Monumental Washington

I've been putting replying to some personal emails for a month now telling myself I'll get a blog entry done first and include a link in my reply. Of course, I don't have any more time now than I had earlier in the month - and I'm not just doing this to procrastinate -, it's simply time I got this done.

It’s a big enough claim to fame for a city to be the capital the USA, but when one is actually there, walking past all the embassies on Massachusetts Avenue, it’s easy to understand why some call Washington, DC the capital of the world. Before ever seeing the city, I had built it up in my mind as being huge and well... city-like: like New York. On the contrary, DC is quite green and since no building can be taller than the Washington Monument, there are no real skyscrapers. One can imagine that the number of foreign diplomats that pass through the city has created a strong pressure to keep away the negative traits often associated with cities.

But for me, the most defining part of DC is its monuments and memorials (to get an idea, check out http://www.pbase.com/jpochard/washington_dc or http://www.scienceviews.com/photo/parks/WashingtonDCMonuments1.html). These monuments aren't just sculptures either, they often incorporate the most important ideas, in the form of quotations, of the people to which the monuments are dedicated. Now, I know I have to be careful how loudly I say this around other Canadians, but the monuments in DC are so inspiring that even I, as a Canadian, can't help but to feel indebted to all those Americans who vehemently fought to reintroduce and firmly establish the ancient notions of democracy and equality back into the modern world - notions Canada seemingly effortlessly borrowed and took as its own. Now, what happened after the establishment of the USA and in the more recent past is a whole other story, but I simply ask: What would Canada be now if it hadn't been for Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison?

Germany

Before I move on to the more recent happenings in my life, I really have to finish my Europe blog with a brief entry on my time in Germany.

So, after finishing up with my archaeological dig in Italy, I took a bus straight from Gravina to Rome and from there, flew (for some 15 odd Euros) directly to the Karlsruhe-Baden airport where Petra was waiting for me. When I was 2, Petra was an au pair for my family, and she's now married to a wonderful man called Gérald and has a 9-year-old daughter, Sophie, and a 7-year-old son, Jérémie.

During the 10 days I spent with them, the children read Asterix and fairy tales to me in German, I played soccer with Jérémie and accompanied Sophie on the piano as she played flute (our favourite song was Scarborough Fair), I chatted for hours about life and parenting with Petra and Gérald, I met all their crazy friends at a BBQ they hosted, I went to the movies with Petra, and we traveled to Tuebingen and Strasbourg (as you can see from my photos). All in all, it was such an amazing opportunity to spend some time with a family (something most university students don't have the chance to do too often) and to learn from the perspectives of two young parents who also knew all about my parents.

But this wasn't the only opportunity I had to do that: co-incidentally, Geli, the au pair that lived with my family before Petra, lived only 20 minutes away and so I was also able to spend a couple of days with her and her family. Since the live in a smaller town, we walked around the countryside eating oh-so-yummy plums right off of trees, checking out some schools and gardens, and eating ice cream. On top of all that, we also spent so time at the stables where Geli's daughter, Lea, rides and went to a Bee Festival.

Finally, after all this fun and some sad good-byes, I headed off to Koeln to meet my friend Marina and her boyfriend, Markus. Marina was on an exchange at my uni last year from Germany and on top of just being a great friend, she helped me out quite a bit with my German. Marina was living in Neuwied with her family and working there for the summer, but since Markus was working in Koeln and had an apartment there, we took advantage of that for a couple of days. First we did a little day-tour of Koeln during which I was most surprised at how sheltered from commercialization the cathedral had been kept. Next, we went to Bonn to see a museum called the Haus der Geschichte (House of History). It was the most well-done museum I've ever seen with interactive exhibits for all ages and beautiful presentation of information, and it was entirely free for everyone!

After this time in the city, we headed of to Neuwied for my last few days where Marina's family greeted me with such incredible hospitality and delicious food! Of course, we saw the city and ate lots of ice cream - the best I had in all of Europe! - but we also had time to take a quick trip to Koblenz and have a look around there.

And then, August 14th, it was all over. After 2 weeks of relaxation and fun with some of the kindest, most generous people I've known, it was time for that dreadful 7-hour flight back to the homeland.