Last round of photos

Two best pairs o' boots Vienna never seen!

Clark & Pierre, Operahouse. Bizarrely, the Europeans have high culture as well, though theirs doesn't come with a Lone Star beer.

Rockin' out with Severine!

Clark "Ansel Adams" Smith

Here I am busily explaining how the world works to some non-Americans. It's a tough job, but that's why God made me a Texan.

Meghan & I. It's really unfair how good-looking God made the Irish.

Briana & I with Salzburg in the background. Probably the prettiest city in the world after Austin.

Yes, some jackass spray painted this onto the side of the castle in Salzburg.

Team Clark, aka, Team Paris 2.

So our Team MVP, Yuhong, took photos of every meal she ate in Europe. This is a pretty typical Viennese dinner--sauerkraut on the left, beef cutlets in the middle, and sliced potato dumplings on the right. And yes, Yuhong at the whole thing!

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Team Texas with a couple of friends from Germany. Our Coach, Terry Kernel, is the young Richard Gere towards the middle. I'm glad we didn't drink alot that night or anything.

As per usual, my team carries me through these times. In order from the left: Ariel (from Brazil), Meghan, Ziyad (from Pakistan), Mark, and Briana. The two on the far right are Pierre and Serge, both good buddies of mine from the Paris 2 team.

My old roommate (and hostess!) Bettina, on the right, and her friend Nadine, on the left. We are kicking it in front of the Watermill right in the heart of Erfurt. Right next to us on the right stands my favorite bratwurst stand in town. Priorities, right?

More Photoes

Here I am with my bud Sascha Muenzel on top of the St Peters Citadel overlooking beautiful Erfurt. I used to live only 10 minutes from this spot. Predictably, we drank been and ate sausage the entire day.

Some Photos

Christina and Me at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin. She was upset at the lack of a Soviet flag; I reminded her just who won the Cold War.

Vienna: More Than Just Sausages!

Gruesse aus Wien! I arrived in this wonderful town last Thursday evening, and today has been my first chance to take a break and enjoy the city a bit. We have competed on Friday, Saturday and this morning, so we're all a little pooped.
The moots have gone somewhat well. Of course it's hard to say, because everything is graded so subjectively. Yesterday we squared off against University of Bucharest, and they were quite good. The problem was that the arbitration tribunal screwed us. They allotted only 20 minutes to both sides and held fast to those terms. What's worse, the American woman was really relentless with her questioning, especially against my teammate Briana. The treatment from the tribunal was totally unequal, and I anticipate that the Bucharest team won. Today's round went much better--we went against Zagreb, Croatia, and they were awesome. I feel that we matched them more or less.
Enough about work. I have had a wonderful time since my last post. Berlin was incredible, as per usual. I got to see my friend Christina, who is a real angel. She has a fascinating story. She grew up in Kazakhstan (she is Boris's 2nd cousin), but her family immigrated to Germany when she was 16 years old. None of them spoke a word of German! They are all now German citizens, afforded amnesty due to her grandmother's German heritage (she is totally of German descent, although she grew up in Russia).
I also got to spend two days in Erfurt, which was my hometown. I know that platitudes get old, but it really is one of the finest cities in Europe. I will try to post some pics to prove myself correct. I stayed with my former roommate, Bettina, who was like a big sister for me in Germany. And I got to hang out with Sascha, my close friend who studies American history in Erfurt. He is wrapping up his Masters thesis on Jesuit immigrants from Germany to North America. Pretty cool stuff.
Ok, I'll try and put some pics in to keep this thing interesting. One more week!

Er lebt noch!

I'm still alive!

Right now I am in Berlin, visiting my friend Christina and seeing some of the sites. Yesterday was Europe's 50th birthday (in 1957 they signed the Rome Treaty, which officially started what is now the E.U.). There was a big party at the Brandenburger Gate, with different booths set up from each Euro country. I ate Polish food and washed it down with Irish beer while listening to crappy music from I don't know where. Anyways, lots of fun.

Paris was wonderful. After traveling for 25 hours and enduring a French rail strike (which took us 2.5 hours to get from De Gaulle airport to our hostel), I managed to meet up with my pledge brother Jeff Neves for a night out on Thursday. I (oops!) slept right through my phone alarm on Friday, and missed that morning's moot competition, which was Ok since I'm not arguing anyways.

This was my favorite time in Paris: I mixed in a nice jog Saturday morning with my teammate Meghan. We stayed very close to the Ile de St Louis and Ile de la Cite, so I mapped out a little jog around both, which was probably two miles or so for us. Being the unadulterated genius that I be, my windbreaker sat comfortably in my bed in Austin just when I needed it to stave off the 35 degree gallic morning. C'est la vie1! Anyways, we managed to end our jog with a dash inside Notre Dame. This was Meghan's first time to see Our Lady. Amazing. At 730 on a Saturday, the only people inside are the friendly Moroccans who clean the cathedral, so we really got unfettered access to one of the most spectacular churches in the world--which never disappoints.

Right after that we jogged over to the Le Deportation memoriale, which is the Parisian way of shrugging off their complicity in the Holocaust. It is enough to make you cry that such an inhuman calamity that was the French deportation of the fellow Jewish countrymen can be memorialized literally in the shadows of such a masterpiece as Notre Dame.

The moots went extremely well for us. We faced off against three teams from Paris, and one from Milan. The Italians were pretty bad, and two Parisian teams were decent. Our last round was against the Sorbonne, and it was the best round by far. We argued for the Respondent (which means Defendant in arbitration lingo), and that is the much more difficult position to argue in this fact problem (basically, the legal arguments all shape up well for the Plaintiff). But we managed to beat the Sorbonne, and the round was quite lively and entertaining. The French gave us great props for our efforts.

The guys on our team have taken to wearing a flower on our lapel for the moots, and in Vienna we want to buy exclusively yellow roses, with obvious implications for Texas. Add that to my ostrich-skin boots and Texas-size belt buckle, and I/we manage to stand out in quite a good way. All of the Euros like us a good bit, and I'd wager that we're exponentially more awesome in their eyes than the other Ami teams (Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia). Not that I needed any independent confirmation of that fact.

I'm in Berlin until tomorrow, then off to Erfurt for 48 hours, before trekking on to Vienna. Pictures to follow when my internet connection is better.

Auf widersehen, und Hook'em!
Clark

Er lebt noch!

I'm still alive!

Right now I am in Berlin, visiting my friend Christina and seeing some of the sites. Yesterday was Europe's 50th birthday (in 1957 they signed the Rome Treaty, which officially started what is now the E.U.). There was a big party at the Brandenburger Gate, with different booths set up from each Euro country. I ate Polish food and washed it down with Irish beer while listening to crappy music from I don't know where. Anyways, lots of fun.

Paris was wonderful. After traveling for 25 hours and enduring a French rail strike (which took us 2.5 hours to get from De Gaulle airport to our hostel), I managed to meet up with my pledge brother Jeff Neves for a night out on Thursday. I (oops!) slept right through my phone alarm on Friday, and missed that morning's moot competition, which was Ok since I'm not arguing anyways.

This was my favorite time in Paris: I mixed in a nice jog Saturday morning with my teammate Meghan. We stayed very close to the Ile de St Louis and Ile de la Cite, so I mapped out a little jog around both, which was probably two miles or so for us. Being the unadulterated genius that I be, my windbreaker sat comfortably in my bed in Austin just when I needed it to stave off the 35 degree gallic morning. C'est la vie1! Anyways, we managed to end our jog with a dash inside Notre Dame. This was Meghan's first time to see Our Lady. Amazing. At 730 on a Saturday, the only people inside are the friendly Moroccans who clean the cathedral, so we really got unfettered access to one of the most spectacular churches in the world--which never disappoints.

Right after that we jogged over to the Le Deportation memoriale, which is the Parisian way of shrugging off their complicity in the Holocaust. It is enough to make you cry that such an inhuman calamity that was the French deportation of the fellow Jewish countrymen can be memorialized literally in the shadows of such a masterpiece as Notre Dame.

The moots went extremely well for us. We faced off against three teams from Paris, and one from Milan. The Italians were pretty bad, and two Parisian teams were decent. Our last round was against the Sorbonne, and it was the best round by far. We argued for the Respondent (which means Defendant in arbitration lingo), and that is the much more difficult position to argue in this fact problem (basically, the legal arguments all shape up well for the Plaintiff). But we managed to beat the Sorbonne, and the round was quite lively and entertaining. The French gave us great props for our efforts.

The guys on our team have taken to wearing a flower on our lapel for the moots, and in Vienna we want to buy exclusively yellow roses, with obvious implications for Texas. Add that to my ostrich-skin boots and Texas-size belt buckle, and I/we manage to stand out in quite a good way. All of the Euros like us a good bit, and I'd wager that we're exponentially more awesome in their eyes than the other Ami teams (Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia). Not that I needed any independent confirmation of that fact.

I'm in Berlin until tomorrow, then off to Erfurt for 48 hours, before trekking on to Vienna. Pictures to follow when my internet connection is better.

Auf widersehen, und Hook'em!
Clark