After a week in two of the bigger cities of Europe I needed a change of pace. Yesterday I took a two hour hike through the forest by Darmstadt. It takes about 10 minutes by bus and 30 minutes on foot to get there. I was expecting a little preserve/park like the Arboritum, but this place is hugh. I walked roughly East for an hour, about 6 to 7 miles according to the trail signs, in nearly complete isolation. The only sounds were the wind, birds, and the occasional plane over head. I don't think I saw more then half a dozen people during the two hours, it was amazing. Apparently one could walk to all the neighboring towns through the forest in a Northeast to Southeast direction. I can't think of anything within a 2 hour car drive that could compare to the amount of undisturbed forest. In comparison it would be like all of Glen Ellyn and Lombard being a forest with only hiking trails trees and lakes. It is amayzing that such a largest forest can be so close to the largest urban area in Germany, 60% of the population live within a 120 miles of Frankfurt, and this is the small forest by us. If I made it to the eastern side of this forest I would end up at a forest about 1000 times as large, though the other one has some small towns and roads running through it.

Today I took advantage of my last chance to see the Picaso exhibit at the history/art museum in Darmstadt. I was expecting to see a variety of works representing his differenet periods. Instead the exhibit was exclusively his "Suite 156," which is a series of black and white drawings he did while a video camera recorded the process from the other side of the canvas. Watching the video of his drawing taking shape was very interesting, the drawings on the other hand get boring after a while. The collection consists of a 156 drawings with sexual conotations, i.e. naked women in 156 different poses with varying additions of men observising/interacting with the women. At first they are interesting to look at for the representation of the body and objects: double heads, unproportional body parts, merged images. But after about half way through it's like "more naked women, k, done, lets move on now." I went on to explore the majority of the normal exhibits that range from stone age artifacts to renaissance paintings to church artifacts from the 1200 to zoology specimans. Almost all of the normal exhibits come from Hessen, which is the equivalent to Illinois in relation to Germany as a country.

After 6 hours in the museum I headed back and prepared for Goska's 25th Bday party. Party was a lot of fun, and topped of with a dancing act from Goska and her friend. It's good to know I'm not the only one that doesn't mind making a fool of themselves dancing.