival, bands of dressed up, drunken Swiss played songs at the base of the slopes. Everyone sang and danced to the music, and nearby, people in in ski-wear sunbathed on pool-chairs sitting in the snow. Switzerland is a crazy place. That night we went to a bar with Julian and his girlfriend. A bunch of his friends ended up showing up as well. I was in high demand, either because I am really awesome and charismatic, or because people wanted to practice their English. Probably the former. One guy had a strange German-Australian accent (after spending a year in Australia) and possibly knew more about American pop culture than me.

After a few hours of sleep, I got up and headed back to Geneva to meet second cousins?...some sort of relatives...Mark, Anne, Andrew, and Eleanor.

More on that later. I'm tired and apparently going to a castle tomorrow, so must sleep.

For pictures, check out the picasa website. http://picasaweb.google.com/WillieBlackmon

tschüs! (bye!...German)

Setting This Up

Why hello there! This doohickey appears to be my travel blog. Ah, yes, for those uninformed in the Life 'o Willie, I am headed to Germany for an exchange program with Cal Poly. I'm studying in Munich, but hope to do lots of traveling before, during, and after my school semester.

So this is how its going to work (I think):

I'm going to post my mumblings on here when inspiration hits.

Now if you are really committed, you can email me and I'll make sure you get an email every time I have a new post. I'm not really sure how often these will be, but I'm going to guess biweekly (Strangely enough, biweekly means both "twice a week" and "once every two weeks." I mean it in the fortnight sense.) Apparently you can become my "follower" or "subscriber" as well, but those things confuse me. Anyway, email me if you'd like to get in on that list.

willieblackmon@gmail.com

Right on. Next order of business. Pictures. Indeed. I'll attempt to add a few cool pictures to this blog, but if you think you can handle the full pictorial experience, head on over to my Picasa Web Album thang.

It's at picasaweb.google.com/willieblackmon.

That will have all the pictures I deem worthy of the internet (and the internet has quite low standards, so there will be many). My inner geek loves it, you can do cool stuff like view the pictures on a map, based on where they were taken. Saweeet.

Excellent. I'm leaving on February 23rd, so expect some premium photographs and prose (and poetry?) around then.

Ta ta for now.