what a jam packed day. for starters, i could barely sleep last night, adjusting to the 9-hour difference...waking up suddenly at 3:30am. later on, jumped on the 9am train up to Bielefeld to visit Tanyel...what a great train ride. i love riding the train in europe..despite the kinda icky, rainy day it was, it was so beautiful to ride along the Rheine and pass through places like Cologne and Bonn. I freaked out briefly while changing trains in Mainze as my next train was 20 minutes late...but I wasn't sure of that..and I ran around the place asking people "sprechen zie English?!" with a "neine!" in return most of the time....I finally arrived in northern Germany about 5 hours later to the greeting of Tanyel, whom I haven't seen in FOUR years, now that I think about it. It's amazing...I never thought I'd ever have this opportunity to see him again, in his own country. We went back to his apartment where he cooked me a fantastic meal of duck salad, an eggplant dish and home-made tiramisu...and then we took a nice walk around the city, going up to some fort to get a nice view of the town....a short but pleasant and worthwhile visit. He pointed out old parts of the city that weren't destroyed by WWII...sadly, most of the city center area was destroyed so the architecture there is all very new. It amazes me still how a war that seems so distant in the past and known only to me by history books continues to reverberate in all of Germany. Tanyel mentioned to me how it is only now, with our generation, that the Germans can say that they are German to foreigners without feeling any shame or guilt. I wish we had had more time to just sit down in his living room, sipping wine and enjoying each other's company and conversation....so after all that, took a 7pm train back to Idar-Oberstein...where I got back close to midnight...and now I have to prepare for the long drive over to Prague tomorrow...can't wait. It should be a beautiful drive.