Boy What Fun!!!

Third Week and only 138 days left, the week started out okay; on Monday on our way to Patton Barracks we passed a group of protestors in front of one of the other camps. I later discovered that it was a protest about wages and not just here in Heidelberg, but that it was nationwide. So it wasn’t such a big deal, I don’t think that it even hit the news. Unlike the fire in Slave Lake, Alberta, this was all over the news here on base, sure hope that all is well, I know that there were some buildings destroyed, but I hope no deaths or injury. With no TV in the apartment and no radio I’m limited to computer access, but only in the apartment.

I’m happy to say that I finally got over my jet lag, now if my roommates can train their families not to call at 3:30 in the morning, I would be okay. I have two roommates; one is from Baltimore the other Seattle. When it is 3:30 am here it is 9:30 pm in Baltimore, 7:30 pm in Utah, and 6:30 pm in Seattle. I realize that it is hard to adjust to the time difference, especially when you’re not used to it. My family has had relatives in different time zones for years or we have had the opportunity to travel to different countries on business or service so we have learned to either calculate the difference or wait to be called to be safe, especially if we know roommates are involved.

Heidelberg reminds me of Utah back in the early 60’s. It is not a large city, but is does cover a lot of area. There is (what they call) a small mountain range on one side (it is like the foothills east of Salt Lake) and part of the city is going up the side of it in splotches and then spreads down into the valley. I haven’t been to the center of the city yet (hoping Saturday), but the out skirts of the city is broken up with farmlands and vineyards with smaller parts of the city or villages built throughout. You really have to see it. The farms and vineyards, that I noticed, are not fenced and are broken up with bike and walking trails.

The trails do not run parallel with the main roads and do not follow a certain pattern. My thought is that in the olden days paths were created by the people going from one farmhouse or village to another in which they seldom took the same path twice, or wandered off the path to the nearest tree and returned. Eventually, the paths widened and became trails, the trails became wagon routes, and the wagon routes became roads, and so forth. Some of the farmhouses have since been removed so the roads just end. If you are driving and pass up your exit or turn you may have to travel 20 to 30 minutes out of your way to turn around. So there are a few things that you need to know to get around 1) know the address you are heading to; 2) have a GPS with you; and 3) know how to get back, if you don’t have these then getting around is going to interesting, even just walking or biking. When I go sightseeing, I’m going to have fun because I have no idea about numbers 1 and 2 and hopefully I can figure out number 3. Tell you what, if you don’t see a blog from me in the next couple of weeks, call the U.S. Embassy here in Germany and report me missing (just kidding).

The last sentence came sooner than I thought. The reason you haven’t seen a blog from me for awhile is due to week four.

Week Four

Friday or Saturday of week three, another intern mentioned that he had a cold; Sunday at an intern get together I started feeling achy with a scratchy throat. I should have posted my blog then, but decided to go to bed early to try to beat the cold that was coming on. The next day I could hardly move my body ached in every joint. By Tuesday I was running a fever, Wednesday was even worse; I couldn’t get out of bed. Thursday was more like Monday, just achy and by Friday just the coughing and running nose.

Which is a shame because this is the long weekend and I had planned to go out venturing Heidelberg, but I don’t think I will until I’m sure that I am over this cold, I’m not the only one in the group to get it, but I was the one who got it the worse. Good news is that I’m still here and still writing, so hopefully I can have a post week only about sixteen weeks left, 126 days  18 hours 9 minutes 24 seconds, or at this point 11,0338,141 seconds (it is hard to calculate the seconds when they keep dropping), but who’s counting, eh.

Until the next time – a closed mind is a good thing to loose.