The date of the feast is occasionally moved by church authorities when March 17 falls during Holy Week; this happened in 1940 when Saint Patrick’s Day was observed on 3 April in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and is happening again in 2008, being observed on 15 March. March 17 will not fall during Holy Week again until 2160.

What the hell do I know? Munich is a weird place, and apparently the German-Irish here don’t give much of a damn about Palm Sunday, because St. Patty’s Day here happened on Sunday, March 16. So it goes.

I myself was working most of the evening, and didn’t end up getting home till around 11:30pm. I checked my phone and had some missed calls from friends out drinking, but since I’m a little strapped for cash at the moment, I figured screw it. But then I read a text from a Scotsman I’d met on Saturday, and borrow a friend’s phone to call him and check up on him.

I learn that Monk, as his friends call him, is of course completely wasted and got separated from all his bros at the Hofbräuhaus. He didn’t know where anyone was, but had made it back to his hostel, which has a bar on the ground floor. He was, in typical Celtic fashion, drowning his sorrow with strong beer. Seeing as this was his last night in Munich, I couldn’t leave him hanging like that. Cue Team America.

I rally Jesse and Alex to come out with me for just a single beer, just to bid farewell to Monk. I really hit it off with Monk on Saturday, when I met him while I was working, and I know figured he’d really get a kick out of our coming out to treat him to a round.

Things did not go as planned, however. It turns out Monk was so grateful that we came, he bought us all a round. And then another. All the way to five. Apparently the pound sterling is doing damn fine against the already rather spunky euro, and to Monk it was like buying candy—in more ways than one, I suppose. By about the fourth round or so, a few of his band of Scots come stumbling back to the hostel, and drinks are once again liberally distributed.

So Jesse, Alex, and I ended up limping back through the doorway to our own place at 6am. I had to be up at 9am to head to work today. To Scots!

For the record, that’s Jesse on the left.

Now, that’s all well and good, but the thing that really amazed me about this St. Patty’s Day was the augur I saw in the sky, after hearing that I had off work due to heavy rainfall. Behold.

Is that not the most gorgeous freaking rainbow you’ve ever seen? That sucker appeared and remained vibrant for about 20 minutes, I’m sure long enough for someone to snag the pot of gold or keg or Guinness or whatever the hell lives at the end of a rainbow.

I’ll be completely honest and say that I spent the rest of the day in a state of extreme anxiety, half-expecting to hear the Gjallerhorn ring out across Munich. I didn’t hear it, though.

Today I awoke to birds chirping so loudly I could hear them through the shut balcony doors. I braced myself for a gust of cold wind, telling myself the chill would be worth it, to hear those birds better, and jerked open the door. The air outside was warmer than that in my room, and I’d left the heat on overnight.

It was quickly decided amongst those present in the building that a trip to the Englischer Garten was in order. So we gathered up the necessary supplies: a frisbee, an American football, empty soda bottles filled with tap water, and a few blankets. Then we were on our way.

After many hours of cavorting across the rather muddy fields, leaping and slipping and wheezing from a lazy winter, we took a break to see off the few people who had to head home and shower before going to work. The day winded down as the sun lolled about before setting, and we washed the mud off our bare feet in the river running through the Garden.

On the way home, I came across a painted rock and it captivated me.

I hope this rock imparted to you but a fragment of the joy it did to me. I was thoroughly mocked for bothering to stop to take this picture, but I’ve just founded a religion under whose tenets anyone who doesn’t appreciate this rock goes straight to hell. And by “hell” I mean they don’t get to see any cool painted rocks while they’re just walking around.

Other things later. Today was too much fun. Take a look at the full, albeit brief, album.

I still have a vivid memory of drinking in a beer garden with some friends, enjoying the glorious late July sunshine in the park, when hordes of patrons suddenly started scrambling for their bikes and heading home. Whole tables were freed up in a matter of minutes. (I think empty tables in a beer garden in July is a sign of the apocalypse.) My friends and I thought that maybe the beer garden was closing soon, but quickly realized the absurdity of such a notion.

Within minutes black clouds rolled in overhead and there was an epic downpour. We tried to join the masses huddling under the safety of the Chinese Tower in the beer garden, but the crowd was packed so tightly we had to press against people to avoid the sheets of water cascading off the upper levels, making a really cool waterfall inches from our chests.

Check out this picture, taken earlier this year, on an afternoon that couldn’t decide whether to be pleasant or apocalyptic.

This morning, Jesse comes knocks on my door and wakes me. I told whoever it was to come on in, and when Jesse sees me still in bed, he asks whether I missed the storm this morning. Upon hearing that yes, I did miss it, he asks again in disbelief, describing the intensity of the storm, and how there’s no way I could have slept through it. He caught his tongue on that last part, as everybody here knows I can sleep through just about anything.

Apparently there were powerful winds beating the building all day, following by pouring rain, then snow for about 10 minutes, and finally glorious sunshine. I got up and joined him on my balcony and sure enough, there was snow in the courtyard, which melted quickly in the golden daylight and vanished within the hour.

I thought this was an interesting occurrence. Later this afternoon, however, I learned that Germany had a freaking hurricane today. This makes sense. Last night, while watching a movie in my room with a bunch of friends, the wind started to pick up. It got so bad that the pair of jeans I had hanging on a nail out on my balcony were completely horizontal, hanging by a single beltloop. More pictures of the devastation here (article in German).

Fortunately, being all the way at the south of Germany, there’s no discernible damage here. But I watched the news with a friend today, and there’s bad flooding and destruction up north.

Oh, well. I’ll go back to enjoying this tranquil Bavarian evening, balcony doors open and my curtains stirring softly.

Unreal or what? After showering, I was able to stand on my balcony in just my boxers and let the sun warm me. For the past several weeks it’s been pleasant enough that I can try that, but since the floor of my balcony is smooth bricks, I usually freeze my bare feet pretty quickly and have to hop back inside in a hurry. This weekend, though, the bricks actually warmed my feet.

What the hell happened to that Bavarian winter I was promised?

That picture was taken in November, damn it!

Things went a little differently today. I talked for a while with the woman, the good Frau Brendel, she reviewed the letter, sighed several times, and eventually pulled out some forms and placed them on the counter in front of me. They were contract renewal forms, not a new contract for a new room in another building. (There were several of them, because I was picking some up for Jesse and Carl, too, as we’re all in the same boat.)

This is a good thing. It seems that as long as we get this paperwork back by first thing Monday morning, we’ll be able to stay in this dorm, and not have to move.

As Carl pointed out when I informed him of the good news, it’s intriguing to ponder what happened to those students who were supposedly to be moving into our dorm when we got kicked out. But as I said to Carl, they can go to hell, and move in somewhere else, because ain’t nobody taking my balcony.

The branches are beautiful against the sky.

[audio:disengagement-bridge.mp3]

Insomnium – Disengagement

(Beyond many a weary league
Where dimming light gives birth to evening stars)
At the treelines of distant, devouring woods
Await my demons, embodying this longing

How beautiful is that?

I hope the rest of the world finds a way to sleep this soundly.

Almost all English-language calendars, going by astronomy, state that winter begins on the winter solstice, and ends on the spring equinox. Calculated more by the weather, it begins and ends earlier….

Can’t argue with that, can you? So, winter. It looks good on this city.

Took that on an auxiliary campus for my university, where I have my e-society class. I have to train across down, then walk a couple kilometers from the train station. On the day I took this pic, I blasted lots of Viking metal through my headphones, as I scanned the treelines for armies in lying wait, ready to charge across the snow and do battle before attending the day’s lectures.

That’s a beautiful one I’m sure will wind up in liner notes for an album of mine one day. Yes, I still believe CDs—er, albums—will have liner notes. Geez, getting off track here. Check out this picture of Marienplatz at night, all spruced up for a Christmas market. (I think this was on the walk home from getting my glasses fixed.)

And this last one I took from my balcony, looking toward the campus buildings. It was a beautiful snowstorm.

Now excuse me while I go listen to metal about snow.

The leaves have changed color so much since I got up that it looks like green paint washing off, showing the rust underneath. I’ll try to go to the park this weekend and take pictures of the changes. Today I was going to take lots of architecture and lighting pictures, to show off the pimp building designs on campus, but without sunlight, they wouldn’t be quite as impressive.

Or maybe they would. Who cares? The weather is beautiful.

No classes today, because it’s a holiday. So I’m going to take it very, very easy. I heard talk yesterday of a “Germany versus America” Fußball/football rematch, the first instance of which took place on Sunday. Don’t worry: we didn’t actually play Germany versus the U.S. in American-style football, as that would have been pretty absurd. Likewise, the Germans gave us a Moroccan player during the soccer match. A fatal mistake.

Speaking of Sundays and holidays in such close conjunction is very natural to me now. Nothing is open here on Sundays. Can’t even go to the grocery store, let alone down to an electronics store or a CD shop. On Sundays, people go to the park and lie out in the sun and drink and laugh in discrete little German packets of pleasure expression. Leisure time is taken very seriously in this country, and it’s something I’m already used to and cherishing. It seems that work time is generally pretty balls-to-the-wall, but come 5 o’clock, it’s quitting time.

So I’m going to chill out here on my balcony in the sun until I burn. I’d take a picture of my luxuriant lifestyle, but my room, and even now my balcony, are so messy I wouldn’t post photos of them. I’d offer to clean it and then make photographs, but, well, today’s a holiday, you see….