Oh jet lag, you are strange - I'm back!

I am definitely feeling a bit on the loopy side right now. I woke up 'this morning' at 4:00 am Frankfurt time which is 10:00 pm last night New York time. What?! I am strangely not as exhausted as I expected but I do not feel 100% by any stretch. But it had been a while since I'd been to Europe (too long!) and I had a fabulous time. I need to get Tamra to send me a few pictures and I will post them. Since my phone didn't work in Germany, and I could not find internet there to save my life, I didn't carry my phone around with me and thus I didn't take pictures. Oops!!! 

This is what the running trails in Munich look like (I stole this picture from the internet). Running there is great.  There are trails like this for miles and miles. You can literally run 70 kilometers each way. Luckily I was only dumb enough to run 17 at the most.

I wondered if I would feel a special connection to Germany since by ancestry I am about 90% German. The answer is no because I mostly wandered around feeling like a typical American jackass who doesn't bother to learn the language before going on my vacation. I am now determined to learn German. It is a hard language. The words are long and there are many letters that don't seem to go together. For example to say excuse me, one must say this: Entschuldigen Sie. This is pronounced 'ent-shel-de-gung' I think. Try saying that five times fast.


I would highly recommend Munich and oddly it reminded me of Denver, I think because it is a similarly sized city, the elevation is well above sea level (not as high as Denver however, but enough to notice), and it is dry. Also the people there are sporty.


One cool sporty thing I did there is a pilgrimage to the Munich Olympic Park and Swim Hall. That place was amazing. It was a huge Olympic-sized pool that was used in the 1972 Olympics. What an amazing facility. However, surprisingly Germans do not self-sort into fast, medium, and slow lanes, and many of them love to do the breast stroke very slowly. Interesting! I always thought Germans were so orderly that they would be more organized when they go swimming. But it was a fun experience regardless. Tamra and I had a great time and although I am glad to be back, now that I like where I live, I had a great time and I look forward to going back to Europe, and back to Germany when I can speak the language. Perhaps by Challenge Roth 2013 if I can convince a few other nutters to do it :)