Alex's Visit!

Okay, okay... so I have been busy. So busy in fact that I have totally neglected planet bloggery... again! But, there has been some cool stuff going down. To start, my friend Alex came for a visit. In short: He came, he saw, he ate more schnitzel then is humanly possible. He took a break from his third year of Law School to come see what life is like in Bühl--he enjoyed a few hefenwiezens, pilsners, and hell-biers, got to watch my team get dismantled by Russelsheim, the first place team in our league, and slept on my floor. Incidentally, the weekend he visited there were 10, count em, 10 people staying in our 4-bedroom apartment. Yes, we had a few adult beverages after we got embarrassed during the home game and got ourselves in trouble. Yes, our neighbors wrote a letter complaining to the landlord. No, we will not be throwing snowballs and fireworks off the balcony after midnight again... even if it is on a Saturday night.

It got a bit crazy to say the least.

A little background on Alex:
He was born on a warm August day 1979. He, like me, is the youngest sibling in a family of five. His eldest sister, Laura was in the same class as Kathleen (my sister) and Alex's middle sister Anna, worked at the Aquatic Center as a lifeguard with Kathleen. Alex and I met for the first time in Pre-first at Walnut Grove Elementary. I had just moved up to Pre-first from Kindergarten and he had taken a crack at first grade, but because he was the youngest kid in the class and a bit shy they decided to put him in the tweener class with me. On the first day he walked into class I invited him to sit down next to me. I was wearing a red Transformers T-shirt and we both were probably wearing some dirt from diving around on the asphalt at recess.
Alex and I hung out on and off growing up as we lived roughly one-mile apart—a long distance in the suburban neighborhoods when your friends tend to be determined geographically. But we were always friendly at school and competitive when we would play against each other in soccer and baseball. In Junior high, we even got to play together on a team (the A’s) with my older brother, coached by Alex’s Dad.
Fast forward a couple of years. Our junior and senior years in high school marked Alex’s political awakening and the crystallization of our friendship that has continued into our (dare I say it) adulthood.
In college I went to Davis and began my track searching for the meaning of life through volleyball and Alex headed out to Boston College. The commute did not deter our friendship and I managed to go out and visit a couple of times during undergrad and even spent the better part of a summer living with him in Boston. We have driven halfway across the states together, we have watched a ridiculous number of sporting events together, and we have even been confused for a gay couple (yeah… as if it happened just once). Now he is about to finish Law school at Colombia and sit for the Bar exam… crazy. Pretty soon I will have to grow up too and make a decision about whether I will go ahead and start grad/law school myself or if I will put it off for one more year of volleyball.

This photo pretty much sums us up. Note Janet's chagrin at her inability to pull us away from our conversation... Sorry babe:).

End tangent.

So, what did we do while he was here? Well, Alex’s agenda was not only to hang with me and Janet, eat several kilos of snausages, and drink his weight in beer, it was also a chance to briefly immerse in the language he studied in high school and explore the country that provides 50% of his heritage.

Alex arrived on a Thursday and we of course went out to celebrate.It was Pink’s birthday so we dressed up for the occasion and went down to our local the Quetch... I must say that we looked pretty dapper!



On Friday it was pretty cold and I had training at 6pm, so we were a bit limited in our activity. We decided to take a walk around Bühl and Alex took some amazing photographs off of our balcony at sunset.



Saturday was game day and although normally I try to stay mellow and take a nap mid-day, we decided to go to Baden Baden


so Alex could see the world famous home of the hot springs that lay only 12 kilometers from Bühl.

We walked around for a few hours and needed to grab a bit to eat so we stopped at the Lowenbrau restaurant near Leopoldplatz, the central plaza of Baden Baden.


This marked the beginning of Alex’s sausage and beer fest!



Here is a picture of me, Eduard and Vladimir preparing for serve receive. The match was well attended, but we were overmatched and lost in less then an hour 3-0… sorry Alex.




On Sunday we headed out to Munich on the train. We arrived late Sunday night and headed immediately to the Augustiner Beer Hall. The next morning we woke up early enough to get the free breakfast from our hostel and went on a free guided English tour of Munich.

Our tour guide, interestingly enough, was an American guy named Isaac who grew up in Wisconsin.Now he lives in Germany with his fiancé and is attending graduate school near Munich. Our tour lasted roughly 3 hours and it was great. He openly discussed the history of Munich (which derives its name from Monks—think Monaco) up to and including the Beer Hall Putsch and the rise of the Nazi party. It was a really well done tour and Alex, Janet and I were all excited to be able to learn so much about Munich’s history and pick up some facts about WWII. We walked around Munich and did some shopping for the rest of the day and went back to the Augustiner Beer Hall for dinner.

On Tuesday morning we walked about, visited Munich’s courthouse, and sampled some Gulasch for lunch. That afternoon we hopped back on the train and headed back to Bühl so I could make it to training. Wednesday morning, Alex and I rode the train together and I stopped in Karlsruhe to go to work and he continued on to Stuttgart to catch his flight. It was a short, whirlwind visit, but we were able to see some great sights together, learn a bit, eat a ton of sausage and drink a few beers too! Thanks again for coming out man… I can’t wait to go visit Manhattan!