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1132 days ago
I have 2 weeks holiday, Susanne has 1. I went to Poland and Slovakia for a week, Susanne went to visit our new niece (Jule) in Bielefeld. She's very cute, and so is Jule I took the train to Wroclaw, Poland, stayed a couple days, then took the train to Krakow. In Krakow I biked around, took the train to Auschwitz, then trained south to Zakopane at the foot of the Tatra mtns. They're like a small Alps. I then biked around them to Slovakia to a small town called Pisska Bela, then biked on to Poprad and a little bit up into the Tatras again. I missed Susanne too much, and caught a train back to Leipzig. Poland and Slovakia are similar to Germany, except poorer, dirtier, and not as comfortable with foreigners. Most don't speak a second language, but it seems German is more common than others. Both are much cheaper to travel in than Germany, and the standards (train, hotels, food, shopping, etc.) are as or nearly as high. You can check out photos at www.flickr.com/photos/wduplooy ...1151 days ago
Just wanted to share some new photos of the Neo-Nazi march that went through Leipzig on the "Day of Germany Reunification" holiday. The march consisted of 200 Neo-Nazis from around this part of the country protected by 2100 riot police (from all over the country). They were being protected from the 3000 or so Lefties (anarchists, antifascists, etc.) that wanted to lure the police away so some of them could attack the Neo-Nazis. Everything was very organized (as we've come to expect from Germans) and under control, until a few hundred of the Lefties started destroying public and private property to lure the police away from the march. They burned whatever they could find on the streets, smashed police cars and vans, and threw rocks, bottles, etc. at the police. A few of them obviously did well in their high school PE class because they were able to lob rocks about 100 m over police barricades and managed to successfully hit Christian Worth, the march leader, in the arm. ...
1161 days ago
Click on www.flickr.com/photos/wduplooy to see our new photos. Last weekend we went to Susanne's grandma's 85th birthday in Emden (6 hour train ride on Friday night, then back on Sunday night). Ouch. 85th birthday party. Ouch. In German... One cool part was that F.C. St.Pauli (a pretty low level pro team) was in the salon next to our 85th party, so I got some photos and met a couple players before their afternoon game. Other than that, not much news. I'm settling into my classes in the gym and Susanne is breaking her back at work as usual. We went out to Cospudener See (lake about 30 minute bike from our place). There are lots of beaches and naturists (ie. nudists), so our bike pace stayed between 15-20kms the whole time. Awkward... We also visited Susanne's sister Petra, who is due in a couple weeks. Luca, her daughter, is so cute that we wanted to take her back to Leipzig with us. She can't speak too well, yet, so she calls me "Orren" and Susanne is ...
1196 days ago
Well, we spent a couple weeks in Canada visiting and now we've been teaching here for 2 weeks at Leipzig International School in former East Germany. We love it, and we're getting our furniture this weekend. You can take a look at some photos here: www.flickr.com/photos/wduplooy and drop us an email if you like at wduplooy@gmail.com Bye for now.
1258 days ago
Check out the huge photo album I added on the right!! We went to Ayuthaya for a day a few weeks ago. It's a National Historical Park with about 40 ancient temples, about 1 hour north of Bagkok. Took lots of great photos. Great place to relax, because there is so much green space (of which we see none of here in Bangkok). Went to Hong Kong for 3 days. Walked around, went to various parks, markets, harbour, etc. The transport system is amazing: bus, tram, subway, taxis, airport -- everything goes everywhere, on time, cheap, reliable, clean. Definitely a liveable city in Asia. We stayed Alisan Guesthouse in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island. Our window overlooked the harbour and a huge cell phone commercial with a stolen photo of a Richard Gere look-alike. We're down to 3 weeks and we can't wait! We are so excited to go back home and then on to Germany. I've been watching a lot of World Cup, but the 2am-4am games on weeknights are hard to stay up for, especially if ...
