Germany, day 4.

[theweaselking]

Saturday March 11
10:20 PM

I am, officially and eternally, Too Old For This Shit.




Went touring Bonn today. Did Lee one better by getting BOTH shoulders AND my entire upper body into the room where Beethoven was born. Bought a music box - so far, incidentally, all my souvenirs go PING. I wonder if I can keep that up? My fellow travellers were unimpressed by the Beethoven artifacts, and one was overheard to say "Oh, wait, he was the deaf guy, right? I think I might have heard of him!"

You can buy copies of his death mask at the gift shop. This bothers me, somewhat. It bothers me more that I know a whole lot of people who'd love to have one.



Went, as well, to see a giant cathedral with some really ancient Romans buried under it. I'm told by my hosts that this is really a very SMALL cathedral, and that I should see the ones in Cologne. I must do that. My fellow travellers were unimpressed by architecture older than their whole country by a factor of 3 - quoth one "I don't go to church at HOME. Why am I here?"

I took pictures inside of the sarcophagi and the decorations. I'm not sure how well they turned out, though, given that I disabled the flash out of respect for the worshippers. They're copying to my machine right now.

Finally, it was suggested that we go to a party. Feeling game, I went along.

Didn't stay long. Loud, pounding techno music, a mechanical bull, and roughly two thousand kids who are all still at the stage of thinking downing a case of beer is, in and of itself, a fun time? Packed in like sardines? Where the age difference between them and me can be measured, on average, in decades? Yes, that plural is intentional: More than one decade (not, as far as I know, more than two in any case. That would be extra-bad). Regardless, a large percentage of these people were born AFTER 1990, which is a terrifying thought.

I made my apologies and left, because I am apparently Too Old For This Shit.
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10:40
Lacking internet access with Firefox has not, apparently, dulled my multitasking instincts, it's just redirected them. I have a novel, a magazine, a newspaper, TWO computers, and a CD player all running at once. On this computer I'm writing this and editing a photo. On the other, I'm checking my email and surfing the web in a poor, forlorn, single-window browser.

The habit of all German people to feed guests until they burst is apparently neither genetic nor upbringing-related. Immigrants to Germany pick up the habit with shocking speed, and emigrants FROM Germany like Pete's parents keep it all their lives, so the change is most likely irreversible.

Maybe it's something in the water.

Maybe I should stick to beer for the rest of my trip.

Given wireless trouble, I may not be able to post this until I get back home. That would suck. This might be an entire volume by then. Should have brought my spare router - the place I'm at has a purely wireless router, with *no* way to plug in directly. I've never seen one like that before. I'm not unplugging their router to plug directly into the cable modem - first, it would be rude, and second, if I do that, and something goes wrong, all the menus are in German.

I'm not playing with someone else's wireless connection when they don't have a free geek to help them fix it, and I don't speak the language that the error messages and instructions are going to be written in. I feel that this falls under the "Practise Safe Geek" part of my Iron Ring oath and, besides which, saves potential strife with my otherwise absolutely wonderful hosts.

The brother is a mad gaming fiend. I must see if I can hook in and start kicking his ass at Quake 3.