D-USA

The Solo Kesler-Does-Germany-Tour is underway. Thanks to mismatching vacation schedules and a very loving and understanding wife, I am now on my way to Germany. Here is what happened in a nutshell: I got 3 weeks vacation, Mrs. D-USA has 2 weeks vacation. After some skillful scheming I was able to extend my vacation to almost 4 weeks, while Mrs. D-USA still remains at 2 weeks. So in an act of loving kindness I received the go-ahead to add a solo-leg to the "Kesler's Do Europe Tour of 2010" and see family in Germany and my old hometown. So for the next two weeks you will see updates, pictures, movies, and stories about my crazy adventures in Germany. After those two weeks I will drive to Italy and reunite with Mrs. D-USA as she flies into Venice. We will have two weeks together in Italy and then we return home.

I am very excited as I consider both Germany and Italy "home". I will try to take a ton of pictures and I should be able to put a big batch online on a close-to-daily basis. I will try to remember to make good use of my little video camera as well.

I hope everyone enjoys the crazy ramblings of a German-American back in Germany.

It's April again, which means that next week will mark the 13 year anniversary of my big trip across the ocean. 13 years ago my family sold almost all our belongings, packed what we could in a few suitcases, and left our home in Germany for the great unknown in the middle of Nowhere, Oklahoma. I normally have a tendency to get pretty sentimental during this time of year anyway, but I think last year was probably the worst year for me. We went on Vacation in Germany in 2008, which was the first time I had been back "home" in 11 years. The fresh memories of being "home" together with my annual attack of being home-sick just made April 2009 a bit more depressing than normal.

This year is already feeling better. Part of the reason is probably the fact that we are about to embark on the 2010 Edition of "The Kesler's Do Europe Tour". Despite the risk of renewing my sentimental thoughts with a fresh visit, I feel like the reality is setting in that I am now in a time of my life where I am able to visit "home" on a regular basis. It doesn't feel like "wait 10 years between visits" anymore, and we are still considering the viable option of moving to Germany at some point in the future.

To help prevent the case of “what if I hadn’t moved halfway across the world” that normally comes with this time of year I have also tried to take stock of the positive things that did in fact happen because I moved halfway across the world.

I better mention Mrs. D-USA as the #1 positive result of moving across the world, especially if I want to live long enough to ever see Germany again. I’m sure that there are plenty of nice German gals in the Old Country, but Mrs. D-USA brings wonderful purpose to my life. We met 1 year after I moved to the USA, and this year we will celebrate 7 years of marriage.

My original plan in Germany was to become a Chef after I graduated school. While I still maintain a passion for cooking and baking, my education and eventual career took an unexpected twist and I ended up as a nurse. In addition to becoming an RN I have spend time working as a medic on the ambulance and volunteering as a firefighter.

So during the last 7 years I have seen people die, and I have seen people survive despite the odds. I have seen people in horrific accidents that we worked up thinking that maybe they survive long enough for family to see them and maybe donate organs, only to see them walk through the door of the station a few months later to thank us.

I was able to be part of a team that kept houses from burning down, and I was able to walk through a house that we lost and save an old Bible. I got to chase after huge grass fires cowboy style while standing on the back of a brush truck, and I also got to make a stand in front of a grass fire with nothing but a shovel and a rake (mostly because the truck was stuck in the mud….).

I came very close to being deployed to Haiti to help take care of victims after the earthquake, and I had the honor of being a part of a military funeral. I worked my way through collapsed houses after a tornado hit our district, and tought 10 year old boys CPR (I honestly don’t know which one was harder there).

In non-work/volunteer related activities I have been able to travel across a decent part of the United States. I spend the weekend in a tent in the dessert at a rock concert, took road trips through New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California. I was chased by wild mules on Route 66, and was scared by UFO’s in the desert of Cali. I made many many friends and found a great church.

I passed a test which made my awesome level of smart official :p.

And we finally bought a house. I think in Germany home ownership is not very common, and many people own an apartment instead of an individual house. So now I am spending time trying to coax our sod from the brink of death, digging through clay, convincing Mrs. D-USA that an outdoor brick bread oven would be a great addition to the house, and trying to avoid the big pile of boxes in the garage that still need to be unpacked.

So all things considered, I don’t think there is much use thinking about the “what could have been’s” considering the eventful and rich life I have been able to enjoy here. And if my past is any indication, I think there are still many surprises left.

Since I hate writing about not writing, I will just admit that this site has been dead for a few months. I am sorry.

I have put my photography on hold for the last 4 months, just like this Blog I have been busy with work, a new house, Pirate Party business, and many other excuses. And it has also been freezing out there. I have driven by many places during the day and thought to myself, that would make a great picture! But as the full moons came and went, I just never made it out there. The last time I took pictures was right after Halloween, when I went to an old abandoned car wash just north of Edmond.

I had driven past that carwash for the last 4 years, it has always been there and I finally decided to spend some time there and photograph it. I think that this has been part of the reason why I have not had much urgency to go out and shoot, these places are old and abandoned. Nobody messes with them, they will be around forever. If I don't make it there this full moon, there will always be next month.

This week I drove by that car wash. The same car wash that I have driven by for the last 4 years, and where I finally spend a few nights five months ago. The car wash is gone. Torn down and burned down, with a "For Sale" sign for a commercial plot. Just like that a relict of the past is lost. No longer visible to the present, and forever lost to the future. A big part of the pictures is the sense of movement: the star trails in the sky, the cars driving past in the background, the trees and clouds moving. Time passes on, but the past stands still. Until the past gets torn down.

Seeing the empty lot makes me want to go out again and explore these places. It was a bit of a wake-up call, and a reminder that these old abandoned areas are not guaranteed to be around tomorrow. Now I have to make a list of places that I really need to visit...

Well, I have been very neglectful of this blog, and I don't see it springing to life in the near future. After reading most of the blogs on my blogroll it seems like I am not the only one suffering from this problem.

I have actually been more active in trying to bring the Pirate Party to the USA and more specifically to Oklahoma. After watching the elections in Europe and Germany I found that we are having a lot of the same issues here in the USA. I joined the German Pirate Party, I really like what they stand for and what they are trying to do.

I know that we are pretty much screwed in the USA with the two-party system, but I still think that the Pirate Party is a worthwhile project to pursue. So If you are interested in what I'm spending my time on I invite you to join me at the Oklahoma Pirate Party site. The news section is set up as a blog, and that has actually where I have been doing most of my activity lately.

In related news, we should be closing on our house towards the end of the month. I'm hoping that the adventure of being new homeowners might spring this blog to life.

I spend way to much of my free time over at IcanHasCheezburger, which is basically just a collection of funny pictures with funny captions. Every now and then I see a picture and a perfect caption comes to mind.

This time, the people have spoken and they agree:


see more Political Pictures

Submited by me and accepted for worldwide Internet fame. Where is my Okie Blog Award people!

Nothing like shameless self promotion!

Sure, I have been slacking in the posting department. And my fans keep on telling me that they miss my witty commentary (ok, so some of my family is missing my witty commentary (ok, so my mom is missing it)).

But just because I have hit a little slump, it does not mean that this Blog is dead. I don't know of better life support than an Okie Blog Award! Nominate me, vote for me, let me win, and my creative juices will start flowing like the OU Sooners Football Season.

But seriously, even though I have never even been nominated (maybe we need an award for Best Blog on Life Support) I do think that the Okie Blog Awards are lots of fun. I always find some more blogs to read, and it gets the Oklahoma Blog Community up and running.

So everyone, read up on your Okie Blogs, and get the nominations going.

Seeing how we were already embracing the European lifestyle lately with our trip aboard the train, we decided that we should embrace European concepts some more.

We took an impromptu trip to Dallas this week in search for some furniture, more specifically a coffee table. Now why would we go all the way to Dallas for a coffee table when we have umpteenth furniture store in the greater Oklahoma City Metroplex area? The answer lies with the fact that I have been bugging Mrs. D-USA for the last 12 months to embrace sleek Swedish design.

That's right, we took a trip to the nearest IKEA store. After breakfast and a long walk (1.5 hours) through the store we left with a nice quality and cheap coffee table. I do believe that Mrs. D-USA had a good time at the store, and I think we will go back with a rental truck after we buy our house. Mrs. D-USA has a more traditional/classic taste in home decor, and my taste is more modern. I am sure we will pull off a nice mix of classic/modern when we are done decorating the new house.

After the trip to IKEA we made a stop at the German Deli store. I have ordered from them online a couple of times before, so I figured if we are in the area anyway we might as well drive by there. Mrs. D-USA was nice enough to give me free reign throughout the store as an anniversary present (6 years on the 27th). So with a Swedish coffee table in the trunk, and German food in the backseat our European adventure came to an end and we made the long trip back to Oklahoma.

It appears that we are one step closer to being fully grown adults.

We recently decided to tempt fate and humbly approached the bank with the question if they might ever be so kind and allow us to purchase a home even though we do not have a first-born child to offer to them at this time.

After the "we need to review your situation further" e-mail, and the somber sounding voice-mail to give the Mortgage banker a call, I sucked it up and called the next morning. The happy news is that the bank has given us a "You can give us your first-born child later, but here is the money to buy a house to help facilitate the creation of said first-born child" decision. While we do not yet posses a home, we are the proud owners of a pre-approval letter from out bank.

But with the happy news of "You can buy a house" comes the non-happy "you have to look at hundreds of houses until you find one to buy" portion of the home purchasing process. During the last few years I have already come to the conclusion that Mrs. D-USA has become house crazy...

I will use this opportunity to give the single or renting married men out there some words of wisdom. We are all aware that after little girls learn to walk and become potty trained, they immediately start to plan their wedding. By the age of 5 little girls have managed to put together an unrealistic list of what their perfect husband will be like. By the age of 10 they will have the entire wedding ceremony planned out. By the time they are teens, any boy that they date will be subjected to mental scrutiny about how he will look in the wedding pictures, or if his sister will make an ugly bridesmaid. Now what happens when that girl finally gets married? Do you think all that crazy dedication to details will suddenly go away? Sorry buster, your new bride will simply channel all that crazy dedication to details into purchasing that perfect house to raise a family in.

So now we are spending countless hours on the internet taking virtual tours of houses. We are aimlessly driving through neighborhoods looking for flyers and open houses. We have to find the house that is not to big/small, new/old, close/far away, and many many many many other factors. Once we find that perfect house we have to hope that the inspection will pass, that the people will sell it to us, that nobody else will buy it out from underneath us, and who knows what else will go wrong.

I hope this quest will end soon, before I become crazy and decide to purchase a 3 bed/2 bath cardboard box to move into. I will cross my fingers, and hopefully we will not turn crazy.

Question for any married men that are further down the road than me:

After the wedding and buying the house, what is the next focus of crazy dedication to details that I can expect from Mrs. D-USA?

I have really been having a hard time posting on here. Part of the problem is that the most time I have to post is during slow periods at work. But even though we have super fast federal grade Interwebs at work, it takes the work computers almost 5 minutes just to log into this site.

I think another factor that has led to the slowdown of this site has been Facebook. It was a lot easier to post one big meaningful (at least to me) post every day or so when I wasn't posting 5 small status updates on Facebook daily.

Instead of making clever witty social commentary on this world famous contribution to the collective knowledge of the Internet, I now post stupid little updates like "I LOL'd" on Facebook.

I have been able to hold back and not touch Twitter with a ten-foot pole. I always hated MySpace, I just feel like I will have a seizure just by looking at that site. Talk about sensory overload. When Facebook first started I would always tell people that Facebook was just for amateurs who didn't know how to Blog. Now I feel like the relict of the mid-late 2000's for having a Blog while everybody else is acting all cool on Facebook. How old fashioned of me.

There is one thing I do prefer the Blog for: political/religious/morality topics. People know who I am on Facebook, and yes friends and family know me here. But the Blog does seem more anonymous to me. I try to avoid any real political discussion on Facebook, just because I don't want to have to turn around 4 hours later when I go to work and one of my Facebook friends starts bugging me about my political stand. I feel that old members of our Church group would have problems with my moderate/semi-liberal outlook on life and my feeling that the Conservative mainstream has lost touch with what Christianity and community is supposed to be about.

I also just miss being a goofball on here. I will make a solid effort to at least make a weekly post on here, but I would love to go back to making daily posts. But I don't want to post, just for the sake of posting. I hate when Blogs go through creative bumps and keep on posting anyway (even though I am doing a little of that myself), you can always tell that it is very forced writing instead of coming naturally. But from reading the Blogs on my handy list on the right side of this post it seems like I am not the only one who is having writers block.

I and the Mrs. took a little trip to Ft. Worth this weekend. As a little twist we had the opportunity to travel "Europe" style and take the train down to Texas and back.

It was fun to travel on the train and enjoy the scenery, the price is not that bad at $50 a person, but it takes about an extra hour to make it to Ft. Worth (a 4 hour trip one way). But for the price and the extra hour you get to take a nap, eat some snacks, read a bock, pretty much anything except pay attention to the road.

I and Mrs. D-USA made some quick comparisons between taking the train in Germany and taking the train here in the USA.

1) Speed: The Heartland Flyer has a max speed in the 60's in Oklahoma and only 50's in Texas. This seems similar to the local trains that we took, but Intercity and Intercity Express trains in Germany travel at around 120 mph. Like I said earlier, it takes longer to take the train than it does to drive in a car. It is more relaxing though.

2) Frequency: One train daily to Ft. Worth in the morning, and one train daily back to Oklahoma City in the evening. It would be nice if you could at least have a train going twice a day.

3) Boarding: Here is where it feels like Amtrak is weird. Maybe it is just the Heartland Flyer but here is the procedure that we had to follow.

1st we had to divide up by destination. Never mind that this is one train with 3 cars that only goes one way. Passengers who exit in Norman had to get on one car, Ardmore another car, and Ft. Worth another car. All the cars are connected, but if they caught you boarding another car you were in trouble. They also checked every ticked and photo ID at the door. The entire process took about 15-20 minutes.

In Germany you have less than 5 minutes to hop into the train, so you better make sure you get on the train at whatever door was closest and hope you were on the right train :-p. Your ticket was checked by the conductor once the train was moving, and if you didn't have one you got to experience the wrath of the DB.

4) Ticketing: Oklahoma City is an non-staffed station. So if you buy a ticket you have to either buy it online early enough for them to send you a ticket, or you have to book by phone, get a reservation number, pay the conductor on the train for half your ticket, then pay and pick up your other half when you get to a station that has real people in it. Germany just puts an automatic ticket machine in the lobby and you buy your ticket when you get ready to get on the train.

So here is my quick Heartland Flyer VS. Deutsche Bahn comparison. It really was a fun little trip, next time we would probably stay and spend the night in Ft. Worth. I still have to go to Houston sometime this year to have my German passport renewed, and after this little trip I am actually considering taking the train there just so I don't have to drive.

More pictures of the trip here.

On a related note, the Transportation Security Administration continues in its quest to protect German Railroad lines and after more than 3 years is still featuring a picture of the German ICE Train on its homepage.