1. No Longer Music →

  3. Radical Missions School, Day Two, March 24th 2010

    Somewhere in the air over the Atlantic the day changed. I couldn’t sleep on the plane, so I ended up watching The Informant! (decently funny) The Invention of Lying (decently funny) and An Education (very good). Also I watched the music programs which highlighted the popular music in Japan, China, and India. Right in the last hour of the flight, apple juice ended up spilling on my pants and backpack. Annoying for the most part, but the flight attendant scrambled to help clean it up. Anyways the captain on that flight had a very monotone english speaking voice which made some of the announcements quite funny.

    We got to Dusseldorf at about 8 am German time, and had to wait around 2 hours for the next leg of the journey, Of the four of us traveling together, 2 of the others were puking and sick. I was feeling pretty good considering not sleeping at all yet.
    We boarded the smaller commuter jet to Dresden via a bus trip across the plane taxi area. The plane was packed with business men, the first flight to be full so far in the trip.

    Upon reaching Dresden the airport was pretty empty. I couldn’t figure out where to get my money changed so I had to use an ATM. Later on I found out that I walked right past a bank that was there for the exchange but the info desk told me there was no place there. So we wondering through the Airport to the Train stop under it and boarded a train to the main station in Dresden. We bought our tickets and got on the train, and then got (yelled at?) by the ticket checker, because we forgot to get our tickets at a little box before entering the train. So we got to the main station and then had to get tickets to Meissen. We got tickets at a reduced price, thinking it meant student, and this time we punched our tickets before entering the train. This ride was quite long about 40 minutes really, and it seemed like we back tracked half the stops we had on the way from the airport. Anyways we had another ticket checker come by and then we got yelled at for buying children’s tickets, which was frustrating because the machine didn’t label it that way.Shortly after that the train made it to our final stop. We exited and were quite relieved, we came to find out later that the train workers are the least nice people in Germany apparently. We called the people here at the school, and they came down with a van to drive us the last 20 minutes into the Countryside to Krogis.

    We got to the grounds of the new Steiger complex and took a quick walking tour. The place is quite amazing, though very run down and dirty. There are a few pictures of the place from about 20 years ago when it was a classy resort type place. We had a quick lunch, and then I loaded up into my temporary room til the school starts. It is on a floor with a bunch of German men who like to party. The previous owners had rented out to these men, and most of them will be out at the end of March, but a small handful will be with us the entire school.

    Anyways I crashed out for a few hours and then was woken up for a BBQ the German decided to have, and invited us too. Apparently there has been high tension since Steiger got this complex so it was good to have fellowship and let them know we weren’t here to threaten them or force change on them.

    Then I went to bed.

  4. Chicago, O’Hare. Leaving the country for the first time.

  5. Radical Missions School, Day One, March 23rd 2010

    Day One, March 23rd 2010

    Got to Minneapolis airport, had to pay an extra 50 bucks to have my bass come with. Easy enough process to get around. Some cool looking stuff at O Hare in Chicago. Had a McDonalds burger to hold me over til we got on the flight to Dusseldorf.