Hi all.... Welcome to my first blog entry ever!!! I suppose being so far from home for so long is driving me to extreme measures to keep in touch with people back home. Let me begin by telling you all where I am and how to reach me if you feel so inclined...
My mailing address here in Munich is:

Daniel Neufeld
Professorenhaus (yes, it does mean "Professor House" .. don't I feel special now :) )
Hans-Leipelt-Straße 12
80805 München

If you are confused by the 'ß' thingy, it just stands for a double 's', thats all. The best way contact me over the next 4 months is by MSN (cdn_dan@hotmail.com), Skpe (daniel.neufeld), or email (daniel.neufeld@gmail.com). Keep in mind that I'm 6 hours ahead, which means by the time you get up in the morning, I'm just finishing up my lunch of schnitzel, sauerkraut and beer.

This is, in fact, my first trip to the European continent (unless you count that 12 hour stopover in London on the way to Africa - really good fish and chips is all I really remember about that)

Alright, so when planning out this exchange, I naturally stretched the definition of 'summer semester' to the maximum limit on both the departure and return sides. I flew on April 24th - which happened to be exactly 10 days before my expected arrival in Munich. This left me time to attend a former roommates's wedding here in Germany. It seemed natural enough to fill the remaining void with an intense European road trip with two other friends of mine who came for the wedding (Jordan and Justin).

I've been told that when entering a new culture, there are several phases of "culture shock" that you need to pass through before you feel at home - the first, of course, being the honeymoon phase. If I'm following that pattern at all, I suppose that would be where I'm at. The grass seems greener, the sky seems bluer, the mountains are taller (not to difficult to surpass Ontario in that regard), the cities are cleaner and prettier... and I have a much nicer place to work here at the Technical University of Munich than back home. Alright, I'll quit rambling and show some pictures of the places we traveled through.

The first stop was Frankfurt. My flight landed there, and that's where I met up with Jordan - an old friend and former roommate. We had 3 hours or so to check out the town before our train to Stuttgart departed. Its a beautiful town. I've been told its one of the most 'westernized' in Germany, but it was still spectacular compared to what I'm used to in TO.
After a long and futile search for Jordan's camera, we headed to the Hauptbonhof (main train station) and rode the high speed rail to Stuttgart. Nerd engineering fact: the train can easily exceed 300 km/h - I'd never traveled that fast on land before.

We stayed for a couple days in a small German village near Stuttgart called Ur Bock. A bachelor party was had, and a large quantity of beer was consumed. (its soooo cheap here)

The wedding took place in an ancient chapel (built in 1100 ad) on a mountain top, and the reception was held in a castle of around the same age on top of a different mountain. I had no idea that places like this still existed. You wont find a single building in North America half as old as these locations. Incredible...

The day after the wedding, Jordan, Justin, and myself took off in a little budget rental car (which happened to be an Audi A3 for those who care) We didn't do much in the way of planning, it was a bit of a seat-of-the-pants operation. We had in mind to drive south to a German city called Frieburg and poke our nose into France along the way.

Alrighty, I think I'll have to do this in episode form, since its getting dark and I'm still sitting in my office here at the University, getting hungrier by the minute. Stay tuned...

Daniel