The last 14 days haven’t really brought out anything special.

My preparation for the snow season has finished. I bought some second-hand boots and got the well-used board Anja has given me waked and repaired. I think for my first attempts at snowboarding the black and red board will prove it’s worth.
With no sign of snow in sight, I have been sticking to the streets with my first ride along the vineyards and corn fields around Müllheim.

A quick change towards my thoughts on politics; that is, my comments on how the Germans feel about the Presidential election. It is no unknown fact that Germany, as well as most of Europe, is a social state. That simply means instead of the citizens keeping their earnings and paying for insurance, school, toll roads, etc, they each pay extremely high (from America’s point of view) taxes. In turn, the state shares the tax monies with all the German citizens in the form of  child-support, tuition, welfare, and so on. Of course the system is much more complicated than that and one couldn’t just show up and ask for welfare. Anyways, this just shows that some US conservative ideals don’t make sense to Germans and therefore, the German public was overwhelmingly pro Obama.

Now that I so cleverly hid my political statement within my post, I shall continue.

Germany’s the name, and football is the game. Along with countless other soccer fans, Anja and I went to a nice pub and watch an exciting rematch of the Germany/ Netherlands derby. Unfortunately, it was one of most boring games I’ve ever watched. Oh well. The following picture pretty much sums-up how my week ended. The perfect meal prepared by the perfect cook (although I peeled and cut most the ingredients.)

Oh ya, and Anja’s cat took a celebrated Oregon State’s win over Cal.