I just got back from 5 days in the SW corner of Germany. Basically I had my "spring break"...the temperature there was 10 or 11 degrees celsius, instead of zero, and a couple days we had some lovely sun. My friend Laura studies at the University there, which is super-old. It's in a mostly-catholic, wine-drinking part of Germany, with low unemployment...very different from Berlin. Anyway, Laura had been at UNC for a year, studying English. She's very fluent! I met her and a bunch of her friends. (I also went on a side-trip into France, to the city of Colmar, but that will get a separate entry.) The quirkiest thing I experienced was the Basel airport, into which I flew. The airport straddles the national boundary between France and Switzerland (and Germany is just a few
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