A single step

I forgot to charge my iPod before I left - so I used an outlet in a phonebooth at Detroit Metro. Unfourtanetly that only provided about 30 minutes of music. Not nearly enough for a trans-Atlantic flight. Regardless: I couldn't sleep on the plane and it seemed to drag on forever.

We arrived in Frankfurt early in the morning and met Strauss in the airport a few minutes after getting through EU customs. After a few phone calls two VW vans showed up to take us to Dortmund.

The first things I noticed were the windmills and their settlement pattern. Grandpa's description of their tiny farming villages seemed to be entierly accurate based on my "windshield survey" of the areas alongside the autobahn.

After a couple of hours on the road we arrive in Dortmund. A bit of shuffling between buildings and we meet our German host students. They took us to their cafeteria but for some reason after the long day of travel I was not particulary hungry. I munched on some brocolli and french fries. We were handed some of the materials we needed for our project and tours at this time, too.

An on campus train (dubbed the Iron Dragon because of its similarities to the roller coaster at Cedar Point) and an S-bahn train took us back to the flat we were to occupy for the next several days. The entire ride lasted about 25 minutes (if I remember correctly).

One thing I was not expecting that all the American students had noticed at this point was the amount of graffiti in Germany. According to one of our hosts there is a strong sub-culture directly linked to this sort of expression. Recently the penalty for graffiti was made more strict, more than a fine as far as I could tell. Compare this to Chicago where 'Mayor Daley's Graffiti Blaster' patrols the streets with a 500-gallon vat of chemical solvent.

Scott and I took a nap at Birthe and Kerstin's flat. We got up late in the afternoon and eventually met up with the rest of the students at Limerick's, an Irish pub in central Dortmund.