Ok, been a bit since I had an actual internet connection, but I have been in Germany for the past week in Donauworth, and I've been having a lot of really long days.  Not helping is the fact that I can more than handle my own with American beer, but this German stuff is a good deal stronger.  I feel 5 beers more now than ever.  But the brew around here has a lot more taste to it.  But if anyone is close to, in Germany, or knows of any good places to go, let me know.

I can say one thing though.  Being an American, I've always viewed the people of other countries as actual people, unlike many I've known.  But I saw something yesterday that hit me pretty good.  It was a stone slab set into the side of a hill, with dates and names on it.  I looked at the dates, and I realized that it was a memorial, and I'm guessing it was for the local people in the village, but it was for WWI and WWII.  The history books and movies have a way of somehow dehumanizing the Germans from that period.  After seeing this memorial, I fully realized that 2 of the worst wars this world has seen was launched from here, not even a century ago, and there are several germans that I really like and get along with. 

It just makes you actually stop and think for a while is all.

Any war is an atrocity..........If Aliens came to attack the Earth.....The Race card would be out the Window and we'd all be just Humans.....Oh Wait.....We already are, isn't that just quaint.

Sorry to bump into your thread, Though I am glad your enjoying the richness of another Culture, must ba a fantastic experience.

I absolutely loved traveling to Europe and really wish I had the means to do more traveling to more places. It is a wonderful experience. It is too bad that warring still exists.

And I have to say that Americans like Ang are more then welcome in this part of Europe.

I was in Germany for almost a year in 1968 with my husband then who was in the Army. We were in Bamburg not sure if that is spelled right. I loved the people and the quaint towns. So green over there no trash like here back then. My daughter was born over there. Would like to have been able to go to the October feast in Munich but never made it. No car of our own.

I'm having a great time out here.  But as for the total lack of trash, I think those days are done for.  There are cigarette butts all over the streets, candy bar wrappers here and there.  But I am glad I did miss Oktober Fest, from what I've been told, it's been completely commerciallized.  It's a shame.  But the christmas markets start opening in about a week, a friend told me to stay away from Munich, or Nurberg if I like smaller things, and since I do, she's going to take me to one of the better small ones in a village about 30 minutes away.

Hi grasshopper1980. 
 
To know other cultures is what exists of more concrete in our search of the knowledge, and more than to know is to respect the differences.  
The times we are taken by fright when we discovered things that terrify us, but those facts were the ancestors that created, the current ones don't deserve that inheritance. 
Congratulations for the initiative in knowing other cultures.

Thandaluz,

To be honest, I don't like to be frightened by what I don't understand.  There's just too much out there to not want to see it.  But to be more than honest, I don't think I deserve the congratulations.  I didn't take the initiave on this one, I wanted to more than double my monthly income, so that paycheck requires training in Germany.  Ok by me.  For this kind of money, you can send to the North Pole for a year, and I would happily go as long as you payed me while I was there.

Edit

And while money isn't everything, I am very tired of not having enough.  And every little bit helps. 

grasshopper1980 - Get yourself down to the Christmas markets and pick up a Stollen and some Glühwein. Brilliant.