Why? I don’t believe in them. It’s a felicitous tradition we’ve been trained to do to make failing to attain a goal OK. If you want to make goals, make them and work towards them. I have a goal for the new year and I actually made it a few months ago: complete an ultramarathon by the end of 2012. That’s my goal, now I just need to plan for it. I’m shooting for a 50k, that’s a 10 times increase in distance compared to what I do now. I’ll figure it out!

Anyway, we just got back from our two week trip in Germany a few days ago and it was a total blast. Celebrating Christmas and New Year’s in a much older culture was wild, I observed so many traditions we do in America that date back centuries over there. We spent New Year’s Eve in Frankfurt which basically turned into a huge fireworks show after dinner. Just about every shop in the city closed at 2PM at which point the fireworks started off lightly then started going off more frequently throughout the night, which basically turned into the most insane show I’ve ever witnessed by the time midnight rolled around. I was on the Alte Brueck Bridge in east Frankfurt and I swear about 5,000 people set off fireworks at the same time, insane. Plus, everyone was drinking.

It was cold, at least to me. The average temperature in Niedersachsen where we spent most of the two weeks must have been about 40F with a crisp (re: freezing) constant breeze from the North Sea. It snowed only once while we were there and it was the first snow of the year, a sign of good luck. We visited my girlfriend’s entire family and they were all pretty awesome people. It’d been nearly two decades since she had seen many of them and then there were many new cousins for her to meet as well. They all knew how to eat well, much better than our standard American diet. Except for a small handful of meals, everything we ate was a home cooked meal for every meal. I totally blew my primal lifestyle and ate gobs of bread and drank mountains of beer and didn’t gain a single pound, proof that the diet itself works to make our bodies work more efficiently. Interestingly, when I got home, I gained four pounds. I’m almost positive that it was from the food here rather than any exercise, which I did pretty much none of aside from walking a few miles a day due to sightseeing. Other than that, I did nothing but eat and drink, literally, as can be seen on my food blog.

A few things I learned from Germany:

1. Traffic lights are literally the most inefficient traffic control method ever invented. This trip once again confirmed to me that roundabouts are one of the best things to ever happen to traffic control, ever. In Germany, we never sat at a traffic light for more than a minute and that was even rare. The day we got back to the States, we sat at a 4 way traffic light for 5 minutes for no reason. I’ve gone around roundabouts larger than the intersection I was sitting at here in the States and they’ve caused no issues with traffic.
2. The public and private sector in the US have absolutely murdered any advances in traffic and auto technology. For one thing, roundabouts. When I experienced them for the first time 20 years ago, I was terrified but they make sense now that I can drive. Engine efficiency is another thing. My girlfriend’s cousin owns an A-class Mercedes with a diesel engine that gets 1000km to a tank, that’s 621 miles. That would get me from my house to my mother’s house in Georgia. Granted, I know diesels get better mileage anyway but even the traditional gas cars had better efficiency.
3. Public transportation is the way of the future and every country knows it except the US, thanks to the government. Out of the dozen or so times I’ve been to Europe, transportation has never once been an issue. If I needed to get somewhere, I could get there very easily. This was ever true in Germany. We took trains, buses, a cab, and public trams just about everywhere further than a few miles away.
4. Americans will continue to be huge fat blobs until we all realize that suburbanization is a horrible idea and our food production industries are horribly corrupt. As mentioned above, I ate like a king for two weeks and ate more bread in two weeks than I have in a year and I gained exactly zero pounds and my body measurements stayed within 1% of their 6 month margins. If I did that in America, I’d still be fat. Everything we ate tasted awesome because it was cooked with real fats or real olive oil and spices rather than things like HFCS or other frankenfoods.
5. Germans eat more potatoes than any country I know of. Potatoes in some form were served with practically every meal, mostly in the form of fries.
6. I think Nutella is a national treasure. Everyone looked at me funny when I said I prefer peanut butter because apparently, they simply don’t eat it. It’s Nutella or nothing.
7. Beer is cheaper than both water and soda, everywhere. Every city and village we went to, beer was typically almost a Euro cheaper than soda and 50 cents cheaper than water. Despite this, Germans aren’t the drunkards we think they are, at least not Northern Germans.
8. When you ask for ‘water’ in a restaurant, they’ll give you sparkling water. When you say you want water “without gas”, they look at you like you’re insane. Not a single person could explain this to me.
9. It seems like 40% of the population smokes. Everywhere we went, we saw tobacco stores and people smoking, it was totally normal.
10. Above all else, Germans value their family ties. My girlfriend has not seen her cousins in nearly two decades and when we arrived at the train station, a dozen people met her there to greet her and 16 people saw us off when we left! They organized a dinner in which nearly 50 people came just to see her and see each other. I’ve never seen this with my already tight-knit family and it’s almost unheard of in America. Every parent was profoundly involved with their children and they were incredibly close. Granted, this was just Northern Germans, I have no idea how Bavarians and Southern Germans act.

We’re still pooped from the jet lag and trying to get everything back on track. Going back to work sucked, I realized how much my job is unfulfilling aside from paying bills. This also means it’s time to start training for my upcoming obstacle course races, I’ve got two Spartans and another Superhero Scramble in the next two months. I’m most worried about the Super Spartan next month because it’s about 10 miles and I haven’t hit that distance yet and I’m worried about my hip still. I’m still recuperating from wearing cowboy boots and walking around half of Germany, terrible idea! I’m now in the market for new boots and so far, everything is either very expensive or has a huge heel, which worries me.

So far, 2012 is off to a rousing start! My girlfriend still has two Christmas presents to get me, one of which we have to drive about 2 hours to get. That worries me.