My friend and I came down with a disturbingly severe case of food poisoning during an overnight train trip while returning from a snowboarding excursion in Austria. For all of March 15th, we were immobile and inable to do a thing. When we finally woke from the fever dreams and nightmarish bathroom trips, it was the morning of the 16th.

When I sat myself at my desk and tried to reassess the world around me, I realized that the illness had prevented us from going to a Bundesliga soccer match in a neighboring town in which the bottom seeded team had beat the top seed team 2:0. I rubbed my forehead and then noticed something else: the Holy Roman Church had changed St. Patrick's day from the 17th to the 15th for 2008 due to conflicting easter celebrations. We couldn't fathom the luck.

When I opened the NY Times on the morning of the 17th, I saw this picture:

What a suit. Even the weight of a meeting with his economic advisors during the downturn of a now apparently ineviteable long term recession can't keep our president from showing some irish pride. A celtic green tie with an olive drab jacket. The man is, at this moment, the peak of fashion. I've never thought much of our 43rd president, but this action bought him some respect in my book. The vatican may have said that the feast of St. Patrick would be held on the 15th of 2008, but Dublin and the president of the greatest nation in the world wouldn't hear it.

So we went out to celebrate proper like, only to remember that Germany wasn't founded upon the backs of a horde of irish immigrants. Besides some irish pubs that were claustropobically packed and billowing with cigarette smoke, it was a normal night in Berlin.