This is the first post

Well, here I am. Unless I am gravely mistaken, this is Germany, and this is my 11th day here. Since I'm too lazy to go through day by day, I'll just give you some basic highlights. First, I arrived in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt (Oder) is on the Polish border- not there- this one is Rheinland-Pfalz- not that you've even heard of Frankfurt (Oder)). The airport there is very big. VERY big. And German 'customs' (they don't really deserve that name) are a joke. There are two lines- 'Nothing to declare' and 'Declarations.' When you go through 'nothing to declare' you hand them your passport, then they open it directly to the 'visas' section- they don't look at the rest (not even the picture page) and stamp your passport. That's German customs.
Then I picked up my bags and met Stefan (for those who don't know, Stefan was the instructor of my second term German course back in Lethbridge, and was responsible for convincing me to go to Germany), and then we went to Mainz, because he and his friend were going to try to fix the brakes on a motorcycle. After they failed, we drove through Saarbrücken and on to Bubach (Stefan's home village). Stefan is renovating a new house he is planning on moving into before the semester begins (October).

Since Stefan was working on that, the next day (Saturday) I took a train to Saarbrücken to check out the city. The picture above is the Saar. Saarbrücken means 'Saar bridges', by the way. I also checked out a couple of churches, one protestant, and one catholic. The left stain glass window is from the catholic church, with the classic representation of the trinity with the dove in the middle. The top of the right protestant stained glass window indicates clearly that all protestants are evil masonic nogoodniks.

OK- so anyway, Saarbrücken has a plague of signs advertising Karlsberg Urpils. 'Pils' is short for pilsener, which is simply what people drink in the Saarland. Every pub has a Karlsberg sign, and most office buildings have at least one banner. Karlsberg, you see, is brewed in the Saarland, and as such, it is blasphemy to state audibly that you prefer Bitburger (the leading Pilsener in Germany, brewed in Pfalz)- I know this from personal experience.