Europe in a Whirlwind

31 October, 2003

Well, this update is especially late! So not so many pictures and not so many details...

After a quick trip to Prauge, I headed to the northern German town of Osnabrück, where I was applying to graduate school. (The application process had actually been going on while I was in Asia. My friend Brian was coordinating things back in Boulder, and through scanning, faxing, and a helluva lot of emails we got the application sent in.) It was two days of cold and rain, but they were studying everything I'm intersted in.

Mike & Nele At home in Belgium.

My final stop in Europe was to visit my friends Nele and Mike in Belgium. Yes, that's the same Nele that I met in Laos two years ago. This is one of those incredible stories that comes about from traveling: A year after Jason and I meting Nele in Laos, she got a job working for the Girl Scouts in America. Out of all their camps, the Girl Scouts chose to put Nele in Colorado. That was good luck, but it was even more good luck that this was also the summer that Jason married his lovely Shannon. At the wedding, Nele met our friend Mike and...er...they got along very well. And so now, a friend I met in Laos and a friend from Colorado are now married and living in the small town of Lint in Belgium. Life is full of surprises.

Homeward Bound

Coming home felt strange like it always does, but it was made even stranger by the fact that I didn't really have a home. My house was rented out, but my gracious tenants let me sleep on the downstairs couch. (Thanks guys!) It felt like I was still travelling, but exploring my own home. (...and know the place for the first time.)

After a few weeks of anxious uncertainty, I received the good news that I had been accepted to the Cognitive Science masters program at the University of Osnabrück. So I had just two months to soak up as much of Colorado and my old life before heading off again!

It was perhaps the most amazing two months of my life. Every day was spent catching up with a different old friend, many of whom I hadn't seen in far too long. (Leaving the country is good cure for procrastination.) This culminated in a fantastic going away slash birthday party. Thank you again to everyone who came...it was really one of the highlights of my life to see so many friends from every stage of my life gathered in one room. I am a lucky man.

Viel Glück in Osnabrück

Tower near the university.

It feels like years ago that I tossed my bags off the train in Osnabrück and wearily walked to the youth hostel. A lot has happened in the last six weeks!

That youth hostel proved to be home for a lot longer than I expected. It's incredibly difficult to find a place to live in the weeks before the university starts, and the hostel was bursting at the seams with new university students, fall school students, and normal travelers. But this, of course, proved to be a blessing in disguise: Everyone in the hostel got to know each other and I made some great friends. (Thanks for those great dinners, Fall School Folks!) My time in Germany was off to great start!

A beautiful old gothic church, 5 minutes walk from my flat.

Classes started two weeks ago and I'm finally starting to feel settled. The last time I really had a place of my own was in February, so it feels really good to stay in one place for a while. (My address and such is here.) And after so many years of talking about getting a Master's degree, it feels really good to be doing it. I feel like a kid in a candy store here—so many interesting classes that I want to take them all! Neurobiolgy, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, semantic analysis, computational linguistics... these are a few of my favorite things!

And if the classes themselves weren't good enough, I'm in Germany! So I'm learning German as well, and learning all those little things that come from living in a foreign country. I'm still learning to deal with stores and offices being closed all the time, and I miss the wide open spaces of Colorado. But I love being to get around without a car, seeing beautiful thousand year old buildings every day, and hearing so many different languages everywhere I go. And the döner's are really good, too!

Home Sweet Home My new flat at Wachsbleiche 12, Osnabrück. My room is the dark window on the right side.

So that's the end of this time of travelling. My days will be filled with a little less wandering and little more wondering. But a good life needs a little of both, don't you think?

THE END

If you've read this much about my life, why not send me an email and let me know what you're up to? I'm looking forward to it!