Introduction

August 2000
September 2000
October 2000
November 2000
December 2000
January 2001
February 2001
March 2001
April 2001
May 2001
June 2001
July 2001
August 2001

June 2001

4 June 2001
Monday

Last night on my bus ride home, there were two African men speaking their native language behind me. As I was wondering what language they were speaking, a man behind them said, "Excuse me, may I ask what language you're speaking?" (in German, of course). One of the Africans asked if the German spoke English, and they proceeded to conduct the conversation in English. I couldn't hear everything they said, but apparently the country the two men are from (I didn't catch the name) has sixty different languages. Of course that leads to problems in communication, and the German said that there's also a good bit of variance in Germany, for instance between Hamburg and Bavaria. [1] Anyway, it was a very interesting conversation, and it made my bus ride. I was grinning all the way home. This is the reason I'm in Germany. Where else could I overhear such a conversation? Certainly not South Hadley.

11 June 2001
Monday

The last week has been very eventful. I'll start at the beginning...

For the past several years I've had a recurring rash on my fingers which comes and goes; I never knew what it was, and it was never really serious enough to bother going to the doctor for (even though I knew I should). However, this spring I had a bad attack, and last Monday Shannon looked at my finger and told me to go see her dermatologist. She ordered me to go, so there wasn't any decision. I went by his office the next day and by sheer chance happened to arrive when there was an open hole, so I took it! He didn't know what it was, but he said it might be a fungus, and he prescribed a cream which I have been applying. It helped immediately; the itching stopped, and the skin is nearly completely normal now.

Last week was Pentecost, so we had a week off of class. Accordingly, on Wednesday morning I got on a train to Stockholm, where my mother's Swedish pen pal lives with her family. The train ride was 10 hours (13 on the return trip), but it was completely worth it. Stockholm was wonderful.

On my first evening there I had a tour of the Gamla Stan (Old Town), the island which comprises the original settlement of Stockholm. The meaning of the word Stockholm itself is interesting; stock means "log", and holm means "island", so together it means "log island." [2] Stockholm was originally an on- and off-loading stop for transferring logs from Lake Malaren to the Baltic Sea. Eventually it became the capital of Sweden (Uppsala was the former capital), but in the Middle Ages Stockholm was a horrible town, with four wells for 7,000-10,000 people. The water from the lake was undrinkable because of the refuse which was dumped in the streets and pushed down into the lake. [3] In spite of that, I think Stockholm is a very interesting city; in fact, I think the degree of candor about squalor during the Middle Ages (which existed in all cities and towns, though perhaps to varying degrees) is a very positive point.

On Thursday I went to the Nordiskamuseet (Nordic Museum), which I've also seen referred to as the Museum of Cultural History. It had a lot of interesting exhibits (Swedish traditions, ABBA), but the one which fascinated me the most was one on table settings (as well as food culture) of the upper classes from the 16th to 20th centuries. It concentrated on Sweden but was also applicable to general European culture. I had intended on hitting four museums that day but spent nearly six hours in this one!

Friday I intended to get up early to go to Uppsala, but I had stayed up too late the night before (fooled by the late-setting sun into thinking it was earlier than it was) and couldn't get up early enough. Ronnie (the pen pal's son) and I ended up taking a ferry to the island of Vaxholm in order to see the fortress; unfortunately we didn't know that the fortress is closed all this year(!), so we tried to amuse ourselves on the island. However, there's really nothing to do there (the "sights" we tried to find were either nonexistent or completely lame), so we had a late lunch and came home on the bus, taking a huge detour in order to take a streetcar across the lake for a good view. That was nice, but we had a rather long walk home, up several hills, and I was extremely tired when we got home. I wanted to stay up for dessert (rhubarb pie) but fell asleep at 20:00.

On Saturday I did wake up by 7:00, as planned, and we set off for Uppsala. After a little bit of walking around, we managed to find the bus to Gamla Uppsala (Old Uppsala), where there is a Viking burial ground (with grave mounds from the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.) and a church. I went in order to see the grave mounds, which were indeed interesting. Unfortunately, the museum about the mounds had less information than I would have liked and reinforced my feeling of ignorance about Viking culture. In the end, the church was perhaps more interesting than the burial mounds; it had originally been a cathedral, built in Uppsala (the seat of the kings of the Svea/Swedes) as a replacement for former wooden churches. However, in the 13th century (1275?) it burned, and the Pope was asked for permission to move the cathedral and the name of Uppsala to a nearby merchant town, Östra Aros, which then became the present-day Uppsala. The old cathedral was not completely destroyed; the nave and chancel arms were torn down, and the remaining chancel, apse, and center tower, with the addition of a vestry and entryway, were converted to a small (and odd-shaped) church. Our exploration of Gamla Uppsala was concluded by a visit to the Restaurang Oldenborg, which serves Viking mead. I tasted a bit, and it's rather sweet (of course, it's made from fermented honey). It's much less vile than beer; I could possibly come to like the stuff.

Afterwards we went back into Uppsala and made our way to the Gustavianum, the Uppsala University Museum, which contains an Anatomical Theater designed in the 1600's for use for human dissections. Unfortunately it was not used very much because even the families of hanged criminals objected to their being cut up for public entertainment; though the priority was given to medical students, extra places were sold to the public. Also unfortunately, we didn't have much time in the Gustavianum because it closed at 17:00; we went over to the cathedral, were kicked out because a service was going on, and went outside to take pictures. I tried out the timing function of my new camera, during which experiment a random passer-by came up and stood beside Ronnie in the picture. After the photo shoot I asked Ronnie, "What do we do know?" to which he replied, "The only logical thing is to go and buy licorice." So we did. We enjoyed it later in the evening; it was very delicious, especially the rhubarb flavor.

On Sunday, my last day, I hit the three museums that I didn't get to see before. The first was the Museum Tre Kronor. Tre Kronor ("three crowns") was the name of the old royal castle on Gamla Stan; this is an exhibit about the old castle. It was very interesting; it is situated in the cellar of the north wing, the only wing which survived the fires of 1697 which burned down the rest of the medieval castle and led to the rebuilding of the whole castle in baroque style over the next 50 years. The north wing had been recently built, on top of the cellars and such from previous centuries; most of the rooms used by the exhibit were from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was really interesting to see, from the inside, how the medieval castle (as well as its baroque successor) was built on top of existing structures, partially adapting them without completely obliterating them. For instance, built-over ovens and bricked-up doors are still findable today and show in part the previous structure of the castle. The rooms of the museum were more interesting than what they contained, I think!

The next museum was the Livrustkammaren (Royal Armory). It contains mostly armor and a few royal carriages as well as a special exhibit with middle-eastern armor, etc.; however, I went for the clothes. There were a few suits of clothing in which kings of Sweden were wounded or died (as well as the horse King Gustav II Adolf was riding when he was killed in battle in 1632), but I was really interested in the women's fancy dresses, of which there were unfortunately only a handful. That was okay, though, because it gave me more time for the next museum...

The Vasamuseet (Vasa Museum) houses a warship, named the Vasa (from the coat of arms of the ruling family of Sweden), which was sunk just a few minutes after her first launch, in the middle of Stockholm harbor. The ship capsized and filled with water because she didn't have enough ballast to steady her immense height. She keeled over and filled with water through the cannon hatches. Though unfortunate for the Swedish navy, this was a wonderful archaeological find because the ship is in near-mint condition. She was sunk in pristine condition; in addition, the wood was preserved extremely well because the "ship worm" which eats away wood in other seas doesn't thrive well in the Baltic Sea's less-salty waters. The ship has been reassembled (almost completely from original materials, as far as I can tell from the outside) and stands awe-inspiringly inside the museum. I got a couple of postcards, but it's impossible to convey with a two-dimensional image the impressiveness and seeming hugeness of the ship. She's actually not that big, and inside she's even smaller (there's a life-size replica of the upper gun deck, so people can see what it felt like inside the ship), but she looks really amazing. I wish I had more time to savor the experience.

I had a lot of experiences to savor during the trip, including Swedish food. The Swedish seem to use a lot more fruit (and flowers!) in ways that I wouldn't think of; for example, I had a drink made from elder flowers which tasted like honeysuckle, as well as soup made from powdered rose-hips. My favorite breakfast while I was there was "creamed rhubarb" with milk.

On the way home I took a night-train, which was an experience, but I don't think I'll be very eager to do it again. It admittedly made the journey a bit shorter by letting me sleep in relative comfort through a good bit of it, but on the other hand I had no privacy and was obliged to sleep in my clothing and to wear the same things for a second day (eww!).

On my arrival in Hamburg, I got to experience the new HVV MetroBus. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between this and the normal 102 line which I used to take, but so far I've had to wait longer for the bus than I used to. This is not a good thing.

So I'll leave you presently and take the new #5 MetroBus home. Wow, it's actually dark in Hamburg now (23:00); in Stockholm at this time last night it was still pretty light.

12 June 2001
Tuesday

One of the coolest things about my trip to Sweden, which I forgot to say yesterday, is that I knew absolutely nothing of Swedish when I went but managed to understand a surprising amount through simply listening, reading, and drawing on my German knowledge. (There was probably a hefty bit of imagination in there, too.) It was kind of fun to pretend I knew Swedish; I bought postcards by figuring out exactly what the cost would be and thus knowing ahead of time what the numbers were, giving over the money, and saying tack. Other times I was completely lost and had to admit that I didn't know Swedish, but sometimes it worked. Anyway, sometimes I did understand things without being told them, and that was really fun.

I enjoyed my vacation; the problem is that now I am back in Real Life and have to start actually working again. :-(

A couple of weeks ago my Sprachlehrforschung prof asked us to write up a 1-2 page biography of our foreign-language-learning experience. I completely forgot until today, so I wrote it in the hour or so before class. I think it's slightly interesting, so I'm going to reproduce it here (to avoid making this page longer than it really needs to be).

17 June 2001
Sunday

I'm taking a study break to update my journal. I have absolutely no qualms about this because I've done a good bit today already. In fact, I got up at 8:30 and did laundry! Of course, I did have a bit of trouble with that task, perhaps because I was still half-asleep. I went down to the basement, put my laundry and detergent in, and put money in the machine; unfortunately it didn't want to take my 1-mark coin, so I had to run upstairs and get another one, which it then graciously accepted. So I set the washer and pressed the button... but it didn't go. There were no lights showing or anything, on any of the washers! I thought they must have been turned off or something, because after all it was early Sunday morning. So I went away and came back a while later; still the same, except I'd lost my money for the machine. It was just as well that I hadn't turned the washer on, actually, because I'd forgotten to put my cargo pants in. So I pushed the button to open the door, and it didn't do anything! I started to panic ("now I can't even get my clothes out! aaaaaaah!"), and I touched the door, and then I realized that it had been open all along. That's why it wouldn't turn on. D'oh!

So it's just as well that I got an early start on laundry. I'm rather surprised that I could get up that early, actually, but it's probably due to the fact that I got home slightly earlier than usual. I left the Smith Center just before 23:00 and walked to the bus stop. As I was waiting for the light to turn so I could cross to the stop [4], I heard a car honk and turned to see a neighbor from my floor waving to me from his car. He pointed in the direction of home, I nodded, and he beckoned me over. I hopped in, and he gave me a ride back to the dorm! It was very nice of him, and it saved me half of the journey home! I tend not to think about how long it takes me to get places in Hamburg, because there's no alternative to the bus, and I don't even realize how short it would be in a car.

My life these days is mostly waiting, however. I wait for the bus, for professors, for deadlines. I wait for my flights to Kevin. Ultimately, I'm waiting to go home. It's not that I don't like living in Hamburg, but I'm tired of it. I'm tired. Unfortunately life is not going to get any easier once I leave; moreover, there are things I need to be doing now. I need to stop waiting and get working on my papers. I need to start enjoying life again. It's more an attitude change than anything else, and I'm not quite sure how to do it consciously.

A few days ago I sat down at one of the computers in the Smith Center and tried to check my email, but all it said was Login incorrect, which freaked me out because I was sure I'd typed it correctly. I tried it over and over again, painstakingly typing my password to make sure I hadn't messed it up, but it wouldn't let me in! So I asked Emily, who was sitting at the computer next to me and chatting to Caitlin, if I could check really quickly to see if I could do it on that computer (in case there was something funky with the keyboard I was using or something), and Maggie said "oh, the X [5] key isn't working on that computer"! I was so relieved that I almost fainted. No, that's not a figure of speech; I was seriously light-headed and had to sit down before I fell. And then today Maggie fixed the keyboard (something gunky had gotten stuck under that key), so it's all okay now. For a while it was kind of funny, though; it was easy to tell every time someone typed that letter, because there would be a loud slam instead of the quiet clicking of the other keys.

On Thursday I received a package from Emily's mother (read my Emily page for details) which contained a compilation tape. The first song on that tape is "This Is to Mother You" by Sinéad O'Connor, and I've since become slightly obsessed with that song. Unfortunately, it's on an out-of-print CD Single, Gospel Oak EP. Fortunately, Maggie W. suggested eBay, so I did a search for "sinead o'connor". That CD came up as the first item! Whee! I bid on it and got it for the opening bid ($6). Right now I'm trying to get the seller, who is in the UK, to send it to Kevin rather than to Texas, because the shipping would be cheaper (and I'd get the CD quicker). However, since I'm planning on using PayPal to send him the money, it's slightly sketchy to ask him to send to another address - i.e. I could have cracked someone's account and be using it to get things mailed to a completely different address, whereas my confirmed billing address is more reliably me. I've emailed him, and we'll see what he thinks.

There's also another copy of the same CD offered; this one is sealed, for the same price as the other, but it expires in a week. Thus I decided to go for the one that was immediately available, in case I couldn't get the other one. For that I set a maximum bid on eBay, and I'm reasonably sure that I'll get it. But if I don't, that's okay; I'll have the other one anyway.

25 June 2001
Monday

I've just gotten back from England and the USA; I made a quick trip to see my brother married. I flew from Hamburg to London last Tuesday and spent the night at Kevin's house; then on Wednesday we flew from Heathrow to JFK to Pittsburgh, arriving at dinnertime on Wednesday evening. It was pretty easy to adjust to jetlag, which was good since we didn't have much time. Thursday and Friday were busy with cleaning and fixing up Ralph's house, and then there were activities in the evening (Ralph's bachelor party on Thursday and the rehearsal wedding on Friday). Actually, the rehearsal dinner was a catered party for most of the guests rather than a quiet dinner for the families; Ralph and Lori wanted to give out-of-town guests a chance to see the house and to socialize. I understand why they did it, I guess, but I wouldn't have done it myself. It was a good bit of stress. I went to sleep in the middle of it, actually.

Saturday was the wedding, and it started with a trip to the hairdresser's, where all the bridesmaids got their hair and/or makeup done. I had both, and it was worth it. Hopefully I'll have pictures later, but basically it was tucked up towards the back of my head and rolled and curled, and the floral wreath (all of us had wreaths) pinned around the stuff in the middle. It looked great. The only annoying thing is that the wispy stuff on my forehead was cut into light bangs, which now drape across my forehead and tickle my eyebrows.

We flew back during the day yesterday, leaving very early in the morning and getting back late last night. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time readjusting; I slept until midday today and was very tired until early evening, and now I'm more or less awake. I'm feeling tired and stressed, and besides that I have some sort of gum infection or something which is causing me a bit of pain. I don't know what it is, and I'm annoyed at having another thing to worry about. I don't want it to be serious, but I have the annoying suspicion that it is. Oh, and I feel like I might have a fever. I think I'm going to skip my first class tomorrow; I'll just let myself sleep in and see when I wake up. Besides, the class is always annoying, and I don't need to know anything they're discussing, anyway.

Okay, so that's a very very quick run-through of my week. I'll probably come back in the next few days and write more, but this week is looking to be very eventful, and I wanted to get something down before I forgot everything.

(Photos of the wedding by Jeliza and Kevin Sullivan: before, during, and after the wedding.)

28 June 2001
Thursday

I've been having a stressful week; the wedding was just the start of it. [6] I promised I'd provide more details, so here they are.

Ralph's bachelor party was on Thursday night; I was invited but decided in advance not to go because I thought I wouldn't be very comfortable; however, Kevin was going to go. On Thursday I fell asleep shortly after noon and slept for a couple of hours, and when I woke up no one was at the house but Kevin. He said that my parents had left but were going to come back after a nap, and that I was going to have dinner with my parents and my mother's sister and her family. We waited alone for three hours for my parents or anyone to come back. Eventually they did, and so did the bachelor party people, and then they left, and my extended family hadn't come into town yet, so I started feeling rather alone and abandoned and excluded. I'd excluded myself, but I didn't want to sit and be tired and alone. I can't explain it, but I didn't want to spend the evening with my parents. So I moped around a bit, and cried, and eventually my father got a hold of someone of the bachelor's party and arranged for me to meet up with them. We just hung out in a hotel room, ordered pizza, ate junk food, and played games (not drinking games, card games and such, and not gambling either - sheesh, you people). I fell asleep in the middle, but that was okay. I mean, at least I was being sort of social, right?

Friday was even crazier than Thursday. Like the day before, we cleaned house and fixed things that were broken. Kevin was put to work assembling chairs, and I helped him and my father and anyone else, wherever an extra hand was needed. In the evening we all headed over to the church and rehearsed the wedding. I really needed that, because although I know basically how a Methodist wedding works, or at least how it looks, I'd never seen a Catholic wedding before. The basic gist of the ceremony is the same, but the logistics are slightly different (for example, most of the wedding party ends up sitting in the pews most of the time), and a Catholic wedding is part of the mass, which means that there's communion. It was a bit more of an ethnic than a religious experience for me, but I think that's okay too.

As I said before, after the rehearsal Ralph and Lori had a big catered party at the house. They had barbecue, which was apparently very good though I didn't eat it, and ice cream for dessert, which I know was delicious. I got a little tired of the party after a couple of hours, particularly since I didn't know at least 80% of the people there (I guess they probably would have given me a glance if they'd known I was Ralph's sister, but I'm not outgoing enough to introduce myself to random people). I went to bed in the middle, which led to at least one person opening the door on me during a tour of the house. I didn't really care; I was very tired.

Saturday was, as hinted above, quite hectic. Early morning was hair and makeup at Philip Pelusi; I paid $80 for both, and it was completely worth it. I'll try to find some good pictures of me and my hair and put one up here so you can see. We headed back to Lori's parents' house afterwards and hung around until it was time to change and the bouquets had arrived. We eventually departed for the church, slightly late, and arrived too late for pictures of me with the groomsmen. We had pictures of the bride and her maids in the tower, however, and then the ceremony. I don't know how long it took, because I took my watch off beforehand, which was probably a very good idea. There were no big mistakes; the only one that could have been bad was that the ringbearer forgot the pillow, but we had the flower girl take it to him. During the ceremony there was a bit of time for people to say things about Ralph and Lori; I wish now that I'd thought of something to say, because I know what I'd have said if I'd thought of it beforehand, but it's too late now. Oh well.

Processional out, greeting line, blowing bubbles as Ralph and Lori came out of the church, and then they let two (very upset) white doves out of a basket. Then back into the church for quick group pictures, and away to the reception. That was a bit of an annoyance actually because the wedding party was seated at a high table, and we had to process in to our seats. (The most annoying thing, however, was that Kevin ended up seated with people he didn't know at all, and that wasn't very happy for him; in fact, the whole day was pretty stressful.) I also almost got carded when the server poured me the fizzy alcoholic stuff we had instead of champagne; he asked me if I was old enough and then told me he'd check later. Luckily he never did, because my passport was at Ralph's house and my driver's license in Germany, but the possibility of being carded hadn't even occurred to me, perhaps because I've been in Germany so long. Anyway, the reception was in general very enjoyable, and I barely noticed the time passing, even though I usually find such things incredibly boring.

(Photos of the wedding by Jeliza and Kevin Sullivan: before, during, and after the wedding.)

Kevin and I got to bed at a reasonable hour, but we had to get up at an extremely unreasonable one Sunday morning to catch our flights. We actually overslept, but we made both our flights, even though both were closer than had been planned. We got back to Kevin's house about 1:00 Monday morning and slept late; in fact, I took another nap right after breakfast. I felt bad before and during my evening flight to Hamburg, but afterwards I didn't feel too awful, which unfortunately led to my staying up somewhat later than I probably should have.

Jetlag was pretty easy on the way to the USA, but it has hit me hard on the way back. That seems to be the way it goes for me; there's not much of an east vs. west distinction, but when I go anywhere for a short while (as opposed to a year or so) the first transition is relatively easy, perhaps because I already know that it's only going to be for a week or so, but coming back is awful. It happened when I went from Massachusetts to France last year, and it also happened this time. I could be wrong though; maybe going east is harder than going west. In any case, I have been having a hard time adjusting. I tried to sleep late on Tuesday morning (I even decided I wouldn't worry about missing my first class that day), but that plan was foiled by the worker knocking on my door shortly after 8:00 and wanting to work on my wall/window. Erg. So I got up, took a shower, and went to buy stuff for breakfast; when I came back, they'd taken one of the panels out of the outside wall, under the windows, and were hacking away with a chisel at the wood border. I took my cereal and went to the kitchen and cried from tiredness and stress. However, when I came back in the evening everything was put back in place; the only problem was that my room reeked of new varnish. Even leaving the window wide open all night didn't help much, because the air was absolutely still.

The next day I had the opposite problem, because I didn't get up until 11:00 and thus didn't get many of the things on my list done. I felt bad about that until I realized that I did, in fact, get a number of things done; for all the things I didn't do, I did at least one thing, and many of the things that I wanted to do weren't pressing, anyway.

I'm a bit stressed because I feel that I'm way behind in writing papers and things, but it's better if I remind myself that as of today, I'm leaving in a month. It'll be a month before I can see Kevin again, which is sad, but on the other hand, I have a month to get all my work done, which is reassuring. If it's long to wait to see Kevin, then it's also long to write my papers.

I haven't seen a doctor about my gums yet. I'm waiting to find out the info of a doctor that a couple of Smithies have seen, but it takes a day or two to get things like that out of my fellow students. In the meantime, I'm brushing and flossing extremely thoroughly, and it seems to be getting better; in any case, there's less pain and soreness, and no blood in the toothpaste any more. I can't really tell if the redness is going down any, though, and there are a couple of sores on my gums that might or might not be getting any better. I did go by the dermatologist's office again today, to see about the culture he took of my finger a few weeks ago, and it turns out that whatever it is on my finger, it's not a fungus. I don't know whether that's good or not, but in any case I made another appointment for two weeks from now (since I'd neglected to make one before, silly me), and we'll see if we can do anything about it. It's not doing badly, but it's not actually good either.

My horrible stress thingie today was that I couldn't find my keys in the Smith Center while we were all getting ready to leave for our bit ending Abschiedsessen (parting dinner?). I was absolutely sure that they were somewhere, because I remembered using them to enter the Center and I hadn't done anything since then, but I couldn't find them. Finally we just left, and I borrowed Shannon's keys to come back. I still couldn't find them, and I was in a panic until I finally found them in a weird sort of pocket-that's-not-a-pocket on the back side of my backpack; I had just thoughtlessly dropped my keys in there because that was the closest pocket at the time and thought no more about it until I suddenly couldn't find my keys. Not fun. However, I did find them eventually, so it's okay.

30 June 2001
Saturday

It has occurred to me that I have forgotten to include here one of the most significant bits of my stress the last couple of weeks. It all boils down to the fact that I no longer have a phone. But let me start at the beginning. Back when I got a phone in the fall, I also bought an extension cord in order to have my phone next to my bed, in the opposite corner of the room from the wall socket. Unfortunately I have this bad habit of leaving my window open when it rains [7] or leaving soaking bras to dry on my radiator, leading to puddles in the area where my phone cords drape across the floor... This means that I've gotten corrosion, which first just gave me a bit of static sometimes. I noticed it but figured I'd see how long it held out. However, a couple of weeks ago I went home one evening to call Kevin (I'd told him I was going to call) and had no dial tone, no sign of life at all from my phone. So I borrowed a phone from Moritz and called Kevin that evening, but that's not a permanent solution. I decided it wasn't worth it to buy another phone since I was only going to be in Hamburg for a few more weeks anyway. Just Thursday I went to Deutsche Telekom and cut off my phone line; it'll actually be cut off on the 6th. Until then I'll have an answering machine but no phone. Just so you know, don't call me - not like anybody would anyway, but I thought people should know.

Actually Telekom is really unhelpful. Most of us are leaving Hamburg in the middle of July, and we want to have phones until then, but even though I cut mine off on the 28th of June, they say they can't get the last bill to me until the end of July, which means that if I don't get it before I leave, I can't pay it. Major problems! The solution, though, is probably to do like Caitlin Bass, which is to give instructions to the bank to leave my account open until sometime after Telekom would have deducted its payment from my account, and then to have whatever's left transferred to my account in South Hadley. Probably expensive, but it means that I won't have to worry about Telekom pursuing me for not paying the last bill. It'd be their fault for not being at all helpful, but unfortunately that sort of a defense doesn't really hold up in court very well.

I got a fun postcard from my ex-roommate Rachel yesterday; I had sent her one from Stockholm saying that she should go to Sweden, so she sent me one saying she'd taken my advice! She was fossil-hunting with her geology class and apparently having a lot of fun. I really must catch up with Rachel. I'm glad she's having fun this year, and I wish that I had gotten out as much as she apparently has.

Yesterday I did something I'd never done before in my life; I watch the movie of a book I was supposed to read for class, The Last of the Mohicans. I had started reading the book but gotten through about 150 pages (out of 400) before deciding that I wasn't going to finish it and wasn't even going to try. I hadn't seen the movie and knew friends who loved it, so I figured I'd watch it instead. Now I realize I shouldn't; from reading the introduction to the book, I knew at least some of the plot and most of the themes and conflict of the book, and I could tell that the movie was completely different. I particularly didn't like the characterization of Magua and of Duncan Heyward. I would have preferred Duncan to be a little more developed, rather than simply an imperialistic prick. That spoiled the movie slightly for me, but in a way, recognizing the differences between it and the book clarified the little I know about the book.

July 2001

[1] He said that it'd be "heavy" (literally schwer, which also means "hard") to understand. How cute!
[2] New York has Long Island, Stockholm has (or is) Log Island! (Aren't I clever...)
[3] In fact, so much trash was pushed into the water that the island grew significantly in size, the width of a reasonably sized building on both the lake and sea sides. Scary! (The land is also rising 4mm per year because of decompression from being crushed by glaciers, but that's still a lot of trash!)
[4] Many of the bus routes in Hamburg have bus lanes in the middle of the street, so the bus stops are on an island in the middle. It's annoying sometimes because I get stuck on the side while the bus drives by, but on the other hand it doesn't favor people who happen to be walking on one side of the road.
[5] No, I'm not going to tell you the real letter that's in my password!
[6] Yes, Saturday's the weekend, but don't but me about details at the moment. I'm way too stressed for that, and we don't want any "accidents," do we? <big fake grin>
[7] Or rather, Hamburg weather has a bad habit of raining when I leave my window open. Seriously, every time I've left my window wide open all day, it has stormed violently at night, which is not at all normal for Hamburg. Usually there's some light rain, but it's rare for it to be at all hard, and certainly there's almost never lightning. Wind, unfortunately, is not at all uncommon.

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