Whats your sign???

Berlin was far more interesting that I could have imagined. In my mind I assumed that most Germans, especially the government, would want to put the its communistic history, the war and the Berlin wall behind them but that wasn't the case.

Ok, tired for an hour now to upload some pics, but the internet here is extremely slow. I will try to upload an album at a cafe later today.

Peace on Earth...

Yes folks, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a beer vending machine - enough said!

June 28...

Journey Begins
My journey has begun. Early Saturday morning I flew out of Kuwait to Dubai then onto Frankfurt. Both flights were good and once again Emirates proved they are leaps and bounds above United in customer comfort and service (thank you for letting me sleep).

Lessons Learned
I understand that Americans are a bit ethnocentric and I try to overcome that personally, but I still get surprised by my behavior when something simple or common completely stumps me - see: I'm a moron.

1. Excuse me, but what country am I in?- Sounds silly, but unfortunately that question came out of my mouth within an hour of me arriving in Frankfurt. You see, in Germany instructions to say ... the GPS in the rental car... are in in German. For a simple guy like me, that was easy enough to fix, simply change the language setting. So here I sit at a gas station outside the airport finally nailing that task when I realize that there are no maps for Germany. How can that be, I rented the car in Germany??? Well the little secret kept from me was that the rest of the world refers to Germany as Deutschland.
2. OMG, Sophie (German friend), did I drive on the Autobahn? - I was very excited about the possibility that I drove on the Autobahn. As a boy growing up in Indiana me and my brothers always dreamed about the fast cars we should drive, I was always partial to the Porsche. Anyway, Sophie' response was a bit of bad news. It turns out that the Autobahn is not an actual road, rather, it is the word that German's use for highway. The good news is that most Americans won't know that little nugget of information so I'll still sound cool back home.

That's it for now. Sophie and Anne are waiting for me. We are in Chemnitz now and we're driving up to Berlin today for Gay Pride.