:big happy eyes: I am so gonna go drive to Leipzig, probably a few days after I get back from Spain. Just to meander. As for dealin' with weird looks, I'm used to them. Often I find that many ppl find me more approachable than many of the body mod community. I get little old grannies come up to me to tell me my hair is beautiful, or to ask about my piercings. In Spain I saw piercings and tattoos, just not as many as I have and not coupled with the attire I wear. The strange thing was that the Spaniards were cool with it - it was the expaits from the UK who were the ones weirded out. Which is flippin' weird! I mean, like after Germany, that's like... the other big goth place!
I took four years of German, but the reason it didn't stick with me is that I didn't learn it the 'natural' way. For instance, I went to Spain with like "Que estas?" and "Donde esta caille Andulcia?" and little things like that. But I would ask people "Que estas?" for everything, and now still remember 3/4's of what I learned. My usage isn't great grammatically, but I get by.
I figure with the foundation of understanding I had from school, plus my natural curiosity and outgoingness, I should be able to actually learn German for real this time, and not that by rote crap they do in classes. I'm super excited. Plus I've always found German to be a soothing language. My friends all say I'm crazy for that, but meh, whatever. My maiden name was Strausser, and my family was originally from Hamburg some generations back. Goin' back to my roots and all that....