Hallo und guten Abend!

How is everyone out there? Pretty expansive question if taken literally, I grant you - but nice sentiment nonetheless!

Wow... I need to remember to log in here and keep up with this. As it is so much easier to create log entries here, you would think I would do more, instead of returning back to the time-honored but old-fashioned pen-in-hand journal entries!

Old habits, especially nostalgic ones, can indeed be very hard to break. Part of the reason a traveler travels once they have been a few places is the nostalgia for where they have already been, or how young they were when they were there, or the place in life they were at when visiting... of course, travel abroad is also about the future - about places unseen and unexplored, people you have not yet had the opportunity to meet, conversations not had, cultural insights not yet obtained.

One thing among many which occurred during the 4 1/2 months since my 27 September 09 entry was my trip last weekend to Ireland! Country #10 was everything that it has been advertised to be and more - and the people, well as interesting as the places are, they are what makes this nation of 4 1/2 million people so interesting, intriguing, and fun. Will be going back to Ireland the rest of my life - and once you start to getting "up there" in places you have explored, that sort of elite status becomes even more special. As many nations and cultures there are in the world that I would thoroughly enjoy visiting, even for months, there are actually few that I can see myself living in full-time, for many years - outside of the United States.

Certainly among those top few are Ireland, the UK, and (not yet visited, but anticpated) Australia...

Have begun to settle in, and have certainly made some friends - including among the German people. My neighbor on the floor above is very friendly and a good ally to have around when youlose your mobile phone AND your apartment keys (Wohnungschluessel)! As the winter chill begins the early stages of its decline and withdrawal, the social event scene begins to heat up... perfect timing with the 201o Vancouver Winter Olympics underway, and the New Orleans Saints (Who Dat Nation!!) having recently been crowned Super Bowl Champions. Way to go, Big Easy!

Every year after the NFL season ends, whether I have been abroad or at home, it has always been a challenge to keep the spirits up... the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl kept ya up after the Holidays were over, then... it's just cold until mid-March! So it is good to be in a great city like Frankfurt and living in an interesting country like Germany... and with people wanting to go out again, I can begin again that ever necessary but difficult challenge of meeting good people to socialize with in another culture... friends, and yes - eventually, a girl - are tough enough to find anywhere, but particularly so when in an intriguing, but hard to break into culture such as Germany's.

I know many of the reasons why they are this way - their history being a big one of course - but as someone single and without friends coming into Germany, you need to develop a network of friends and hopefully find a nice girl to be with... and it can be tough to do so here I must admit.

Thanksgiving amounted to Turkey (Yay! Found turkey and mashed potatoes!) watching the Cowboys play at one of the American sports bars here in Frankfurt. A nice thing to have once in a while, but football (NFL) only lasts 5 months of the year... Christmas - well, ha, ha... that amounted to yours truly trying to find - having been unable to go home to the US for $2000 - one of the even fewer open cafes (than Sunday mornings) to have a Christmas lunch at... a snowy solo meal, but I did have a really nice Christmas Eve with a work colleague's family.

New Year's Eve (Silvester) was great... went to a Frankfurt bar in a trendy part of town with an expatriate social group, and after much drinking and some dancing, got an Aussie welcome to 2010 kiss, and went outside to watch all the fireworks bouncing off the walls of the buildings in the street (!) or quite beautiful & powerful rockets zooming into the sky... sparklers everywhere, a really cool travel abroad (in my case living abroad) experience. An indellible image.

Finally got the elusive H1N1 Flu Shot on 22 January! Yay... doom avoided, thank God. Although it may be nothing more than regular flu for most people, it is still nice to know that you are covered - and can stop being a news-watching worryer about it.

February of course was Dublin and Ireland... and you my friends are - more or less caught up! Movies watched? Sherlock Holmes, Up, The Wolfman, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (a Sneak Preview), the mighty "Avatar", An Education (again, Sneak Preview ok?), Zombieland (zombie movies are always good for Christmas), the Hurt Locker, etc.

Bis spaeter! Auf Wiedersehen...

Brett