Frohe Weihnachten!

A lot has happened since I last wrote. I am now in Kassel, Germany with a good friend of mine named David and his family. David and I met when we were matched for a foreign exchange thing a while back. We've kept in touch so far as he came back to visit me in America with his sister last summer. He's a good guy. A good, stereotypical German guy. He's very fond beer and is adamant that Volkswagen is the only way.

This is the best picture of David I could get from where I was sitting without actually expelling any energy. 

David's family was nice to take me in and host me for Christmas this year. Hearing that they were excited to do so took a large amount of weight off of my chest. Spending the largest holiday in the Christian world in a youth hostel was not appealing at all. Pretty sure it would have ended with me sharing some Pringles with a homeless guy in an attempt to have something that resembled a holiday dinner.
The German Christmas traditions are great. I think my favorite one is how you have to sing holiday songs for a while before you open gifts. Speaking of which, I got tickets to a circus and a six pack of beer as my present. I couldn't be happier, I think it's a weird combination of the fact that I can't drink beer in America and that I like circuses.
The food at all of my Christmas dinners has been absolutely wonderful here. It's almost exactly what you would expect out of German food; meat with a side of meat and some cabbage and potatoes thrown in somehow. I've eaten so much food in the past three days that I don't think that I need to eat anything in the next week. I would recommend German Christmas to anyone that wants to have a crazy, slightly different time for Christmas in the future.

A soliloquy

I don't plan on making this a long entry, I just wanted to point something out really.

I am now sitting in bed almost ready to go to sleep, and have just said goodnight personally to Tim the German, Oskar the Chinese guy, and Mohammed the Syrian. These are my roommates tonight. The fact that I can hang out with all of these diverse guys in Leipzig, Germany blows my mind. Truly, this beats going to college at the moment. As of now on this trip, I have met Spaniards, Brits, French people, Koreans, Egyptians, Australians, Irish people, Chinese people, Austrians, Germans, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Syrians, Afghans, Indians, New Zealanders, Japanese people, and some Mexicans. Also a few of my American countrymen but those guys are too normal to me.

The diversity of people like myself just wanting to experience the world is astounding. Through this trip I have realized that all people are the same. Sure, I may have said I knew that prior, but now I really have experience with people from all over the world. People are the same in the simple fact that they just want to be happy. I think that no matter what, every person deep down just wants to feel like they have good people and good food around them and nothing else. I guess it's kind of like what Mark Twain said about travel being the only cure for ignorance. Through experiencing these people, I realize that they aren't just imaginary places that a person only hears about on TV shows.

And if that ain't the niftiest thing I've ever written I don't know what is.

Leipzig

So, first off I want to rub the fact that the weather here in Germany is like an early fall day in late December in the faces of people from my hometown. As I understand it's cold and snowy there at the moment.

At the moment I am chilling in the beautiful German city of Leipzig with my current traveling companion Tim. I met Tim in Dresden and he decided to follow me to Leipzig. It was actually more of his decision I think. I asked him what a good city to bum around in for a few days before I spent Christmas with my host family in Kassel would be and he said Leipzig sounded cool. We arriv
ed yesterday and spent most of that time looking through the touristy area and finding food. It's seems like a nice enough town, not big and sophisticated like Berlin or Hamburg but not small and disturbing like most inhabited areas of Arkansas. 

Today we did a little wandering and decided to walk to the outskirts of the city to see this really tall monument to some Napoleonic battle. On the way there we walked through some really soviet looking parts of town and came across this relic:

We have no idea what it is, but it has a red star on the top and looks derelict and terrifying. Leipzig is also in the former DDR so we figure it's some sort of important socialist building. 

When we got to the monument thingy, we were shocked to find it was six euro to get inside. We made ourselves content with just climbing to the top and looking out over the city. 

Beautiful day here in Germany. I wore a sweatshirt and a scarf and it almost seemed too much. These posh Europeans were still wearing parkas because not doing so would have broken some social code that I don't follow. 

Little cloudier when I took this one a few minutes later. The rest of the day was still gorgeous. 

In other news, I'm debating turning vegetarian. Tim is devout and has shown me the light. We made this stir fry with tofu the other day and it was one of the best meals I've had while I've been in on this trip. It's not even that it's healthier or anything. Finding protein and stuff while only eating vegetables is like living life on hard mode, the only way worth living in my opinion. 

Man, Dresden is so...hygenic

Yesterday I spent my first day in Dresden exploring the town with a German guy named Tim. I met Tim in my hostel room. All I did was ask him if he wanted to go to the German hygiene museum. Boom, instant friendship.
Dresden has definitely lived up to the hype, it is incredibly beautiful. Here's a glimpse at what a lot of the buildings in the Altstadt look like.

Beautiful. Although I can't decide if this photo is actually good, or if I'm just hoping it is. 

I especially liked this. I forget the name, but it's a mural that depicts all of the Saxon monarchs that reigned here. Tim later made the realization that besides a small girl, there were no women in the entire thing. Those sexist bastards. 

We spent most of the day at the German hygiene museum. I had just typed in to Google "Things to do in Dresden" and that seemed like a cool place to spend a few hours. I mean come on hygiene is such an interesting, mainstream topic. It was not at all what we thought it was. There was nothing about hygiene. I'll let this photo do the talking.

You see correctly. That is a manikin of an incredibly ripped man in a man thong gesturing to his package. 

That was a photo taken from the human sexuality section of the exhibit. Tim and I couldn't for the life of us actually figure the correlation of any of the exhibits to hygiene. The tour began with a section  on anatomy, then eating habits, human sexuality, your brain on drugs, stress, and some weird Victorian thing with like... spoons. Another exhibit in the museum was about sustainable fashion. It was definitely an interesting museum. I can't say I have a real desire to go back. Today we plan on seeing nice things, like Christmas markets. 

To end things, have some eye bleach. 

Hostel lyfe

I just had the desire to make a post about hostels, because I know a lot of people feel they are shrouded in mystery.

A hostel is a cheap travel accommodation somewhat like a hotel, except you sleep in a room with like ten other people and you all share a bathroom. This is why they're so cheap. It's really not as bad as it sounds, you really only use the room to sleep in anyway. The quality of the hostel varies a lot as well. Some seem like mansions for the price you paid and others make you worried you'll be shanked while walking back from the showers. Every hostel is different and will provide you with some sort of entertainment. 

The room comes with a bed, and usually a locker to put all of your valuables in. Some rooms have an attached bathroom and shower, others have the dorm style thing where they are at the end of the hall. Most have a kitchen and some free food. The food ranges from free tea to non perishable items that some backpacker left like pasta or oil or something. One hostel I went to had free oranges. I ate way more oranges then I needed to as a result. All hostels have a common room to meet new people in. Some (the good ones) have bars attached. Others offer a more chill vibe and just have a huge collection of movies and a large TV. 

If you ever end up staying in a hostel, make friends asap and ask the receptionist for tips on fun things to do. They are usually natives and know all of the intricacies of the place you're visiting. 

Don't be a loser and sit on your phone or computer all night. Those guys are lame. 

Dresden!

After a long, drawn out process, I managed to find a place to go to next that was sufficiently close, and fulfilled my personal interests (I slept in and picked a random German city twenty minutes before I checked out). I chose Dresden, a rather unassuming German city with a knack for having kick ass Christmas markets. Apparently the Christmas market there is the oldest continuously operating one in Germany. It's like the super bowl of festivities, with fewer commercials and more hot wine than it's football counterpart. It also happened to be on my way to Kassel, which is the city I'm going to spend Christmas in with a friend of mine.
Dresden was at one time known as an incredibly beautiful city until it was fire bombed into oblivion during the second world war. I don't know how much of the city has been rebuilt to be in that fashion, but I hope it still holds some of that charm. It also holds the German museum of Hygiene and the German transport museum, two attractions that I hope are as amusing as they sound.

To end this post I'd like to share one last Poland ball to commemorate my time here.

It's a little dark, But I don't care anymore. I've had enough Poland to last a lifetime.

Polish the Polish

I won't keep it a secret, I'm becoming, in actuality, sick and tired of being in Poland. I meant to be here for like four days max and I've now been here for like eight with two more definite days planned. Here's the deal, Poland is cold and isn't on everybody's list of things to see in Europe during the winter. At the hostel scene, there aren't too many people that want to hang out and see all of the attractions (However few there are). I've been a lone wolf for too long. I need socialization like a duck billed platypus needs metaphysical assistance to survive.
At the hostel I'm currently at in Wroclaw (Breslau for you traditionalists) I've pretty much been sitting in the common room writing blog posts and catching up on my journal. There is a Polish girl reading a book and a Romanian guy sitting in the corner playing League of Legends. He's pretty cool though, he gave me some desert thing like a souffle just for being one of the three people in the same room.

Onion dome!

Average park in Poland. They love the army more than we Americans do. I have to say it's disheartening. The Polish have out 'Merican-ed 'Merica. 

Oh look. Poland. 

I did have the best schwarma I've ever consumed in Warsaw though, so that's a plus. Get it with a coke, will not disappoint.