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Here’s a sample of something I do part time in the marketing department. Hopefully it entices some perspective students to come to Frankfurt!

When older brother Ryan came and visited me last month, I knew that I should  expect 3 things:

1) We’d probably eat a lot 2) Ditto for drinking, and 3) We’d be constantly on the move.

Needless to say, I was three for three. For the few days we actually managed to stick around Frankfurt, Ryan managed to teach my Hungarian and Polish roommates the American tradition of Beer Pong, celebrate his birthday on a few different nights (sorry I couldn’t stay up past midnight on your actual birthday, since I was participating in a case study competition the next day). He also managed to find a wine festival on his own accord while I was at class. Nicely done.

Weekend one entailed a perfect 4 day trip to Italy to visit some old friends of mine, to be detailed at a later date. Weekend 2 entailed a 1300 km drive, each way, to Ukraine and back to visit some old exchange friends from his time in Uzhgorod, our sister city,  10 years ago. I thought the whole idea was perhaps not the best plan, since a)the rental car company doesn’t allow you to bring their cars to Ukraine b) Even if you promise to park the car in Hungary while you take the train across the border, they only let you rent a Ford c) I had class on Thursday and Monday d) European gas tax! e) etc. etc.

These reasons clearly weren’t strong enough to break Ryan’s sense of adventure, so I complied and we set off from Frankfurt at 9pm in our Ford Focus. I slept most of the 9 hours to our first major stop in Budapest, only to wake up from time to time to a) translate the sign that we did in fact need an Austrian Autobahn pass, just in time to miss every exit to buy one, b)ask for a Hungarian breakfast, only to end up stopping at the next Mcdonalds, or c) yell at Ryan to get gas.

In Budapest we picked up some of Ryan’s “Hungarian with Ukrainian passport” friends who would guide us to the friendly man’s house at the border who would let us park our Ford in his lawn, and hope for the best while we took the mildly decrepit train 20 minutes across the border, and spend the next two days in the forbidden lands.

Our friends told us that we should expect issues at the border with our passports, because the Ukranian border guards didn’t accept any funny business…just bribes. Seeing as how Ryan had put his passport through the wash recently, so several pages were stuck together, and how I have about 10 pages of Chinese visas, coupled with an old picture that looks nothing like me, we expected the worst. Luckily we caused just a minor diversion, and the passport lady called her boss over to try to determine if it was really me in the picture.

The rest of the trip pretty much involved going from place to place of people that knew Ryan while he was in Ukraine before, or relatives of those who did, eating meals, taking shots of vodka, and looking at old, extremely entertaining exchange-era pubescent pictures.

Ryan’s old host brother Christian has a young, adorable daughter now, whom we dubbed “Hurricane Valeria,” as she never really stopped moving/screaming/terrorizing (see video below, ukranian translations welcome).

A few more pictures, and a video below!

Corvallis' sister city, Uzhgorod

I want one in every color.

The most important annual, pan-european, musical singing contest is kicking into high gear. I present to you Germany’s entry to the contest, rumored to be supported in the finale show by a Dita Von Teese strip show of some sort. The hastily put together, nomenclature-challenged duo, Alex Swings Oscar Sings, performs the song, Miss Kiss Kiss Bang.

Taking the concept of Eurotrash to a new level seems to be a key requirement for the competition. Have you ever seen the jacket with no shirt underneath look pulled off so flawlessly anywhere else??  They are clearly a shoe-in. Props for integrating it into the 50’s Americana swing-vibe though.

Listen to it twice and good luck getting it out of your head.

Update: Ok, leave it to the Americans to get involved in a Eurovision controversy, but apparently Ms. Teese got kind of innapropriate, a la Janet Jackson. “Her nipples were however covered partly by some glittery stars. Whether this kind of nudity will be allowed by the Eurovision Song Contest bosses, remains to be seen.  If so it will be a clear a new precedent on what is and what is not consider suitable for the Eurovision Song Contest stage,” according to esctoday.com . And yes that url stands for eurovision song contest today.com

And I’m done caring.

It’s official, I live in the 8th best place to live in the world. I think we can safely assume that everyone’s criteria for such a list differs substantially, but based on the availability of 24 hours döner, ample running paths, weather.com forecasts that don’t include the term “smoke” (I hate to name names, Beijing), riverside cafes, public transportation outside my doorstep, and liquor control laws that are perhaps the polar opposite of the United States’ (read: BYOB to parks, festivals, riverside benches, anywhere, etc.), I happen to generally agree.

And it seems counter-intuitive that Frankfurt often feels like it is coming out unscathed from the whole global economic downturn, especially considering that the city is based on the finance and banking industry. There are more than 300 branches of banks located here, including basically every international one you can possibly think of, as well as the European Central Bank. However, as I attend a mostly banking school, it seems the general feeling is that banks will regain their rightful place in the economic order, and the manufacturing sectors in other parts of Germany are probably going to be the most severely affected.

Various factors that are holding it back from the number one spot, in my mind:

-Why does virtually every taxi have to be a Mercedes? Could that be contributing to the outrageous cost of 10 euro for about a 2 kilometers distance ride? I’m guessing yes.

-I get that closing basically every single business on Sunday, other than some small cafes, increases the quality of life for some retail workers, but it in fact it drastically reduces mine, on Saturdays, when every working person in Frankfurt crams the grocery store, Ikea, and shopping streets, etc. And on Sundays, when there is nothing to do, except homework.

-Starbucks is officially the only place in the city where German retail workers are friendly, or at least smile at you, any day of the week. Tip to the service sector: people might actually tip you if you didn’t make them feel like you would actually prefer them dead.

-Paying for things by writing down your bank account number, a bank code, and a signature, can not possibly be safer than just using a credit/debit card. Why is this practice still in place here where direct deposit/payment is totally standard?

-Again, 19% sales tax

-Cocktails range from 8-11 Euros.

-The whole German language thing.

Check out this headline from February 29, 2000 I found using the “Wayback Machine” courtesy of archive.org

McCain might have played the card, but Bush managed to play the whole deck for the last 8 years. Sorry, I couldn’t get the actual link with the story to work. Would have been elightenting I’m sure…

Please don’t replace me.

Happy Mother’s Day again! Miss you tons!

Here are a few (I’m guessing) little known facts about Germany for the uninitiated:

-They serve Special K with organic milk at Mcdonald’s here.

-Big Red gum isn’t actually red, or spicy for that matter.

-When a class is over, to show appreciation to the professor, we vigorously knock on our desk, as if it were a door, for about 5 seconds.

-I saw Energy Mentos once, but wasn’t brave enough to buy them.

-The public transport is so effective, or the mailmen so abused, that they deliver the mail using it.

-Bags at the grocery store cost money, and no one seems to mind. Unheard of!

-Sales tax is 19% (in Frankfurt at least)

-I would venture to estimate that at least 50% of the autobahn is an area with speed limits.

-Even the ovens are fabulous.

I’m not too sappy, and I find it hard to believe that I’m actually recommending Youtube videos of a talent show, but both of these videos are great in their own right. Enjoy! (Click twice to load them on the main Youtube page)

Of all the countries I’ve been to and lived in, none embraces voicemail with even a fraction of the unadulterated vigour that we Americans do.  My host families in China and Chile never had it in their homes, and cell phones never gave the opportunity to leave one either. Same with Germany, and it is glorious. Maybe it’s because I am keenly aware that I am not important enough to ever expect other people to have an urgent message for me.  Mabe it is beacause the voice menus are so annoying and I don’t have a visual voicemail a la iphone to make scanning and screening easy.

Anyways, apparently the new term for all this is ‘voice-mail phobic.’ Thank you NYTimes. 

I thought of all this really only because I went to a glasses shop to pick up some contacts yesterday. They didn’t have my exact prescription, so they got my phone number to text me when they are ready to be picked up. SO MUCH BETTER.  Then I wonder if this is just one step closer to total consolidation and to eventually  getting a facebook message from ‘my friend’ the optomestrist office.  I wouldn’t be opposed.