Pre-departure

Well, the time is finally nearing. I just finished the last of my finals for the winter semester today, and now I've got three days till my plane leaves for Paris. I've been waiting to return to Europe for almost three years now, and this time I'll have three months to get acquainted (which I'm already anticipating will pass unpleasantly quickly). The plan for the beginning of my expedition consists of meeting up with Sanjay, whom I haven't seen in nearly three years, staying with him in Paris for about a week, and then taking the night train to Konstanz a week from this Sunday. For those of you who remember Sanjay, the last time I talked to him, he said that he'd lost quite a bit of weight, and is apparently quite a trim fellow now, which I think is directly connected with his - in my opinion - very wise decision to resume eating meat after about a five year hiatus. He has assured me I won't recognize him when he meets me at the airport.

On something of a tangential note, this relates to my beef with vegetarianism (har har har!). Rather, not so much vegetarianism, but people who become vegetarians, but don't put forth the effort to actually eat a healthy diet by finding replacements for the nutrients provided by meat. I'm less than delighted to report that I know more than a few vegetarians who, out of a selfless desire to preserve big, cute, stupid cows (not that I think they should be eaten because they're stupid; I'm just laying that out there as a statement of fact), subject themselves to something I might dub "The Beige Diet: Extreme!" The "Beige Diet 1.0," something I heard about repeatedly during bi-annual forays to Swarthmore College and was apparently practiced by a student there, consists of fare such as cauliflower, mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey, chicken, rolls and breads of various pale, whitish hues, topped off with some milk. The enhanced, "extreme" version is the same, but without the milk, meat or either of the vegetable items (which I think are only classified as such due to a loophole somewhere in the naming convention). Essentially, 90% of the solid food intake for these people is made up of bread and processed cereals. And then one of these people then has the gumption to ask, "does my butt look big?" "No, don't worry! All the carbs just pooled in your hips!"

Also unrelated to travel, but in line with my food thought, I'm suddenly reminded of a notice I read in the menu for our local Flint Chinese carry-out restaurant, Hong Da. "Spiciness can be adjusted to suit your taster." This is probably the best Engrish statement I've seen, and I think will have to refer to my tongue as my taster from now on. I think it's much more descriptive of the actual function of the organ, so why not strive for precision in our language?

Returning to the point at hand now... When I finally get to Konstanz, I'll be taking three courses: Heat Transfer, Machine Design and Germany Within Europe. I was originally supposed to also be taking an FEA course, but it was cancelled due to low enrollment, and because of the bio-engineering concentration for my major, there weren't any other classes I could take that would count toward my degree. This means it's going to feel like vacation compared to the five to six courses per semester I've been taking for the past year and a half. Additionally, according to the schedule I received from Kettering's international office, I'll only have classes three days per week there. I'm extremely excited about this and looking forward to having so much time available for traveling. I know, I suppose I should allow some time for doing... what was that again? Oh yes, homework. But I think that's an activity I should be able to accomplish a good deal of on the train to and from wherever it is that I'm going.

Speaking of train travel, I've been told by one of my former German teachers that I should try to get to Spain at some point it I'm able, in order to watch the train cars get moved from the standard to narrow gauge tracks. I'd like to see a cost-benefit analysis of keeping the Franco era tracks versus standardizing them. What would be the cost to replace the infrastructure versus the time lost in transferring the cars from track to track? I guess I assume it probably doesn't take terribly long. Either that, or Spain figures it was a good national defense measure at the time, so they might as well keep it. Clearly, this is an idea that should be adopted by Homeland Security. In the event of war, the Iranians will never be able to roll their troop cars into the United States! Anyhow, Eulalia, my favorite high school Spanish teacher, mentioned to me several years ago that I should let her know if I ever find myself in Spain, since her parents would be more than delighted to meet and feed one of her former students. If I recall correctly, they live somewhere near Barcelona, which is a convenient location, since I don't think I'll be making plans to travel to the western side of the country because of the terribly long travel time.

Also on the tenative travel schedule are Rome (a must for the engineering achievements), Prague, Berlin, and possibly Dublin, London and/or somewhere in Greece. I suppose I should have given more thought to this before now, but unfortunately I've otherwise occupied with dynamic systems analysis and fluid dynamics until earlier this evening. I'm open to suggestions from those who have been abroad for some time already.

I had a dream the other night that kind of distrubed me. There was a woman who had applied for a job at a company that was run out of an individual's home, and after her initial interview, she walked over to one of the bedrooms, crawled underneath the bed, and waited for the family cat to walk by. As the cat approached the bed, she reached out with a large chef's knife from under the bed and stabbed the cat in it's side. The person who had been interviewing her then entered the room and chastised her, saying, "You know, that wasn't in the orientation manual."

Something else I am looking forward to in Europe: stricter gun control laws. I pretty confident that I just heard three gun shots and a car peel out. That's definitely not the first time I've heard that this semester either. About a month ago, I thought I heard shots just down the block from my house here in Flint, so I called 911 after that so someone could come and check it out. I'm pretty sure that did absolutely no good, but I figured it was probably worth the token effort on my part. I guess that's what you get in the country's 3rd most dangerous city. Unfortunately, as a friend of mine once said of Flint, "It's always dangerous, never exciting." Hopefully Europe will do slightly better in the second category as well.

Okay, the hour seems to be getting extremely late (or early, as the case may be), so I will end this for now. The next update will probably be from the other side of the Atlantic, and perhaps a little more focused/interesting.