A Confederacy Of Dunces

I wrapped up A Confederacy of Dunces in the Munchen airport yesterday.  While the lead character, Ignatius J. Reilly, nauseates me (and maybe this was intentional), the book's snippy dialog alone makes this a great read.  It is very short so if you are trying to read everything on the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction list, this is a quick one to knock out.  

BMW Munchen HQ

On Thursday we checked out BMW HQ.  We skipped the museum and focused on the new models.  The show room was about as awesome as all the sick rides on display there.  Damian and I especially liked the new X6 which I think is just coming out in the states now.  I just loved the architecture and all the technology and luxury.  Maybe someday, if I save my pennies, I can own on of these amazing machines.

St. Anton, Austria

Here are the pics from our little Austrian excursion. 
 
St. Anton has an enormous amount of skiable terrain.  There is so much to ski there.  The weather, the skiing and the apres were awesome on Monday and Tuesday.  I got a guide (Alous) on Tuesday that took me to some of the best powder of my life.  We got pretty hammered every night.  The trip was way fun.

First Days in Munchen

Posting from LaDayDay's very, very nice HP laptop in St. Anton am Arlberg, Austria.
 
I got in on Saturday morning, was very tired, quite jetlagged.  We acted like we would actually try to stay awake all day but ended up napping within a couple hours of arriving at Jen's place.  Munich has an awesome subway system.  I was quite impressed though I wonder if it is massively subsidized like most metro in the US and like many industries in Europe.
 
First days on most trips overseas are usually spent just wandering around the town and that's exactly what we did.  We walked through the Koenigsplatz, the Marienplatz, the famous Hofbräuhaus and ended up at Wirtshaus-N-Bretzn for a traditional German dinner.  D and I split the duck leg salad, the veal ragout and the kaiserscharrm for dessert.
 
Here are the pics.  I have some good stuff to post from St. Anton but Jenbo is dying to get on the interbahns...

The End of History and the Last Man

I just wrapped Fukuyama masterwork this morning in Munich.  Nice to finish a serious piece like this before the train to St. Anton.  Not only do I now have one less thing to carry, finishing this one lets me move onto the lighter fare I brought on vacation, A Confederacy of Dunces.
 
The End of History lived up to its esteemed reputation.  For me, Fukuyama provides a cogent explanation of the historical movement toward liberal democracy.  I am fairly indifferent to his argument that there is a slow global trend toward liberal democracy.  With individual sovereignty out of reach, I already viewed liberal democracy as a our best possible compromise and I am pretty good so long as there is no political backsliding in the Anglosphere.  However while reading this book, I did realize how much on a day-to-day basis, I take for granted liberty and equality, the "twin pillars of liberal democracy."  It is nice to be able to work and live in a period of so much freedom and relative stability.  I doubt I would be a trader at a hedge fund (or any investment company for that matter) back in Franco's Madrid, Hitler's Berlin, Kruschev's Moscow, Yoshinobu's Tokyo or Khomeini's Tehran.  I'd probably be some sort of lame government bean counter provided I was given access to any sort of education at all. 
 
Well, I've already got America at the Crossroads and Our Posthuman Future on the bookshelf though they are behind The Constitution of Liberty and The American Challenge in the reading queue...