Back from Germany

I got back from Germany Friday. I have updated the photogallery with the pictures I took. Its very interesting to be in a city whose buildings are older than the US. While I have never been to New York it is also nice to be in a town with a massive public transportation (they even had bicycle lanes in the road).

I do wish that our education system was close to the German education system. Most of the people over there spoke English (better than most Americans). I had to laugh a couple of times when, in meetings, they would apologize because the only English they learned was from High School but then kept on talking in flawless English. I had a semester of Spanish when I was in school and forgot most of it before the next semester started.

I won't be mad about the price of gasoline again. The cost over in Germany was 1.08 Euro's per Liter for cheap unleaded gasoline. That works out to about 5.82 dollars per gallon. And with the Kyoto treaty they are saying the price could go higher.

An interesting thing about the Kyoto treaty is that for each trip you have to pay the cost of cleaning up the environment. While I am wholly for that the problem with the treaty is that it applies differently to different countries. So developing countries don't have to pay anything while US and Europe would have to pay out the nose. If the US signed the treaty you would see even more jobs leaving the US to countries that don't have to pay anything to clean up the environment. So while I wish we had something like the Kyoto treaty I am glad we didn't sign it until its fair and equal across the board.

I'm just getting over the jet lag. Fortunatly it was a short trip.