Train Blogging

I am composing this entry - for what I am sure is now the highlight of all of your days, my European Blog – as I sit in the train from Munchen to Nurnberg. From there I just make a little hop to Erlangen and I will be at my home for the next 2.5 months.

Some fun adventures over the past two days to report on. First, I flew from London to Munchen on EasyJet. Supposed to be cheap, right? My ticket cost 30 pounds; a great deal. However, they charge you a ridiculous amount of money if your checked baggage weighs over 20 kilos. Mine weighed thirty, and they get away with charging 6 pounds per extra kilo. So, all the sudden my flight is like 100 pounds. Absolute rip-off. What really got me is that they only allow one carry on piece, even if its just a laptop bag. It’s a normal plane, an airbus, there was plenty of room in the overhead bins for my normal carry on, but no, they weren’t having it. So, good lesson learned: the cheap airlines are excellent if you have no baggage and rubbish if you do. Luckily, I have found a British Airways flight back to London that’s dirt cheap, and they at least should be reasonable.

Right, so got into Munchen, found my lodgings no problem, sat outside in their beer garden and had a couple of €1.50 Weiss beers. Good times. I then wandered around a bit, grabbed some food, and thought about writing a blog posting at that point.

Later in the evening I started talking with a couple of German chaps – good fellows – and we proceeded down to the discothèque they have on premises. At first, it was awful; my lodgings were in the Haus International and many tour groups come through and stay there. Unfortunately, one of them was composed of the most obnoxious Italian middle schoolers (although to be fair, if I was on holiday in Germany at that age, I guess I’d be pretty obnoxious as well). So, they were dominating the place, requesting crap music and being kids. But, it was soon their bed time, and shortly after they left a group of Ausies on a tour came in. They were proper fun.

I did my part to improve international relations between us and the Australians by dancing and having a grand old time with cutest of the group. She was an acceptable dancer, so it wasn’t really that big of a sacrifice on my part. I can’t abide dancing with women who have no rhythm – that’s definitely a deal breaker.

Have I mentioned how much I love how cheap the good beer is here? No, I haven’t allow me to take this opportunity to do so. I love the cheap, good beer here.

I got to bed at a more reasonable hour than I did on Friday, so I was able to wake up in what may not have been tip-top shape, but pretty good. Since, my boarding house isn’t expecting me till around 5 pm, I decided to take advantage of being in Munchen by taking a stroll to the Olympic gardens. Interesting tidbit about the Olympic garden and village – which is gorgeous by the way (although, I’ve never seen an ugly Olympic area) – They built up a rather large hill with different levels, topography, etc from a lot of the rubble from the war. So, as I stood on the highest point in Munchen and surveyed the city with the alps to the south, I was standing on some of the ruins created by one of the saddest eras in our history. Anyway, I took many pictures, walked around in my boots, thereby giving myself a blister, and had a jolly old time. I got a couple of nice action shots of some swans chasing each other around as well as the obligatory skyline shots and pics of the village. So, I then walked back looking for a cash machine. In my five miles or so of strolling I encountered only two banks – both of which were closed due to a holiday – and both of which didn’t recognize my card as a valid one to open the doors. I’m just used to cash machines everywhere – but here, no, only in banks it seems. Luckily, the guy at the Haus International pointed me to a bank which did let me in through its doors.

That’s about it. Oh wait, also, I love trains, especially the German trains – quiet, fast, reliable, comfortable, and very little pollution. The Midwest better get some train action going on soon, and the government should invest more in Amtrack, and all children should be taught about how evil cars are and how wonderful public transportation is. You can do things like write your blog.

I was going to stop there, but I’m still on the train and I had some more thoughts about public transportation. First, not only should the government be investing much more in renewable energy development and offering much larger tax breaks to individuals and companies who use or develop alternative fuels, and not only should the government be taxing the hell out of fossil fuel usage and stopping any further construction of non-clean coal power stations, but we should have a nationalized train and bus system. Here’s my plan. First, maybe wait a bit until some further developments have been made – maybe like magnetic trains, but once we get to a point where they don’t have to run on a lot of fossil fuels, we have a major government led construction project to connect any city of say, 50,000 or more people, and have busses or trams running from those cities out to smaller cities. Yes, it’d be expensive, but we’d also create a lot of jobs and offer an alternative to driving everywhere. Then, I’d like to see the government subsidize the operation. So, it’d cost maybe 20 bucks to get from Madison to Milwaukee and 25 from Milwaukee to Chicago. Yes, airlines would complain, and Republicans would have a hissy-fit, but I don’t care. The only way to ensure that Americans start using public transportation and stop using so much bloody fuel is to make it cheap, reliable, and easy to use. That’s more important than the free-market (which is often a little too free in my mind). Hmm, yes, so a bit socialist, I wonder if this will ever be dug up when I run for office. Screw it, I don’t care, I embrace certain aspects of socialism, and I’m not afraid to say so.