So many holidays in June!

Next week will be the second holiday in June, and May had one in the last week. That's crazy in my opinion, the weeks are just so short these days. But after that there's nothing in July and August, so full 5 week days are ahead of me. I've decided that even though my work sucks, at least I don't have to think while I'm doing it. I'm not big on thinking, so that's a plus point. I will try to see the good side of things from now on, and simply accept my fate of office lackey.

I went motorbiking on Tuesday with my Aunt and Uncle, they have 2 Suzuki Intruders. I think that's what they're called. Or Invaders. Whatever. It was pretty cool as I haven't sat on a motorcycle before. It's like a bicycle but faster, which is pretty much logical. I kept bumping helmets because I was too afraid to fall down. It was nice being cooled off on such a hot day, though. It was super hot this week hopefully it'll cool down soon.

I thought I might make some more observations regarding differences in Germany.

As some of you know already, cars drive pretty fast over here, even though curves and hills outnumber straightaways 100 to 1! Cars speed like crazy, especially in areas where there are no speed limits, like the Autobahn. Cars go 200kph easy on there, even cars that aren't sports cars.

Also, Stop signs are a joke here. They are so rare, and when you do see them they are just there to serve as 4-way stops when the traffic lights malfuncion, so you basically drive through a stop sign when the light is green. It's a weird feeling. The yield signs are in places where there should be stop signs, and places that should have yield signs, have no signs at all! Well some have these signs that are circles with a cross and an arrow pointing right. That means the car on your right goes first. But what if there are four people in the intersection at the same time? Also all the cars are standards, but I think I mentioned that already, and they mostly don't have air conditioning in them.

And some intersections are super complex, every single lane has their own light, so left, straight, right for four directions, that's 12 lights. So you'll never see someone trying to turn left on a green sitting in the middle of the intersection waiting for an opening. The pedestrian signals are a red dude standing and a green dude walking. Makes sense. Except the red dude just appears and stays solid, there's no flashing before hand. And of course no turning right on a red signal, that's obvious. The actual lights are on your side of the road too instead of on the other side, so you gotta duck down and look up to see your light change. Some even change backwards, so they go from red to amber to green, like in a race.

Curbs are made out of small 2-foot sections instead of a long continuous band of concrete. And there are lots of cobblestone driveways and parking lots, not so much ashphalt except on driving roads. The city center in Stuttgart is almost impossible to get through with a car. There is a big street called the "König Strasse" which is there for pedestrians only, so basically imagine downtown Toronto (Yonge Street for example), only instead of cars and people it's only people!

All the houses look the same too, they have one flat colour for the outer wall, and a pretty steep roof covered with rounded brick tiles. So no aluminum panelling or brick layers or sandy roof shingles over here. Windows are funny, you can either open them sideways like a door, or if you turn the handle 90 degrees you can pull them open so they tip towards the inside. I haven't seen one sliding window yet, except on cars. Also all houses have intercoms on them and lots have gates in front, locks all over the place. The Germans are paranoid somebody will get in, or maybe they just like it that way. You don't see lots of tall 13+ story appartments either, instead there's just lots of houses bunched up really tight. They cram them full of people, and the roofs usually don't have an attic so you can see the tip of the roof from the inside if you're on the top floor. Toilets don't have handles to pull down, instead they have buttons built into them, that you depress to start the flushing process. The button is sometimes about as big as my hand, but others are just little buttons. Either way, they are built into the toilet. Refrigerators and stoves are really small, they are even built into the kitchen decor sometimes to make it look like they're not there. For example, you open a random cupboard and whoa! You just opened the fridge door. Or hey! you opened up the stove vent!

I might have mentioned the lax cigarette and alcohol laws here, so you can skip this paragraph if you already know. But it's unbefrickenleavable to tell you the truth. They have cigarette vending machines on every corner. Each pack is 3€, which is about 5$ Canadian I think. So any little kid could buy them, and they are also in the cash checkout line in the grocery stores. Alcohol you can have when you're 16. It's all about the beer here of course, you can even drink it in public areas, like in the train station or bus terminal or anywhere you want. So lots of people drink and smoke here.

The stores that have grocery items also have everything else in them, including motor oil. So imagine Canadian Tire, Chapters, Zehrs, Sears, the LCBO, the Beer Store, and Future Shop all mixed into one. And they call all cereals Corn Flakes! So the original Corn Flakes are called 'Die Originalen'. Most people eat lunch and supper backwards, so for lunch they'll have a huge warm meal while for supper it's just bread with cold cuts and stuff. It screwed up my whole metabolism process, now I'm getting fat because of it. I'm 80kg now and I was 70kg when I came!

Well I've pretty much run out of crap to say now, but I will come up with more sooner or later, that's for sure. These journal entries are simply fuelled by immense boredom and lack of real work, so that's why they are so long and may repeat things now and then. And you don't have to email me about them if you don't want to, just if you got some comments or questions.

well that's all for now

-joramee