Bremen

Well as much as I enjoyed the UK, its a relief to be out of it. Atleast there is sun here in Germany! It's a much bigger cultural difference aswell. I'm not used to traffic on the right hand side. It seems much stranger here than my brief trip to the US too. I have immediate recations to things such as thinking buses are driverless and or going backwards before remembering. I've also been kindly provided with a bicycle by Edith (My former flatmate who I'm staying with) and have thus far managed to stay alive, but its possibly more by luck than anything else. Though the biking trails are good here, it seems like cars actually look for bikes before turning and respect the right of way. So much so that I've had cars try to give way to me as i was stopped on the sidewalk looking around being lost.

The language barrier is also interesting. It's my first time in a non english speaking country. I had plans to learn the basis from the lonely planet european phrase book that i've been carrying round with me since i left. However several weeks ago when I went to find the german section, I discovered it had been replaced with a gap in the book binding - I did just find the book in my old sharehouse so I guess I can't complain too much. So this has left me with knowing next to no german. I realise almost everyone speaks english, but I don't feel right just launching into english, so it was a bit awkward the first day. Now however I bought the Lonely planet Germany book, which features a small phrase section which ought to be enough to get me by.