I haven't really been sick all this time. Just Busy.

OK, there are no excuses. But that doesn't matter. Long ago, I promised a post on smoking, so here it is.

The question here in Germany is not "Do you smoke?" but rather "How much do you smoke?" To most Germans, being a non-smoker is not really different from being a non-coffee drinker. Such things are abberations. Almost everyone smokes at least one Zigarette at any given party. You can't go anywhere (even to class) without causing your clothes to smell of cigarette smoke. For the most part, the air quality in Saarbrücken is quite good, but when you're in the proximity of people, you're also in the proximity of cigarette smoke.

It's also important to note that there are a few things that Cigarette companies are allowed to do here that they haven't been allowed to do in Canada for ages: Firstly, they are permitted to advertise wherever and however they like, with nothing more than a warning that "smoking may be bad for your health." Secondly, despite a law against selling tobacco to people under the age of eighteen, there are Cigarette machines everywhere, in completely unsupervised areas (such as on the side of a public street). Thirdly, Cigarette boxes have a simple warning saying "Rauchen kann tödlich sein" (smoking can be deadly)- they are not required to have anything more than that. And, of course, fourthly, cigarettes are much cheaper here than in Canada. This is why it's not uncommon to see a thirteen or fourteen-year old lighting up. This is why the question is not "do you smoke?"

That was a terribly exciting rant. On an even more exciting, positive and personal note, I have been informed that my girlfriend and myself have been "successfully allocated tickets" to see the FIFA World Cup game between Japan and Australia in the rounds phase of the tournament in Kaiserslautern on June the 26th. Which is über-awesome.

On another note, after much searching and scraping, I have found a cheap flight to Cairo for April, which will cost about 160,00€ for a return ticket, which is also über-awesome.