Prost!

NEWARK INTERNATIONAL, DIRTY JERSEY -- well i just got a free trip to Germany. the firm i work for has a few projects in Germany, and last week, one of my coworkers ended up not being able to go, so my awesome bosses asked me if i wanted to go to Wiesbaden, Germany (outside of Frankfurt), and i kindly accepted - i mean it was a no brainer with the free plane ticket, hotel accomodations, and meals. i left last saturday and no i'm back.

when i studied abroad, i had gone to Berlin and loved it. beer and meat - seriously what is there not to love? my firm has been working in Wiesbaden for a few years, so my coworkers knew some great places to eat like the Wikinger and the Ratskeller. i loved the bratwurst in Berlin but actually sitting down for a full German dinner was a completely new experience. i had schnitzel for the first time - kind of like a pork parmesan. i also tried pork hock which is a pork knuckle. of course, the beer was fucking amazing. my new favorite beer of all time is Franziskaner Weissbier Dunkel, a dark hefeweizen. it's the perfect combination of the lightness of a wheat beer and the full flavor of a dark beer. another memorable thing about Wiesbaden was this gummy bear store there that sold gummy bears as big as your hand.

anyways, the work part of the trip wasn't bad. i went there to do some survey work which is a fancy way of saying that i took a million pictures of the project site. luckily, my group finished all of our work on thursday, so we had friday completely free to ourselves. we had 2 rental cars for the week and decided to try to find a place that no one had been to before - trains and Ryan Air were also options. the obvious choice was Luxembourg, Luxembourg - a tiny country between France and Germany. it was only 2.5 hrs away, so the 5 of us hopped into our rental car and drove out. we stopped in Trier on the way, which was this nice German town with a big central pedestrian area around this enormous church. after grabbing some lunch, we moved onto Luxembourg. unfortunately, it was a little disappointing. the city center was easy to get around but there just really wasn't much to do. we did try to get a tour of the thousand year old palace, but the guards told us that we had to get a reservation a day ahead, so we just bought a couple 6 packs and drank them on the way home.

now, i'm stuck in fucking Newark. i don't know what happened here, but every single flight here is delayed at least 3 hours. oh well, i guess i'll just have to enjoy a nice steak dinner and some beers on the company's tab.

-Tenn

P.S. pictures to be posted soon: http://picasaweb.google.com/AnthonyTQLe