Hello!

No…that’s no good.

Guten Tag!

Nope….worse.

Welcome?

That’ll do.

This is a travel blog.  Pretentious?  Yes.  Very much so.  It doesn’t change the fact that this is how people share the things they’re doing.  Thus:  blog.

None of this actually matters.  The point here is, in case you hadn’t heard, I’m going to Germany.  Dresden, more specifically.  Small suburb thereof called Radebeul is where I’ll be living.  Why?  Well, turns out there’s something to this theatre racket.  Through the gracious benefaction of Piedmont Players Theatre and Reid Leonard, I’m going to be working with the Landesbühnen Sachsen on their production of “In God’s Own Country,” which is a new play written about Colonial Lutheranism.  Sounds pretty exciting, huh?  Protestant Reformation, old white dudes, Germans…yeah.

Now that you’re aware what’s going on, we can get to the crux of the matter.  Yes, I’m incredibly excited about my stay and the work I’ll be doing, but there’s not much to be said about the ins and outs of a theatrical experience abroad.  The purpose of this blog is not to bore you with that, it’s to keep you all on the up and up about what it’s like to an American abroad in the 21st Century.  Lofty?  Yes.  Still pretentious?  Maybe even more so.

There have been volumes and volumes written about the American abroad in the century prior.  My great love of Ernest Hemingway (after this point referred to in this blog as “Ernesto”) is proof enough of that.  That was then, however.  The Lost Generation had reason to be lost.  They were adrift in a world beset by woe and war.

I am not.

I’m a college student of no real renown.  I went to Denver once.  That’s about it.  There is no looming existential dread.  I am simply a man…no…a guy that’s getting on a plane to live somewhere alien and new.  For further study on this issue, I offer up the movie ‘Lost in Translation’ starring the always-wonderful Bill Murray or the episode ‘Fish Out of Water’ from the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, starring an alcoholic horse.

Still you might ask:  “Why blog?”

To which I say:  “You ask too many questions.”

Really however, the answer is:  “Why not?”  The great virtual sounding board of the internet will be here while I put to electronic paper the impressions of four-or-five months somewhere else.  Stay tuned for sporadic updates with pictures, stories, rants, and (hopefully) bouts of things actually worth reading.

And now?  Back to staring at an empty airport gate and wondering why in the hell I got here so early.