weekend one

Friday July 7th

It wasn’t hard to wake up this morning after a night of drinking but it was still very early. We had to catch a 7:45 train to Norrdeich mole further north in Germany. Norrdeich Mole is on the north sea and is a very small island. It is known to have to lowest pollution in all of germany. One could tell this just by walking around, the island was a great change of pace. We saw a recovery spa for patients and got to see how the german medical system works. The recovery spa is for German citizens who need to rehabilitate themselves after injury/perform preventative medicine. It was more or less a free 5000 euro vacation for 3 weeks. I thought it was ridiculous that the government would send people to a 3 week day spa for free and give them sick leave. I wouldn’t want our government to do something like the german system because I don’t want to pay more in taxes. After leaving the clinic we went and swam in the north sea which is around 17C or roughly 65F. Niles said whoever gets in the water before him gets a free beer. At the sound of this Samantha and I stripped down into our underwear (she had a sports bra and nike shorts on and I had some fishing shorts luckily) and jumped on in. Soon after everyone else joined in and we all swam with our professor and niles. After air drying in the cold we decided to play ultimate Frisbee on the beach. Most of the Germans didn’t know what we were doing but we had lots of fun doing it. We then ate at a small place near the hostel which served fish and pizza. They were both amazingly good, as well as the local Driebles Alt bier. It is a darker beer but tasty like a cross between a shiner bock and Newcastle brown ale. After our long day we crashed early in our Hostel. There weren’t any towels provided so we all used a spare comforter to dry off with. I found it quite humorous.