fing krouts

hi ya.

just got in to austria tonight. gorgeous place. we left amsterdam this morning and flew to munich. from there we were going to take a train, but it was like a 5 hour ride and would have cost about 70 euro apiece. we decided to check out rental car thinking maybe it'd be cheaper. it was only 90 euro total to get to austria since they had an austrian car in their fleet ready to come back. so we got a peugot diesel wagon and i got to take it for a spin on the autoban. or however it's spelled. come to find out the autoban is only segments of speed limitless fun and there are 80 km/h zones here and there. so the first one we come accross i'm comfortably making time a 135 km/h. not wrecklessly fast at all. i think that's somwhere in the upper 90's is all. i'm in the middle of a good conversation with carter in the passenger side and the i notice there are blue flashing lights right behind me. we had bags stacked up so i couldn't see very well. i don't know how to pull over in germany and wasn't sure what an unmarked bmw with blue lights was so i got over and let him pass. he slowed down and forced me off the road from ahead. then this dude in an unbuttoned shirt, jeans, and a gold necklace gets out and shows me his id and starts some german. i said i didn't speak anything and he gave me his best english and told me he was a cop and asked me if i saw him. i said no and i think he was a little pissed. i tried to explain, but in too many words he didn't know. he took my oregon drivers license and walked back to his car. we made jokes about him until he came back and told me i owed him 180 euro and since i wasn't a german i owed him up front or we could go to an atm or jail. i said i didn't have it and he said ask your friends. i told him there is no way i would be able to come up with that i had a fifty upfront on my money clip and 40 more folded behind it. i said i have 50 and carter and jeff both said they had 20 apiece. then he started to fill out the ticket and told me i'd be billed for the 90 that i didn't have. i then told him to bill me for the whole thing if i was getting invoiced anyway, but he just got angrier. had it been mexico i'd been completely ok with going to jail having been through that before, but considering this was a country with real laws i decided to cut my losses at 50 euro that i couldn't afford to give away. still pissed.

anyway after that we had a practice and there is an older undersized middle already here and they are looking for two more and an opposite. things look good for me. more tomorrow.