Germany

barebones, as yours truly really ought to be reading for her essays and presentations.

no troubles getting to mainz. hung out at will's the first night - first with him and then with a movie when he headed out to collect emmons.
and then friday we slept pretty late, then went to the farmers market and the cathedral. made lunch at will's and then went back out to the old town tried to see the church with all chagall windows, but it was closing, so we just got to look around for a couple of minutes. wandered around for a while, windowshopping and such, and trying the young, sparkling wine that's mainz's specialty. then headed back to wills for dinner and hanging out.
saturday we got up, had breakfast, and headed for st. stephen's (the chagall church) but there was a wedding, so we proceeded to the zitadell and the ruins of the roman theatre, with a very pleasant detour through a playground with a windmill slide. then visited st. somebody's, which is a baroque church used by german priests to practice before they actually qualify as priests. then there was lunching on traditional german food in a traditional german restuarant (spaiglekase (sp?) for me, gulash for emmons, sausage for will). went to see the rhine after that, then one of the original city gates. then we wandered around the uni for awhile to see where will studies and such. then back to will's for more dinnering and catching emmons up on firefly.
sunday was a comedy of errors in transportation, starting with the tram (we forgot that the schedule'd be special due to it being sunday and all). wait, actually starting with me screwing up the alarm clock the night before such that we got up an hour early. which turned out to be a good thing, because if we hadn't i'd probably not have caught the tram i needed to get to the bus to go to the airport. but still. got to the airport just in time, but the computer wouldn't recognize my confirmation number, so several desks, an internet cafe, and a whole pile of panic later and i was on a flight to london rather than glasgow. it being sunday there were train diversions and fewer services, so there were no seats and for a good hour or so between york and darlington all the aisles and end-of-carriage areas were packed like cans of sardines. oh, and at some point i lost my eurail and britrail passes (britrail about to expire, so no big deal, but eurail completely unused and now requiring an insurance claim).
but i got to meet an irish farmer/farm equipment trader who was coming over to ely for an equipment sale by way of market research on the way from stansted to petersborough. his last name is blackburn, he's from shannon, and he has a daughter in second year at uni in limerick majoring in enviro sci. he raises beef, mostly little local cattle but also angus, on a small scale. the recent revocation of the ban on brazilian beef (apparently some enterprising brazilians have found a way around the foot and mouth troubles that got them banned) and the recession are cutting into farming's already tight margins over here. he worries that his daughter won't be able to get a job in the current market, which set us to talking about pollution monitoring and green job corps. he remains sceptical. we also talked about how, in his opinion, the beurocracy is killing britain. apparently there're enough folks working at the farm bureau or wtv to have a bureaucrat spend three weeks with each individual farmer. 'course he also thinks that the banking crisis - which he likened to letting a store sell the same product several times over and expecting things to turn out alright - is partially responsible.