Though this reminds me that I remember getting my first skis. But don’t remember learning to ski in particular. Skis and snow has just always been there. I think I know where they are still today.
I was in Salzburg back in 95 with a HS exchange program. We were traveling around and having a great time. That day we went up to the castle kinda near closing time. The entry booth was unmanned so our group walked on in.
We walked around, saw lots of the castle and the views over the city were enchanting. Most of our group left, but about six of us were still in the castle later. It turns out they close and lock the main gates once all of the tourists are out. Since we didn’t get tickets in, we apparently went uncounted and got locked inside.
On my my buddies came running up to me as I was sitting on a battlement being morose (summer fling issues) and declared with alarm “we’re locked in!” so I jogged to the gate with him.
This is pre cell phone and we weren’t great at German. I told him to rally the rest of our stragglers and stood by the gate to think of how to get out. As the group was walking down the path to me, I heard keys jangling outside the gate.
After a moment the smaller postern door opened. Standing outside was a kid about 13 years old with a sack of groceries. I said entschuldigung and blocked the door open. Our group all piled out through the gate and ran off down the road while the kid just stood there looking shocked.
That was the first time I accidentally got locked in a castle in Europe. They’re remarkably effective at keeping people both in and out, both are issues I’ve had to deal with at various times.
Not as often as I’d like, but it’s happened a few times in my roaming the world.
I also had this short stint as an illegal immigrant in the UK. No one (not even me) noticed that my passport was expired before I entered the country. The dumb part was that it was noticed as I tried to fly home, but my home country changed the rules a couple of weeks before then to only allow valid passports back. So… I couldn’t immediately go home and I didn’t have a valid visa in the UK.
In an unrelated face, did you know that embassies often close at 3pm? That’s really early when you’re racing from Heathrow on the Tube and around London trying to get a valid passport for a flight the next day.
Dr Angela Collier, acollierastro, does really fun casual conversational videos on the topic that explain topics in a good approachable way. They're not going to be an efficient way to learn, but they've got a pleasant vibe
I was in Germany working on a cruise ship that was being finished up in the Bremerhaven dry dock when I was 19, it was after work and a bunch of us went out and got drunk as we did and while coming back after all our fun, we passed by a roll-up door that had “einfahrt” painted in huge block letters on it. One of the people in our group looks at it, points at yells “I fart too, but I don’t brag about it!”
Definitely the highlight of the trip.
I also remember hanging out at the bar that was on the docks having dinner and some of the other people on my ship were trying to ask where the bathroom was and the waitress and bartender didn’t understand a single way they were putting it until the guy was like “Ok, I’m sorry this may be a little crude but it’s the only way left I know how I might ask… Where can I take a scheisse?” Turns out they call it “water closet” (bathroom is just labeled “WC”) and that was the one term none of us had ever heard before.
Placeholder comment because I need to go back to sleep. Someone remind me and I’ll tell y’all about rescuing my brother from a maybe kidnapping in Mexico.
Okay, so, me and my brother visited Mexico. It was a fairly small town, not a major place like Cancun. Had an amazing time. Ended up meeting these two bartenders that we became friends with. Their boss, who legit made everyone he met call him El Jefe, would come by and steal their tips and get drunk. We were there for a week. On the last night, I’m on the other side of the town (10 minute walk away) trying to seal the deal with this dude I’d met, and my brother was at the little bar hanging with our bartender friends. I get a call from him, panicked, as he whisper yells that El Jefe asked him to come with him to another bar he owns. He’s in the car, El Jefe is flying down the street, he’s doing cocaine off the dash. Please come get him at this other bar. He sends me one of those location pins that update in real time.
I tell dude that I’ll help him finish later, and take off to rescue my brother. He’s only like 5 minutes away, and has stopped moving. I go into the club, and start looking for him, but he’s not there. I’m asking folks if they’ve seen him, and trying to get closer to his pin. Finally, I find his phone, there’s some random ass dude who has it, and when I tell him I’m gonna need that phone, he tries to act like it’s his. I explain to him it’s my brother’s. He acts like he’s gonna swing at me, so I drop El Jefe’s name. That, combined with the fact that he’s 5’nothing and I’m 6’3 and near 300 pounds convinced him of the error of his ways. He gave me the phone, and I moved on in my search. I talked to the bartender, who explained that El Jefe had been there a few minutes ago, and had left some coke for me because my brother told him I was meeting them there (neither I nor my brother do coke). I asked could he tell me where they were headed. He gave me an address about a mile away. I took off.
I arrive at the house, by this point it is nearly 2 in the morning. It looks like just a house, but the lights are on so I knock on the door. I am greeted by a woman with the largest breasts I have ever seen in real life. They’re enormous. And she’s topless. Now, I don’t speak Spanish. I know enough to ask where the bathrooms are, and (I smokes at the time) where I could smoke at. Other than that, it was Google translate and gesturing for me.
However, I did not need Spanish to understand that this woman was a prostitute, and was very keen on the young American in front of her (or, at least his wallet). I tried to explain I’m trying to find my brother, but she wasn’t having it. Grabbing at my crotch, trying to pull me into one of the bedrooms off the (very nicely decorated for a brothel) living room. As my actions at this moment were less Liam Neeson and more Jerry Stiller, I decided to just come clean with her with one of the only Spanish words I knew “yo soy Mariposa!”
Now, I know that’s a slur, and I’m sorry if it upsets anyone. But at the time, it was the only thing I could think of. An hour before hand, the phrase had been… Relevant.
It was like a magic spell. Her entire attitude changed, and she was finally able to listen to my words. Once we cobbled together enough Spanglish to understand each other, I gave her the coke from the club as a thanks, and headed off to find my brother where she told me El Jefe had taken him next.
I arrive back at the night club I’d gotten the coke from, and I see El Jefe’s car this time. It’s parked in an alley behind the club, against an outdoor stair case. I go up the stairs and open the door to a private little fucking rave on the top floor of the club. They’ve got their own bar up here, and if I remember correctly, you can’t get from one floor to the other from within the club.
I see them at last! My brother looks mortified, trying to get to the entrance, and keeps getting pulled back by El jefe, and El jefe dancing with fucking scar face levels of coke on his face. It’s insane. I go up to them, and El jefe is all excited to see me, asks if I want some more coke, do I wanna party, he has a pretty boy all picked out for me if I want.
I tell him no thanks, we’ve gotta go. He gets pissy and says I’m being rude, stay and party. I tell him we’re leaving, and before I can react, he swings at me in all hiscoke fueled glory, completely missing me by a country mile. I stand up and tower over this man and explain we have a plane to catch in the morning. He finally let us go, and we head out.
Our plane the next day was delayed, so we ended up spending two more days there. In that time, El Jefe apologized for swinging at me, and gave us a tour of some of the apartments he rents.
We still keep in touch on Whatsapp, and he invites us to his enormous birthday party every year. He also says he’ll rent me an apartment there if I want to do private security for him. He talks to my brother more than me, though. He really liked him, and he calls me El Gigante. He really, really wants us both to come work for him. From what I gather, he basically runs the entire town we were in.
The first was an exchange student from Ecuador who attended my high school. She actually cried. The other time she told me she cried was when she started dreaming in English instead of Spanish.
The second was a girl I knew in college who had moved up from Florida to attend Ohio State. The first snow that year was that dry snow that blows around, but there was enough of it that everything was covered.
Walking back to our dorm, she kept gathering up handfuls, trying to make a snowball, and she asked if we could make a snowman. We told her it wouldn’t work because this is not snowman snow, and she was mystified. “There’s snowman snow??”
First time we had that good, heavy, wet, sticky snow, we took her out and made a 7-foot-tall snowman haha
I wonder what my sisters exchange students would have said if they had encountered snow on their visit. They were here during the summer, wearing jumpers and hoodies and still freezing…
Two of my favorites are already up. Here’s some more.
Professor Carolin Crawford’s Gresham stint is my all-time favorite astronomy lecture series. It’s somewhat outdated, especially on the topic of Pluto, but fundamentally, it’s outstanding.
I grew up with a lot of snow, skiing, etc in the PNW. As an adult I moved to Palm Springs, where my daughter was born. She and my friends had never seen snow, so one day I thought it’d be great to show everyone. We took the tram up to the top of Mt San Jacinto, where there was about a foot of fresh snow.
I loved watching them marvel at how oddly cold and bright the ground was. They tried and failed to copy me making snowballs, like it was some alien magic trick. I ran ahead and made a sliding jump down a small slope, then stopped and turned around, waiting for them to follow. They did, one at a time, and every one of them slipped and dramatically wiped out trying to navigate the slope. Gods, they just kept. coming. down.
I was horrified that I’d accidentally set them up to go careening everywhere, but the sight was too hilarious and I could only double over and belly laugh as they all crashed about like lemmings on ice!
Noralities is a girl who makes video essays about anime, and they’re not trivial opinions They involve writing, stereotypes, romance, society, and stuff. She’s done her homework.
Love Geerling and Rossmann, but I simply don’t understand the appeal of Levy; he is so over the top. Not that I would downvote this though, he is just not my style, and there are many good chess channels since the boom. Chessbrah, Anna Cramping, Hikaru, Banzea, and Hanging Pawns all come to mind.
Anna’s content, especially with parents GM Cramling and GM Bellón López is so fun and wholesome.
To boil down Kyle Hill as simply debunking conspiracy theories is so sad… He’s a science communicator and makes awesome educational content. Occasionally, he debunks a conspiracy or two.
Funnily enough I just got done with his video about the “nukes aren’t real” conspiracy theory. Of course that’s just one in his long Half Life Histories series which is mainly about the science and not conspiracies at all.
Lol, I used to hang out with Jenna way back in HS. I knew she was writing books, didn’t know she had a YouTube channel and/or was successful at it. That’s cool to hear.
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