Back from Germany. Happy New Year!

A lot of time has passed in between my entries. I deliberately took a break from writing - and using the internet, really - while I was in Germany. I was trying to reset in a way. I realized that I spent too much time on my computer and not enough doing things that I really wanted to do, like read, run, etc. It's far too easy just to spend time bouncing between news sites, facebook and any other number of time consumers. Maybe it's a bit of a new year resolution to me, to not spend so much time online. That would probably be a good one, since I really haven't made a resolution yet...any suggestions?

Germany was amazing, plain and simple. Far too much time had passed since I had seen Ben, but we picked up like a week had passed. His family took me and a slew of Australians in for about three weeks; I stayed the longest. It was nice to spend Christmas with his mom, dad, 3 brothers, their kids and the neighbors. While I missed my family, I feel like I didn't miss them as bad as I would have had I not stayed with such a loving, warm group of people. Christmas dinner was on the 24th, as per tradition in Germany, and we shared it with nearly 25 people. Much different from my family, we were sipping schnapps and great German beer until about 3am. I don't mean to get down on my "native traditions", but I kind of like the German way of doing things in this respect.

We went out with Ben's friends - who I think I may now call friends of my own - to neighboring towns to go bowling (my dreaded return to the game), dancing at electronic clubs and eat the sacred food, doner. Due to the high percentage of Turkish people in Germany, and inebriated youths' need for cheap, tasty food, we found ourselves in a doner restaurant no less than 10 times in 3 weeks. A doner is like a kebab, with lamb and chicken, salad and two sauces wrapped in warm flatbread. While I always went with felafel, being a good vegetarian, I did try the doner and can say that it is pretty amazing.

I did a bit of traveling with Ben, Jani and Tom (Ben's best friends and neighbors), and a few other Australians, Mike and Sam, who were staying with Ben for a bit while backpacking Europe. We went to Cologne to see the cathedral, Dortmund and Bochum for the Christmas markets and Berlin for New Year. I saw far too many awesome things to describe in a reasonable length. I will say though, that Berlin is possibly my favorite city on earth that I have seen thus far, and would really like to live there one day. It has such a mix of culture, history, music, food and great architecture. Combine this with a relatively cheap cost of living and I am sold. I'd really like to go back and learn a bit more German and chalk it up as another great life experience. But, who knows what my future holds for me.

I got back to Spain on Saturday night at about midnight due to a delayed flight in Germany. I was fortunate enough to meet two really nice Dutch girls who weathered the delay, cold and lack of buses with me from 1pm on Saturday until 3am on Sunday. After seeing them off - to a friend who was nice enough to drive two hours to come and pick them up - I tried to find somewhere to sleep. Too cheap to pay for a hostel for 3 hours and unable to find a 24 hour place to grab and coffee and do some reading, I took to sleeping in the entrance of a bank for a miserable hour, doing the same in front of the bus station for another hour and then finally getting into the station once it opened at 6am. Without saying more, I was never happier to get back to Algeciras.

I've returned with a renewed view of the remainder of my time here. I'm going to try and engage people more in general, be less ashamed that my Spanish doesn't sound like theirs (a near impossibility for anyone not from Andalucia) and set out to make my internship in Argentina a reality.

Happy New Year to everyone. Peace and love from the other side of the Atlantic.