Obligatory End of the Year Post

It seems to be a requirement that if you have a blog that you have to do an end of the year post, so here is mine. A lot has happened in the last year. A lot has changed. Graduating from university in May was a big enough deal on its own, never mind everything thing else. It was a little more than 10 months ago that I started interviewing for my job. After hours of phone interviews and a trip to Scotland, I accepted the position in mid March. Then all the visa issues came up. I studied for and took the LSATs while all of that was going on. There were trips to Hilton Head and Orlando. I finally moved to Scotland in the first couple of days in September. I was homeless for a couple of days too. I've been to London twice, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, and drove through Bratislava quickly. In 2009, I got to meet a lot of interesting people and go to a lot of interesting places. It was an exciting year and hopefully 2010 is even better.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my readers. I'm back in the US right now after flying home Tuesday. Its just as cold, if not a little colder, than Scotland. Looks like I didn't luck out.

The next morning after flying home, I had a dentist appointment to go to. Afterwards, I-83 was backed up and the on ramp was full so I had some time to kill. There is a brand new McDonalds nearby so I stopped there to eat and wait for the traffic to start to move again. If you ever need a reminder that you're in America, stop at a McDonalds during lunch hour...

Käsekrainer

Another thing I had to eat in Austria was a Kasekrainer. It is a klobasa sausage that has some cheese in it. It is served in a baguette that is cut open at the one end. Some mustard is added as the sausage is slid in.

Langos

In Vienna, I discovered Langos, which quickly became one of my favorite festival foods. A langos is a large, fairly flat piece of dough that is deep fried. It is then coated with a garlic butter spread. They're great and I had two of them from Vienna's Christmas Market.

The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York

Here is a another Christmas classic:

Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

This has become one of my favorite Christmas songs, but the video is really strange/creepy. Why he is even trying to dance? Who decided that Santa was the way to go? The Santa is really creepy and not just in an awkward 80s kind of way. Check out the kids reaction at 2:50. Also, whats up with the weird female adult-sized elf that shows up at a couple of places? Is she wearing makeup or is she just that ugly?

Videos from Munich

I took a couple short videos with my digital camera of the Glockenspiel at Munich's Neues Rathaus. Everyday at the top of a couple of select hours, the clock has some mechanical figures that put on a show.