I'm on permanent leave...

If there was one thing that I noticed about Berlin, it was that liquor was CHEAP compared to Ireland. DIRT cheap. So cheap, that buying a not-so-large amount could cover the travel costs to pick it up. It worked out like this:

20 euro plane flight to Frankfurt (Hahn) and back
28 euro in bus tickets to airports/cities
10 euro for a checked bag.

The price difference was about 10 euro... meaning that if I picked up 6 bottles of alcohol, the trip paid for itself. SIGN ME (and Joseph) UP. But he's a wuss. He was buying for other people.

I arrive in a German airport for the 2nd time in 3 weeks to get my passport stamped. A full page of Germany. I love it. Despite nobody really speaking english, we get on the bus just fine and are on our way to Frankfurt on a mission: Find and buy hard liquor.

It is funny that my past quests to obtain alcohol involved me walking downstairs to Brett and Mike and giving them a wad of cash and a list of what to buy. No, I get the wad out from the ATM, fly to Germany, ask a CLUELESS tabakwaren attendent where the grocery store is (ask germans where the supermarket is, not grocery store -- they understand that), and proceed to walk into the alcohol section with a duffel bag. My how life changes in 2 years.

I ended up picking up 1x .7L bacardi dark, 2x .7L bacardi (normal, white), 1x.7L Ouzo, 1x.7L Parliament Vodka, 1x.5L Tabu 73 Absinth. All in all, a pretty good haul (esp. for ~80 euro). Joey was in front of me with 2x apple wien (or something like an apple wien), smirnoff, tequilla, Jägermeister, and something else. The guy behind me bought 2 carrots and a pack of gum. We wrapped the bottle in towels and set off to lock it all up in the Hauptbahnhof -- the train station where our bus would pick us up.

We set off on a walking tour around Frankfurt after that. And what a gorgeous city. Andi (as usual) was dead on the money about what we should see. The weihnachtsmarkt was absolutely beautiful... and I wanted to buy pretty much all of the the toys and trinkets displayed. The food was outstanding, the alcoholic drinks sold on the street were.... alcoholic (some better than others). And the Germans were actually quite friendly. Even the guy that told us the story about his knife fight in dublin where he knocked a guy down, then went away to get a metal pipe and came back to beat the guy. Lucky (for the other guy), he'd left. At the end of the night, we ended up watching 2 soccer games in an american bar (oops) and watching some 30-something year old swiss girl get molested by her co-workers. All-in-all, a pretty decent, chill night.

We spent far too long in the airport the next day. And I couldn't buy the cigarettes I wanted (for a friend -- not me). Stupid taxation schemes. But we made it back and there was only 1 broken bottle -- one of Joey's apple thingie's costing a while euro fifty. I'm drinking on the cheap for the week!

I have to say that I had no idea what to expect out of Germany. Andi had told me language shouldn't be a problems, but it still made me uneasy. It was my first continental European travel w/o my parents and brother, so I actually was a little nervous about it.

But we get the the airport, pick up our bags, and find the train station no problem. Okay, now there was a problem. The ticket machines were completely unusable. Berlin was no where on them (apparently -- I didn't use that machine). After about 30 minutes of debating a cab, we found tried another ticket machine upstairs on the platforms. Bingo. A 5 person 1 day ticket was just 15 euro. Not bad.

We made it into the city and checked in, dead tired. We went out to have a little bit of explore around where we were and came across an AMAZING looking bar. Sad to say, I didn't go to it while I was there. But hey, gotta have a reason to go back, right?

At this point, everyone decides they are tired. We all stayed up all night to get the early ryanair flight out of Dublin. Unfortunately, "nap rules" were broken, and my four travel buddies were out like lights. I decided to walk around Berlin at sunset to get a better feel for the city (walking in both east and west Berlin and yes... you can still feel a difference today). I came back 3 hours later... nobody moved. Fine. I went to the local grocery store, got some cookies, a beer, and sat in the bottom of the hostel with a few others that had the same idea I did.

We got up the next day at set out for a walking tour of Berlin. In a word, it was amazing. Our tour guide had been there during the fall of the Berlin wall (and events leading up to the fall of that government) and talked about it with a passion that was moving at the least. There are so many buildings, such great architecture, and so much history I can't begin to describe it all. It is pretty much like the entire 20th century took place in Germany. The four hour tour ended up taking 5 and a half... but it was obvious that it could have taken more. The quide glossed over a TON of stuff.

That night was the pub crawl. To make a long story short, it was a lot of fun, and I got home safely by some miracle of drunken memory and a very large, very golden jewish temple.

The nex day was the event which I will not soon forget. We got on a train to Oranienburg where we walked to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. And I think that no matter how long I ponder what when on there, I will never really come to terms with it... Being in the barracks, seeing the remains of ovens, seeing the trenches where ashes were spread. Being INSIDE of one of the guard towers, 2" thick steel door slamming shut behind me.

That night was Russian Disco night. It was a lot of fun too, despite being WAY too hot. Drinks were cheap, but I was still feeling sick from the day before. That, combined w/ Matt and Amanda having a really great time together, prompted me to go. The sleep would do me good anyway.

Anyway - the next day, we flew back to Dublin, and all was well. The public gallery for Berlin is at Berlin (public). If you want to see the in-bar pictures, well, you'll need to know me.

Okay guys -- I've finally figured out what happened for the most of the rest of the night. It took a couple of days of talking to roommates and friends, but I figured I'd post it since people are so curious. Let me just say -- you probably have college stories like this -- I'm just posting them on the internet. This is, afterall, an attempt to reconcile me with my concept of myself. I actually do think about these things. And if that's a bit too much for you, ignore it.

So Tram Co. I had to pee. Apparently, the line for (or proximity to) the men's room was just too far to handle. So I went to the ladies room. It took THREE bouncers to get me out of there. And apparently, my belt (nobody knows where that went). They threw me out of the back. For anyone who is keeping score, I've been thrown out of 2 irish bars and no american bars. Equal amount of time.

I gave the cab driver my phone, who returned it using only 80 cents of credit (he's pretty good) despite not speaking english. Matt had my camera because he ran out of pictures on his camera ehem and needed space on mine. My roommates and Matt played pranks on me that I just washed off.. but that's okay. I trust them, and they got me home alright. After all, I did walk to the hostel in Berlin almost as bad as I was that night (maybe I'll tell you about that later).

I want to emphasize that I'm not drinking every night. I went to Frankfurt and didn't get drunk. And I only drink around those who I trust. I am being safe/smart. I'm just re-evaluating what I want out of life. I need to get a few things straight. My recent conversation with Kalen reaffirms that (and she is a goddess). These are just more shower-time life decisions I've made. If they don't work out, I'll re-evaluate. But until then, I'm going to continue.

And as a direct address to comments -- I'm not slowing down. If anything, I'm speeding up. I've had a lot of fun in the past few weeks. I have been protected. I'm wanting go to Paris soon, and I've had a lot of fun in German for 2/3 of the past weekends. And drinking during the week. I'll do fine on exams. But I'm living more now that I have in the past 3 years of school. I know it is a switch for me... but I'll be fine. I graduate in May. I need this.

On monday, the fliers went up. Stoplight party at Tram co. Wednesday night. Stoplight parties take away all of the weird questioning of intention and availability ... so, being a full-on green light, I was going. And I was intending it to be a good night. This would be the story of last night. Oh - and sorry mom.

This month has been marked by essays being due, and me blowing off essays in favor of drinking (amanda is such a good influence on me). Mikey's been in the library 24/7. That's why, when the pre-decided departure time of 10pm rolled around, I was alone in my room with a mostly full bottle of bushmills (white label). Amanda was making jello, drinking, and talking to me on IM, so i wasn't really alone... I opened up the bottle and started in. After all, it was going to be a good night, right?

Mikey finally gets back and powers through a beer. Matt shows up w/ his Russian flask full of Russian vodka (he got back Tuesday) and starts in. I'm about an inch and a half down into my whiskey. Maybe a bit more. Mikey took a shot or two, I drank a little more, and looking at the bottle now, I have about an inch and a half left. I wonder where all of that went.

We get to the bus stop at about 11. Busses normally make their last run at 11:30, but campus bouncers told us that they'd already made the last run for the night. The next stop was a 5 minute walk away... but the B&L society was running free busses. I'd met the guy handing out tickets before, so I knew he was legit. Sure enough, 5 minutes later, we were all on the overcrowded bus headed to tram co.

I fucking hate waiting in queues to get into bars. And this one was sooo long. Maybe it was the fact that we were getting there with 3 or 4 other busses. Maybe it was the fact that it was raining. Good thing alcohol is an umbrella (I was beyond the point of caring -- I was going to a stoplight party and it was going to be grand). We made it in, I get my sticker, and I get my drink. Guinness. Not the best one ever, but decent. We took some pictures, talked, and headed upstairs. I see a German and Italian friend, I think I have another beer at this point, and ...

So I wake up this morning next to a tree and a road cone. There are 2 chairs flipped upside down in my room and I'm using one of Mikey's cardboard boxes as a pillow. I am confused. My watch says 14:40, but swears it is 11:15. A glance at my laptop and some math confirms that I'm in fact 2+ hours late for my first class. And 15 minutes late for my second. Screw them all - I'm going to bed. After I pee.

Underneath all of the crap that is EVERYWHERE in my room, I find my pants. In them, I have a wallet, 10 euro in cash and some coins. That's funny... didn't I mention taking pictures before? My camera isn't on my desk. Or floor. And no ring when somebody calls my cell phone.

At this point: I'm pissed (off). Not only did I completely miss the party and my chance to hit on an absurd number of girls (hey, you have to be a dick sometime), I'm missing stuff. I have good friends (well, minus sharpee'ing my face while I was in bed w/o shoes -- so against the rules), though, so 50/50 they have my stuff. Luckily Matt had my camera, so that just left the phone.

I get an IM from amanda, who is in full Julia Childs mode despite not knowing who Julia Childs is and never really cooking in her life. I was supposed to rip the crap out of the bird, but I needed to shower. I'm not walking around campus with 1/2 the ink from my sharpee on my face. [as a side note, thanks to rachel for forcing me to learn how to get sharpee off fast and effectively. I haven't really had to do it since my 21 birthday/scuba final. IT WAS ON MY BACK AND MY EAR!] Luckily, her roomie had done it by the time I got out of the shower, so I'm off the hook until 20 minutes from now. So the IM starts off, "I found your phone, kinda." Can any of you guess where it is? No? Cab driver. I still don't really know why he's got it, but he's dropping it off at 10 tonight. It should be in interesting conversation.

But all day today, I've been seeing the people I saw last night. They all just giggle when they see me coming. But whatever, I was amusing. They all had a good time, and the only thing still missing is a 6 year old belt. I also keep getting notes telling me where my phone is. I suppose I don't regret that it happened, but I would have rather it not happened. Getting kicked out of yet another bar (this time for using the lady's bathroom) isn't setting a good trend. Maybe I should slow down. Maybe I should eat more than eggs and toast before a heavy night of drinking. I just didn't feel that drunk. And I didn't have that much (1/2 a bottle is still the quite coherent stage for me).

And that's perfect timing considering that in less than 12 hours, I'm going to be on a plane to Germany for the sole purpose of buying liquor.

I should be writing a paper. After all, I think I'll be drinking Wednesday, hanging out with Matt and Amanda tonight, Thanksgiving Thursday, and I'm flying back to Germany on Friday morning. Paper is due monday. It is going to be a good week.

Instead, I noticed that I hadn't said anything on here for about a week. Most of that is due to a lot of stuff going down this past week (a lot of fun was had - and if you want the whole story, IM me. I'm not posting it). I need to upload a bunch of pictures to clear them off my memory cards, which I might try to do tonight. I had a paper and a visitor (well, Mikey did), and well, the computer fell away. So I got on today and started looking at my the statistics for this silly little page. I have to say, I'm quite surprised. (read: thanks for taking an interest).

The number of "unique visitors" keeps going up by about 75%/month. I doubt that many more people are reading, but it shows that people are reading in different places. So cool beans. I haven't really gotten on this week, but there have been visitors. Most of the visitors are me (i can tell from the Irish IP addresses), but there are some that are obviously from the US. Yes, you actually can tell.

What got me was the number of RSS hits the site gets. I'm really glad to see people use that, since that was completely my intention. I don't want to be obnoxious and email people, but if you want to read, I want you to know what's going on.

And then I hit google's stats. The cool thing about s9y is that is auto-submits sitemaps to google, which makes sure that the site is parsed/indexed. Therefore: I can find stuff on it. As a side-effect, I get all sorts of information like who links into my site and what phrases have given me the best page-rank.

Well, I made it to #1. I am the top hit on google for ... "unpeg currency"? wtf, mate? google search: unpeg currency. I'm not really sure how that happened. There are some other weird search terms that'll bring you to my page (I think I'm #6 on "gallery galway"), but that one just stuck out.

Anyways, I think I'm going to the library for a bit to find Metaphysics by Aristotle. Paper... I hope I can get the images up tonight.

I sat on a bench in a courtyard where Hitler's body was burned. It was over the bunker where he shot himself after the Russians had taken the city.

I walked in and out of a concentration camp with a sign on the gate, "ARBEIT MACHT FREI", from which tens of thousands never left.

We heard a man speak who was there when East Germany fell and gave us the real story -- the one in which the fall of the wall itself is not significant.

I'm really not sure what to make of it all. I had an amazing time, but it was hard not to break down. I think that city will take me a while to fully appreciate.

If you didn't know, I take pictures for one of the"school" papers. They gave me the assignment of shooting the UCD vs. Vincent GAA (that's Gaelic Football) Dublin County final. Colm called ahead to square away press access for Adrian and me. 2 buses later, was was 2 feet from the out of bounds line at my first football game.

Sports photography is TOTALLY different from my norm. You have to take a lot more photos and throw many more away. They will all be grainy, most will be fuzzy, and a lot will have some significant part out of the frame. All that is due to crappy light, shaking hands, and the fact that a person is a faster/better focuser than any AF system. Luckily I'd practiced at some IFIUS games about a month ago.

Check out selected images at the GAA gallery.

It is about midnight on a Sunday night, and I'm sitting in my room watching the sentencing of Saddam thinking, "what the f**k?" Can we really put him to death? By hanging?

I'm not entirely opposed to the death penalty (though not totally for it, either). I could be convinced that a member of society who obviously, brutally kills several people and is going to rot in prision forever could be better served. On the otherhand, it is still wrong to kill a person.

But Saddam is different. He wasn't a normal member of society. He was the leader of a sovereign nation, capable of making laws. How can any outside organization impose any ruling on him? Especially one that claims to be under the UN flag (a underlying theme of which is independent sovereignty of nations)? While I think the UN might have had the moral obligation to remove him from power... does anyone (especially the government replacing him) have the jurisdiction to kill him? And vengence doesn't seem like a good enough reason to put a man to death. His trial WAS a sham. I mean seriously... the rules were custom-built for this ONE trial. At least put him on trial in Nuremberg like Slobodan Miloševi?.

So what to do with him? I'm not sure. It just doesn't seem like we can really punish him. Not that he should play golf for the rest of his life. But couldn't we put him in Nebraska or something? Letting him live out his natural life there seems punishment enough (I'm assuming that the Muslim population in Nebraska is .. um... sparse). Just house arrest him like Martha Stewart so he can never leave.

I dunno. Am I the only one bothered by this?

There is a big difference between if(!preg_match('/.mp3$/',$file)) and if(!preg_match('/.mp3$/i',$file)). That little 'i' cost me a day of confusion (well, like 20 minutes.. then I forgot about it until tonight). I mistakenly posted a ".Mp3" instead of ".mp3" .. and my list generator never found it. But really, my internet connection is too crappy to stream the song anyway. So screw it.

Halloween wasn't quite (read: nearly) as good as it was in Chapel Hill. I didn't realize how good I had it. I dressed up as a lumberjack (10 euro shirt + hatched cut out of the cardboard from a package my parents had sent) and went into the city to a club/bar with Mikey. We met up with Kyle, John, Matt, and eventually Amanda. I had to get the 2am bus back 'cause I had a 9am test the next day. Remains to be seen how that one turned out.

I went to hear a photographer talk on Wednesday and realized that I had a philosophy about photography. It is weird to think that I've been doing something long enough to have thought about it and have legitimate opinions on the subject. I learned a new trick that my camera will do, as well, which makes it a LOT more counter-intuitive to operate. But it lets me focus and meter separately. So that's cool. Focus is on my right thumb, exposure adjustments are on my index finger, and my middle finger is the trigger (and exposure). I'll have to take a week to see if I can get used to it.

And I just played in photoshop for about an hour... no idea how to make the pictures of Northern Ireland look any better. They scenery is so amazing... they look fake anyway. I just don't have a clue how to make it any better.

I finally went to the climbing wall again today (time #2). I have to take a belay test, and they do it a different way... this is the 3rd method I've learned. They said I shouldn't take the test -- I should practice this week and take the test next week. Which amounted to me belaying this week anyway. I made it up the wall 1.75 times. I would have climbed more, but the girl teaching me to belay thought I had NO CLUE what was going on. By the second time I got to climb, I was tired (... it was 2 hours later). I got 3/4 of the way up, my arm did the funny "I'm done" twitch, and my grip was gone. Also, the harness was NOT comfy. But I got to see Isabel and climb with her, so that good. I believe I might even go back next week.