Escaping Vancouver, Enter Europa

Marburg, Germany
I've only been in Deutschland for two days and already love this place. Following my 7 hour flight from pdx to jfk, 5 hour layover in new york and 9 hour flight to frankfurt I was greeted by my old german ally Moritz. Moritz was an exchange student at my high school during my sophomore year and we became good friends. Running cross-country, getting j-bo and chillin in the couv were some of the great times we had over 6 years ago. After a quick zip on the autobon we arrived in the city of Marburg where moritz goes to college and lives with his girlfriend Becky in a flat.

The city of Marburg has a population of 70,000 with 20,000 of them being the university students here. Its a pretty small, homely town that reminds of tacoma. Not much of a night life, people go to frankfurt for that but a lot to explore inlcuding old castles and numerous stands of doner khebabs. The most interesting thing I've seen so far here in Deutschland was a protest out on the streets by the local farmers. Walking down the streets in Marburg we ran into 50 tractors plowing down the road, honking like crazy and halting all traffic. This was their own form of protest of the low prices of milk and other goods. Essentially, farmers in Germany have been getting screwed by the EU, as food imports from other EU countries are forcing local merchants to drive down the price of goods to compete with foreign goods. Marburg and the rest of Germany has also been undergoing massive protests within the last few days due to the education system reforms implemented by the federal government. According to what Ive heard, the government is changing the college system from a diploma system to a bachelor system. What that means is that instead of students being able to choose their classes yearly, they must declare their major their first year and then lose all flexibility in choosing their classes for the next 3 years of college. Marburg, Berlin, Frankfurt and other cities have experienced much protests against the bachelors degree reform, with thousands of students marching, blocking traffic and trying to bring attention to the country about these reforms. They have affectionately called this movement the "facking bachelor party" and have planned more protests for the following weeks.

Its been pretty awesome to learn more about this stuff through firsthand experience. Unfortunately, my body is still on a weird jet-lag time with me waking up at 4 AM. If my first two days of my trip are any indication of how my next year abroad will be, its going to be a facking good time. Tomorrow, I'm heading to Berlin to meet up with another friend and see the sights. Its about a 6 hour car ride to berlin. Im getting a ride through this german style craigslist service that carpools people around the country. It should be pretty awesome and Im pumped to see more of this country and especially the Berlin Wall.