Venlo

Today was my second full day in Deutschland and it went very well. I’ve been working really hard on my Deutsch and so I apologize because I will probably become more and more hypocritical over time as I make grammatical errors due to my mind being set in Deutsch and not English. I am still a grammar nazi, I assure you.
I’ve been staying with my Tante Martina and Onkel Freddie and I have a good opportunity to practice my Deutsch since my Onkel doesn’t speak English and my Tante knows just a little more English than I know German. I’ve got to hang out with my whole family (minus my cousins, most of which all have their own jobs and houses now) at my Opa’s house twice now and that was really cool. Living in Deutschland with locals has revealed many new things to me that I did not experience last year traveling across the country as a tourist, I definitely like it. I was made for this kind of life.
Today I went to Venlo with my Tante Isolde and Onkel Norbert. Venlo is the first Dutch city over the border in the Netherlands. That was definitely an experience; there was a lot to see there. And it is where I took that picture of the skull with the crown of thorns. It was mounted on the back of their Rathaus. I learned a lot of Deutsch on that trip because they speak English very well and they like to talk.
When we got back, I took a walk with my Tante Martina down the road to a restored 18th century village. That was pretty neat, also in the open-air museum was a building with a huge train set –bigger than any I’d ever seen in hobby shops or anywhere else in the states. It was pretty neat too. When we left there, we were already pretty close to the house that my cousin Yvonne just moved into with her husband in February so we went to visit them and their place is really cool. It is small, one house split in two like most Deutsche houses, but I really liked it. I found out it’s not that expensive either –it’s about two or three times more than I paid for my apartment junior year but twice as large and at least ten times as nice –large windows, a porch and a yard with a shed, spiral stairs, a basement and an upstairs… and that’s all after I converted the rent in Euros to Dollars. Lemme just come clean: I’m not coming home ;-)
We had homemade, Deutsch style pizza for dinner and it was gooood. In the evenings we watch a little bit of TV which is pretty crazy here. It also helps my Deutsch because they talk very quickly and they have different accents. We watch a comedian named Mario Blarth and he’s pretty damn funny. It’s like Mind of Mencia (except obviously better) or imagine a late night talk show mixed with a sketch comedy show –it’s hilarious, even if you only understand half of it. They guy reminds me of a mix between Paul Rudd and Simon Pegg, two of my favorite comedic actors.