steve.sends.his.regards.across. the.pond: I am now living in the town of Darmstadt, just 30km south of Frankfurt, in the Bundesrepublik of Deutschland. I have seen only one morning of snow since I arrived here on Feb 3, 2003. I am still getting sorted out. No email access at my tiny (I should send some photos) apartment, but I can write things there, carry the disk to the lab, and send those.

brad.waits.a.few.days.and. casually.replies: No internet, eh? That’s too bad. I flew into Frankfurt a few weeks ago. Nice city — from the air at least. The landscape is this flowing matrix of hills and houses, occasionally dotted with a castle. I don’t imagine you’ll really miss the internet access — for a while at least.

stephen.patiently.continues: So far, I have pretty much been limited to foot power. That should change when I have a bank account and student bahn pass and other things all completely sorted out.

brad.adds.helpfully: It might also be a good idea to learn some German. Not only could you then facilitate these activities much easier, but you would quickly become a foreigner with a cool Canadian accent. The benefit to this is that girls dig accents no matter where you go, and you would soon find yourself with a German girlfriend who has a vehicle and could drive you all over the place. Huh? Huuuuuh?

ok.i’ll.shut.up.now.and.get.off. my.soapbox

Karin and I went downtown yesterday. (We had our reasons.) While taking the skytrain journey to the center to the city, it was quickly noted — remembered — recalled — that there was that big protest thing going on. Protest, you ask? Well, simply, there’s a whole lot of people who don’t tend to blindly agree with the United State’s imperialistic, oil-mongering, anti-democratic, illegal-genocidal, terror-attacks on third-world nations — and as such, they tend to do these peaceful gatherings all over the world. Vancouver was no exception, and after finishing up our business in the downtown core, we took a stroll to the center of the masses and gave a few cheers with the mash of people at the protest. It was an experience.

willy.where.are.you.?

Remember all that whereswilly stuff with the money that I marked up and sent off into the world. You thought I’d forgotten about that, eh? Well, no. I haven’t sent out any more bills in a while, but the hits continue to roll in:

2002.12.13: ANV01—86
2002.12.21: EVR44—57
2003.01.26: FEA83—23
2003.01.30: ANU11—92

photos.from.the.dark.side

Lots of folks keep asking me about my recent European vacation. Truth is, it’s a deep dark secret that I’ll carry to my grave…

Ok, no, I lied. The simple answer is that not only do I not want want to exhaust that wealth of new material that I gathered overseas all in one massive “brad.on.vacation” post, but I’m working on a story through pictures that will be much more entertaining than anything I could ever write. The fact that I took over a thouand — yes, thats a 1 followed by 3 zeros — digital images while meandering through the Netherlands, simply means that my activities mostly involved clicking a small silver button on my digital camera a lot. Don’t get me wrong. Prowling the mean streets of Amsterdam, or wandering through the nighttime eerie-calm of small town Nuland, or poking my nose into numerous little shops while visiting Utrecht, or even racing across the dutch countryside in silver Opel Vectra — these are all great things to write about, but they will leap out of your computer screen and slap you green with a jealous rage (Except for Stephen. He’s there now.) while explaining to you the nuances of travelling abroad, if you sit back and patiently wait for the (filtered) collection of images I will bring to you soon…

I hope that helps.