Bliss.
I've been milking that win for my own personal smiles for weeks. Every time I walk in Man Room now, I think "I saw my boys win a Super Bowl in this room". It makes me grin. If Man Room wasn't already in my personal Hall of Fame of rooms, it sure as hell has the top spot now. In 16 months, I'll be ready to leave Germany, but don't think I won't pause as I close the door to Man Room that last time, head bowed in solemn respect as I formulate some sort of heartfelt good-bye. Because I'm telling you now that's going to happen.
But I guess it's time to move on. Oh don't worry, I'll fill up the off season with ridiculous purchases of "Super Bowl Champion" t-shirts and hats, as well as year-in-review DVDs. And I will certainly continue to be "that guy" who drops little victory nuggets any time football comes up. It's been a long time since the G-men won, and I'm going to milk it dammit.
But football itself is done for now. And when football season is over, traveling season can begin in earnest for Gwendolyn and I. Other hobbies too, can now take center stage, but more on those in later posts.
Last weekend we had a modified four day weekend (we had to spend Friday morning learning how to wash our hands - don't ask) for the President's Day Holiday, and we went to Dresden. I think more than anything both of us needed a break from work. Things have been hectic lately, and well, let's just leave it at that for now.
Dresden's claims to fame are essentially three: It was the seat of power of the "Prince Electors" of Saxony for hundreds of years, it was mercilessly firebombed in 1945 by the Allies (denounced as a punitive bombing, Dresden had no military significance in WWII. Vonnegut writes about this in "Slaughterhouse Five". Interestingly he was an American POW in Dresden at the time of the firebombing.), and it was an East German city in the Cold War, meaning it has lots of commie relics that are fun to point and laugh at since we schooled 'em. ("Hey, people used to stand in line for bread during a drizzle here! Suckers!" Stuff like that...)
We took a train out to Dresden, and for the most part had a very relaxing time, complete with scheduled afternoon naps and sleeping in. The weather was cold but clear which made for good sightseeing. Saturday was crazy because as we started to hit the town we noticed that there were Polizei everywhere. We learned later that there were multiple demonstrations that day (actually we were very near the anniversary of the fire bombing), both left and right wing, and including even a small neo-nazi demonstration. We wandered briefly around the areas of demonstration, and I proceeded to make no less than 6,000 jokes about neo-nazis, most of which aren't worth repeating here. Anyway, I'll hand it to the Germans, they didn't let anything even think about getting out of hand. ThePolizei outnumbered the demonstrators probably about 30 to 1 - see our photo of the "Demonstration", which is really a photo of the backs of hundreds of Polizei keeping demonstrators penned in. (Although what irony if things had gotten out of hand, and you had Polizei beating the tar out of neo-nazi's, essentially going "Police State" on people who are pro-Police State. Think about that, and by the way sorry I just made your head explode.)
Walking around Dresden reveals a city rich with Baroque architecture (prompting the "If ain't 'Baroque', don't fix it!" joke to come out 2000 times). Other interesting sights were the communist relics from wall murals chock full of propaganda to blocky, unadorned, ugly, economical looking buildings for rows and rows. Other than Berlin, this is the first German town we've seen with a distinct "East German" vibe to it, from back in the day. It was funny, walking around, to think that everyone here in 1984 might had a different outlook on things, or at least on movies like Red Dawn and Rocky IV, than I did. (Those were both documentaries, right?)
Anyway, there's not too much else to day about the trip. It was nice, pretty and relaxing. We had some good meals too, including one at a "Medieval Times" style German restaurant which is supposed to recreate an authentic "Saxon" experience. Unfortunately we hit it for lunch, at a low time, and so there weren't kings and jesters and armored knights tromping around like I'd hoped.
For more information, see Gwen's post.
For me now, it's time to post up the pictures link, and then go back to surfing the NFL combine links. I need to see who the Super Bowl Champs might pick up to help us repeat next season...
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| Dresden Feb 2008 |
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