October 8, 2002 - Page 2

The great weekend we spent in south-central Germany proved Oktoberfest to be quite expendable in the end. In two days, the three of us witnessed four extremes of German life and history: the fairytale castle Neuschwanstein nestled on the Alps’ edge, the grounds of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, medieval charm inside the stone walls of Rothenburg, and the busy, reconstructed streets of postwar Frankfurt. To better enjoy the beautiful Bavarian countryside (much prettier than France), we elected to rent a car for the weekend; who wouldn’t want to take a new Mercedes up the Autobahn? Well, someone who hasn’t driven a manual transmission in nearly 20 years, namely my father. Needless to say, the commuters of the greater Munich area were not sad to see the Beatons and their sticky clutch leave town.

Beginning the mini-week on Monday was more difficult than usual, as midterms loomed over our heads, but the 10 days in the British Isles I can look forward to provide a significantly better incentive for work than does a Friday evening trip to Applebee’s in Lexington. Making the rapid ingestion of 3,000 years of world history even more bearable was the blitzkrieg delivered by my beloved St. Louis Cardinals to the World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks in baseball’s first round of playoffs. This is one piece of American life I don’t intend to cast aside regardless of where I might be visiting on any given weekend. Now if I can only find a place to watch some baseball with my fish and chips…