Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 16:14:31 +0200
Subject: "The Periodic Adventures and the Adventurous Periodical of Marleigh," Issue 10

Hallo!

Umm... what to say...

Right, I played Dimplomacy with a bunch of guys on Saturday.  There was
Christian, Christian, Reiner, Mattias, Ingo, and me.  Those of you who
are familiar with the game I think I've already given a brief run-down. 
Suffice to say that I made a decent showing and we all had fun.  They
all spoke English, so I got a lot of chatting out of my system.  After
the game,  it was still nice out so we went for a walk.  They showed me
the university campus (they're all in the math department, so we played
in a conference in the math building), and it has worse art than MIT, if
you can believe it.  Of particular note was a large cylinder that took
up most of the sidewalk.  Really, you had to leave the sidewalk to walk
around it or walk single file.  There was a giant hole drilled through
it.  The point of this large, rusting sculpture is that you looked
through the hole and can see the cathedral in the distance.  Except you
can't see the cathedral, because there's a forest in the way.  To make
it worse, they can't move the sculpture to clear the sidewalk because
then you can't gurentee that you would be able to see the cathedral
through the hole, if the trees weren't there.  You can't guarentee this
because the trees are in the way, so you can't check by looking through
the hole at the new location.  Silly people!

After the walk, we played a bit of Netmaze, which is a multi-player
shooting game where you are these large spherical smiley faces and try
to zap the other players.  Ingo refered to these big spheres as
"Smarties."  And really, if smarties had faces, they'd look like this. 
Then we went to a pizza parlor, where many of the guys often went. 
There was this old guy who worked there who was speaking Italian with a
Serbian accent (at first I just thought my German wasn't working that
evening.)  The food was really good, and the old guy kept harrassing the
people he knew.  It was a good evening.

The week was fairly dull, though I had my first dance lesson last
night.  Christian and I went, we were one of 4 couples (and by far the
worst) who were taking the competition training.  It was taught by yet
another Christian.  There are Christians all over the place, they're
starting to outnumber the Stefis.  We danced ok together, though our
frame needs work.  I wanted Dave there to tell his infamous Glass of
Guiness story (well, it's infamous to those on the MIT ballroom dance
team).

German Word of the Week
der Kreisel = top (as in the child's toy), or a waltz/quickstep move 
(spin turn)

I've never been really into standard ballroom dancing.  The music is
terrible, and I could never find a partner.  Now I have a partner, and
I'm finally starting to learn it formally, so I'll know what the names
of the moves are.  Of course, I'm learning this in Germany, so the names
of the moves aren't all the same as the English names.  Some are (chase,
link, impetus are all the same), but others aren't, like Kreisle, Links
Trio, and Rechts Trio.  I'm going to come back to the states and need a
translator.

Honor and Glory...
	to Mom, for coming to visit me!
	to Richard, for offering to bring me a cot for mom to sleep on.
Dishonor and Notoriety...
	to Ralf, for being home the one week I actually had work, and it all
	   depended on his presence
	to playing Russia in Diplomacy

I'm off to Frankfurt in a half hour, to go meet my mom.  She's staying
with me for two weeks.  Perhaps I'll have her write the next one of
these.

Tschuess!

Marleigh