Hallo Freuden! Wie gehts? George here. Welcome to my weekly experiment/newsletter called What is the Information? where I share with you what I’m doing (usually parenting, reading, writing, working and thinking). Thanks for reading, hope you are all doing fine!
So we’re back from Germany. It was the trip of a lifetime.
This is our first family vacation to Europe As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we chose Germany to get my two high schoolers interested in my plan to have them attend college in Europe, preferably Germany. On that front, I think we accomplished our mission. My children came back with an appreciation of the country, the language, the culture, and way of life. I asked them several times during the trip if they could see themselves in Germany while studying at university the answer was an unequivocal Yes!
We were staying with a friend who was kind enough to accommodate us in her apartment. While it was cozy with the eight of us (her and her 2 children and us, with our 3) we made it work.
We walked nearly 46 miles in 9 days!
This was an eye-opener. As I write the newsletter tonight, I’m about 10,000 steps away from my high point in Germany. It’s forced healthfulness to walk 18,000 steps in a day. This happened because of our 11 minute daily walk to the public transportation and our subsequent walks to and from where ever we would go.
We got our fill of the art and culture by visiting Castle Neuschwantstein, Deutsches Museum, Alte Pinakothek. We were able to eat Mexican, Korean, and of course, traditional Bavarian food. We shopped for groceries at some of the local grocery stores like Lidl, Edeka and REWE. We learned (again) that most shops are closed on Sundays, so we had to buy what we planned to cook and eat on Sunday or else find a place to eat out.
We visited not only Munich but Nurnburg, Salzburg, and Schwangau where you can visit Neuschwanstein. Jet lag was tough - because of it, we left for Salzburg too late to visit the Hohensalzburg, the castle overlooking the city. Lesson learned about the cost of sleeping in.
Of course, I stopped by the Munich Used English Bookstore. It’s a non-German thing in Munich but is part of the establishing the city’s international bonafides. While on the exploration to find the place, we ran into a cafe with a pet cat, and the bookstore had a rather large pet dog enjoying the sun peaking into the door about 3 steps in.
On our way home, I had heard there was an incident at the Oscars…from Germany it took me a day to figure it out, then the memes started…
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As if daily writing and publishing wasn’t enough. I’ve signed up to podcast about IRS tax debt too. I’m a little behind in my onboarding because of our trip but I next week, I’ll be able to post a link to some of that content too. If you’re interested check out, Espree Devora on Linkedin, she’s put together a cohort based course that blows me away with how much value she’s provided.
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Word of the week: Irredentist
I ran into this word when my Twitter timeline was blowing up about the war in Ukraine. This word was used to describe Putin’s views about how Ukraine should be a vassal state of Russia as in the Soviet era.
Find of the week: Not a baseball fan but this is gold!
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When’s the last time you took off for 11 days? Did you get bored? Did you worry about work? Were you itching to get back to work? Comment below.
And think someone might be interested to hear the opinions of a husband, father, tax debt studier, voracious reader, and continuous writer (and soon to be podcaster?)
That’s all for now…sorry I’ve missed the last two issues. Thanks for reading.
-George
Congrats on the podcast, that sounds awesome!