Laura learns German

2010-12-19T05:09:00.001+01:00

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Last week in Germany

2008-08-04T22:29:00.002+02:00

I really should have written this sooner. I wanted to write a nostalgic, sad post on my last day (Friday) in Heuchlingen, but the router broke! Of course! On the one day when I actually needed the internet (to check how the flights back to the US looked).

On Wednesday I got together with my friends for the last time. We met up in Heidenheim and ate ice cream and hung out and talked. It was really nice to see everyone a last time before leaving.

On Thursday we (meaning me, Stephanie, Dominik, and Johanna) went to Schlicker, which is the bar in Heuchlingen, to have a mini goodbye party. Basically it consisted of the kids playing on the swing set and us eating pizza. The weather was really nice to sit outside, but the flies were unbearable!! Oddly enough, there was also a group of Texans visiting one of the guys who works at Schlicker who had lived in Texas for 6 months or something. It was pretty weird hearing Texan English on the night before I left. Mostly it was just weird hearing English in Heuchlingen. Usually I only hear that from me!

Let's see, what fun stuff did I do with the kids? Oh yeah, on Tuesday I didn't have to work because Dominik was at the Dorffreizeit and Johanna was at Oma and Opa's. Wednesday morning Lukas was there in the morning to play with Dominik, and I can't remember what Johanna and I did... Thursday I played "Insel der Schmuggler" with Dominik, which was actually really fun! I wish we had realized earlier that that game's not that hard. We could have played a lot more often. Thurs afternoon I played soccer with Johanna and then she climbed around in the tree for a while.

Friday wasn't much because their friends came in the afternoon to stay for the weekend. In the morning Dominik and I made a little city out of cardboard and paint. We didn't get to finish much of it, so hopefully he will later. Then Friday night after dinner I had to say goodbye to the kids when they went to bed. It was definitely tough to see them for the last time. Tabea came and picked me up around 9, 9:30, and drove me to Frankfurt. She stayed overnight with me in the hotel then drove me to the airport the next morning. All the flights looked insanely full, so she waited around to see if I had made my flight. I didn't, so we drove back into the city. We decided it was a great opportunity to do some sightseeing in Frankfurt. Unfortunately we were both really tired, so we didn't walk around that long. And Tabea, being the excellent friend that she is, stayed overnight with me yet again and drove me to the train station the next morning (by that time I had booked a flight from Dusseldorf to JFK, because all the Delta flights were insanely full with no chance of me getting on any of them). Even though it sucked that I didn't get to go home that day and had to buy a ticket instead, I'm glad I got to spend some more time with Tabea. I'm so glad she and Judith are coming in September!! It was hard enough saying goodbye to everyone, but it makes it a little easier knowing that I'll see them soon.

So, now I'm back home, after taking the train to Duesseldorf, flying to JFK, and the crazy van ride back to Elkins Park. I've already gotten most of my stuff packed up, thank goodness!! And I even got my thing for UGA notarized! I've been so busy that I still haven't had time to be that sad about leaving Germany. Mostly I just really really miss being surrounded by German and getting to speak German all the time.

I guess this is it. The end of my German adventure. I can't believe it's been a year. I still remember so clearly the beginning and everything that happened. How can it already be over?? I'm so so so SO glad that I did not only a year abroad, but a year before graduate school. I learned so much about myself this year, and did things I never really knew I was capable of. I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend being an aupair, but I'd definitely recommend taking a year to learn another language.

So that's that. I might write some more stuff later, but probably not. I think I should just leave this as it is: the end of an adventure.

(Even though I still have to write about Heidelberg and Stuttgart!)

Errr, yeah

2008-07-28T23:30:00.004+02:00

Today I took Johanna to the playground for a while, then we came home and cleaned our bikes (Stefan asked me to clean my bike before I leave, and it's always nice to have an excited 4-year-old do half the work for you), then Johanna played in the "Wasserblume" for about 5 minutes (it took about 10 minutes to set up, of course), then she played with Alina, then Alina and Marvin came over and went swimming with Dominik and Johanna. It was a really nice day with Johanna. We had a lot of fun and she was being especially sweet and cuddly. It was also my last day in kindergarten, which was sad, but not that sad. Some of those kids are a pain! I'm glad my job is only taking care of two kids and not twenty.

Oh yeah, and at the playground I got stung by a bee. On my big toe. When I looked down to see what hurt so much, the bee was still sticking out of my foot. I had to pull it out, then the stinger too. When I told Dominik about it later, he asked, "Didn't it hurt to pull the bee out??" My response: "Well, it had already stung me!"

Saturday night was my last night in Gegenwind. It was at Andrea's house, where lots of people had brought food and they had grilled out. They gave me a t-shirt with a picture of the whole Gegenwind group on it, and it says (in German), "To remind you of your time in Germany", then they all wrote their names on the back. Cute! Definitely a nice way to remember the group.

Yesterday I went to Heidenheim to see Eveline and Irene. Eveline doesn't have a car right now, so we had to walk from the bus stop to her house--not really that far, and I'm just complaining because I'm lazy, but we had to walk all the way up the big hill and then back down the other side. Tobias also was there for a little while. Eveline, Irene, and I also went to the BrenzPark, which I'd never actually been to. It costs money--what the heck! Definitely a nice park, but man, was it hot yesterday. Well, not really that hot, but HUMID. Today it was hot again, hotter than yesterday, but not nearly as bad because it wasn't humid. Anyway, BrenzPark is nice, even though the Brenz is a rather unimpressive river (comparable in impressiveness to the Tookany Creek).

Only 4 days left...this is a sad countdown, though. Tomorrow I don't have to work, which is nice. I think I'm gonna go to Heidenheim, return some library books, maybe go to BrenzPark again. I wanna see the stuff in HDH one last time, walk up to the castle one last time. I have a bunch of pictures I could post but eigentlich bin ich too lazy. Oy. I'll just leave that. I've been having that problem lately, where a few German words come out in place of English ones. Sometimes it just so happens that there are German words that work better in a situation, especially ones where English doesn't have one word for it. For some reason a word that I often want to say while speaking English is "fahren". It's such a diverse and multi-purpose word. You can use it to mean driving, traveling, riding a bike, riding the train, taking the bus, etc. Sometimes I just can't think of the English equivalent as quickly as the German one. I hope this keeps happening--maybe it means I won't forget German!

Also..

2008-07-26T14:03:00.001+02:00

I really really will write about Stuttgart and Heidelberg before I get back to the US.

My last Saturday

2008-07-26T13:53:00.003+02:00

K, some more exciting things with the kids....

--Making funny faces with Dominik (that kid makes really excellent funny faces!)
--Making funny faces with Johanna (she can't really do it very well, which is what makes it so funny!)
--Johanna "cooking" for me in her "kitchen" outside
--Playing board games with Dominik
--That Dominik took Johanna to kindergarten and then picked her up! Seriously, cutest thing ever, and Johanna was so thrilled

Tonight is my last time at Gegenwind, sad :-( I think it's also the only time it's ever actually been warm on a Saturday where I have time to go? Yeah, the weather has been crazy here this year. I think it's been legitimately warm (which I'll classify as 78 and above) maybe 3 weeks the entire time I've been here? Just take a look at my pictures when traveling. The trips I have gone on where I haven't needed a coat are: Prague, Wittenberg, Vienna. Wow. That's pathetic. I mean, I know it's Europe and all and not as warm as the US, but seriously! It's summer! Last week was crazy. There were several days where the high for the day was about 55. Didn't help that it was windy too, making it feel even colder. And now today, the high's 80. Oy. Well, at least I know that Georgia weather will be hot and humid. I'm sure I'll be praying for a Germany summer once I move.

Um, right. Moving on. Thursday night I went with Eveline to a different bible study group, and it was really good. It's a shame that this is the first time I went, because the people were really nice and fun. Oh well, at least I got to go once. Plus, it's not like I really would have been able to go before, since I have to babysit on Thursday nights. It was a nice change to go a bible group where the people actually talk. I got a lot out of the evening.

Not much else. Still packing a lot. I think I've pretty much got the weight thing down. It definitely helps that Judith and Tabea said that they'll bring some stuff over when they come in September. I've already taken out a ton of books that I'll give to Tabea tonight. That's really good, because it saves me from either having to pay $80 for an overweight (obese?) bag, or having to break my back carrying 6 kg of books around the airport.

OK, I'm sure I'll post another sappy nostalgic post before I leave, so stay tuned.

Leaving soon

2008-07-22T21:09:00.002+02:00

Wow. I can't believe it. I'm leaving Heuchlingen next Friday for Frankfurt, and then flying from Frankfurt back to the US on Saturday (hopefully--if not, then Sunday). It is so weird that I have been here almost an entire year. It really has gone by SO fast. I know in the beginning it felt like it was dragging forever, but after a month or two and once I'd gotten settled in, it just flew by. I've been packing and re-packing and adjusting for the past couple days or so, trying to get everything under the weight limit, and the weird thing isn't how empty this room looks, but how the same it looks. Most of the stuff in this room isn't even mine--it just kind of all belongs to the aupair room. I mean, obviously all the clothes and stuff are mine, but you can't really tell they're all gone, since they were in the closet. It's sort of cool though. I'm leaving my mark too. I'm leaving some of my books behind, some maps from places I went, even some clothes. A little sad that that's all that will be left here of my year.

In a weird way, this feels just like last year, except I'm not nervous at all. I'm making another huge change. Sure, I'm a little bit anxious about starting graduate school, but mostly I'm just excited. I think maybe the reason is, I managed to move to another country without knowing anyone (OK, I sort of knew the family) and rather apprehensive about planning travel on my own, and now I'm leaving a country that feels like my home, leaving behind good friends, and leaving Europe having traveled to 14 countries on my own. I feel like I can do anything now! I'm not worried about making friends in Athens. It'll happen. I'm also much less worried about putting myself into uncomfortable social situations (aka, situations where I know no one). This year has been full of uncomfortable social situations, in a foreign language at that, and I survived.

So, I told myself I would write about some of the fun moments with the kids the past couple weeks, because I don't want to forget that stuff! I only have a little bit more time with them.
--Giggling with Johanna over her "stinker sand". She always "cooks" with sand in her play kitchen outside, and when she drip-dropped the wet sand on top of her "food", it looked like chunks of poop. She of course thought that was hilarious! She adorably said, "Du bringst mich voll auf Lachen!"
--Building a marble chute with Johanna to send the marbles down. Both of us were entranced by it for a solid half hour.
--Playing Chinese checkers with Dominik
--Playing UNO Extreme with both of them
--Making a "Fußball Blume" with Dominik out of the leftover soccer ball cutouts
--Looking in the animal book with Dominik

I'm sure I'll think of some more, so I'll post them when I think of 'em.

Vienna (for real)

2008-07-14T19:23:00.004+02:00

July 5-6

My bus (again) got in insanely early (approx 5 AM), so after lots of running around involving trying to get into my hotel, discovering that it was locked and I couldn't get in til 9, then riding the U-Bahn across town to the Westbahnhof to drop off my bags, I made it to the city center. The guidebook I got from the library had a whole bunch of walking tours in it, so I did the historical one first. It was a good choice, especially since by this point I have no desire to go in a bunch of churches. Although surprisingly, a lot of them were open!

St. Peter's Church

I went into at least 2 before 7 AM. I hit the big sites, like the opera house, the Hofburg (where the Habsburgs lived for over 600 years), a bunch of churches, a ritzy shopping street, a memorial to the Austrian Jews killed during the Holocaust, and then the big church: Stephansdom. According to my good book it has the third highest church tower in Europe, after the ones in Cologne and Ulm. I didn't go up to the top because 1) I was tired, and 2) I couldn't find the entrance. I looked around the church a little bit but I mostly used it as a place to sit down. It was pretty cool and huge and all, but eh, it's a church.

After my historical "tour", I decided that a tour of the Ring (what the streets going around the historical center are called) would be excellent--especially by tram. I walked from the Danube canal down one of the rings (they change names every block or so) past the Urania (still not sure what that is), the government building, the Postsparkasse designed by Otto Wagner in the Jugendstil (dont know what that is in English), to the City Park. Let me take a second to comment on this. Vienna has AMAZING parks. They all look like gardens on the back of castles that are maintained by teams of gardeners, with the exception of Sigmund Freud Park, which is a dump. In the City Park I tried to take a nap, but alas, even though I had almost fallen asleep in the tram, I just couldn't do it.

When I gave up on my non-nap, it was almost 12, so I decided I should eat something despite being really not hungry. Since Vienna is famous for its Sacher Torte (complete with secret recipe, ooo) I went to the Cafe Sacher to eat some. Granted, it was really good, but right after I ordered it I realized that I've had it before (just a knock-off, of course), and that I hadn't loved it. I'm not a big fan of the raspberry jam that is spread between the layers and under the top layer of chocolate. Luckily it was so chocolately that I couldn't taste the raspberry much, and even with that it was pretty good. Not the best cake I've ever had, but good. And not worth 5 euros. But it's pretty cool to eat Sacher Torte at Cafe Sacher in Vienna in view of one of the best opera houses in the world.

Speaking of opera, both the opera and the orchestra take their yearly breaks in July and August!!!! If I had been there just one week before, I would have been able to see a performance by the orchestra, which is what I really wanted. To me, Vienna=great music, so it was a little disappointing to not be able to experience that.

After "lunch" I went to the Naschmarkt, where there is a seriously HUGE flea market every Saturday. There were tons of people there, including several disappointed tourists who thought it was a regular old market. I walked around the stalls for a while, looking at the ridiculous stuff that people were selling (want a tourist-y beer stein from Augsburg?) and debating buying some it. I didn't though, because then I would have had to carry it all day plus bring it back to Germany with me.

Flea market on the Naschmarkt

From the Naschmarkt I continued on to Karlsplatz and the Karlskirche. Karlskirche had unfortunately just been closed for a wedding that was about to start, but looking from the outside was enough. I thought it was a castle from far away. From Karlskirche I went back up to the ring and went to the Alte Hofburg, which I had missed earlier since it had been closed at 7 AM (go figure). Then the Neue Hofburg and some more amazing parks and gardens. From there I had been planning to walk only to the Parliament and the Rathaus, but just my luck there was a huge protest/parade that shut down all public transport on the Ring.

View from Parliament

Luckily, since they're German (-speaking), the protest was pretty much a bunch of twentysomethings drinking beer while listening to loud techno music...with a couple protest signs draped on trucks for good measure (not to mention a dude who'd painted himself green....), which meant that they were really slow-moving and by walking at a normal pace I could get way ahead of them. I walked what I thought was all the way around the rest of the ring, and actually turned out to be only halfway. Ugh. But I happened upon an U-Bahn station and rode the rest of the way, then got some dinner and went back to my hotel (I had taken my stuff there after lunch, so I didn't have to bother with going back to the Westbahnhof again).

Umm wow, writing up all the stuff I did, I did A LOT. My vacations are NOT relaxing.

The next day I was intending to go to a museum, because that is what I had budgeted for. I decided to pick a composer's house to go to, since I've already been to a ton of art museums in Europe (although Vienna does have a few really good ones). After making another trip to the infamous Westbahnhof to drop my stuff off again, I headed to the house where Haydn lived...and found out that all composers' houses (except maybe Mozart's?) are free on Sundays! Thus began my musical adventure. None of the houses ended up being that exciting. You'd think in Vienna, where all these amazing composers were born and lived and worked, they would have truly amazing collections of objects and writings from their lives. Not so. Most of the houses I could get through in about 15 or 30 minutes. The best part about them: all of them had listening stations where you could listen to full versions of selected compositions. The houses I hit up: where Haydn lived; where Johann Strauß (son) lived; where Schubert was born;

In the courtyard of the house where Schubert was born

where Schubert died. I also went to the Hundertwasser House (house designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser (not his real name) who also designed the Martin-Luther-Gymnasium in Wittenberg). His stuff is pretty famous mostly because it's CRAZY. I mean, it can't be because it looks good.

Hundertwasser House

After visiting Schubert's death house and making a quick trip back to the city park to see the Johann Strauß memorial, I was pretty wiped out. I still had a bunch of time until my bus left, so I took the tram out to the Central Cemetary, where lots of famous people are buried. It's also HUGE. According to my guidebook, it has more than 300,000 graves with about 3 million people buried there. That's a lot. It also has the graves of such famous people as Mozart (who was originally buried in a mass grave so now only his legs occupy his grave spot; apparently the Viennese take a while after your death to realize that they really like you), Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauß son and Strauß father, and Schönberg. There's also a huge church there, but it was closed by the time I got there. The Vienna airport must also have been practically right next to the graveyard, because literally about every minute a plane would fly over, and most of them were low enough that I could read the Austrian Airlines "AA" on the tail (well, for the ones that were in fact AA).

Central Cemetary

After eating dinner, I went to the Donau Insel because I figured I should probably actually see the Donau (Danube) while in Vienna, especially seeing as Strauß, who lived there, had written that song. The river looked pretty cool at night, but there were some shady characters out there.

The Danube River at night

Then I almost missed my bus back by taking too long on the Donau Insel, making a stop at the Parliament to see it at night, and not getting to the Westbahnhof until about 10 PM.

Parliament at night

I got my bags from the locker as quickly as I could, but I still didn't end up leaving there til about 10:10, which meant I got to the Erdberg station at 10:25, and to the bus stop about 2 mins after that. Luckily the bus was late (it pretty much always is), so I still ended up being there about 15 mins before it arrived.

Vienna is a really cool city, also a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to understand their dialect there, but it's really just a different German dialect. I didn't have problems anywhere else in Germany, so I don't know why I was worried. They do sound different, but most of them speak Hochdeutsch, or at least with me they did, thank goodness.

Only one trip left :-( Next weekend to Stuttgart and Heidelberg, and maybe Worms? Exciting, but also sad!

Vienna: my journey to discover if it really IS the world capitol of classical music

2008-07-11T13:14:00.001+02:00

Long story short: yes, it is.

Bremen, Bremerhaven, and Hamburg (and a little soccer)

2008-06-30T17:14:00.005+02:00

June 21-22

Bremen was a bust. Turns out you can see everything there in about two hours. Also, I highly recommend sight-seeing early in the morning! No one's around to get in your pictures or walk slowly in front of you.

After my train got in and I dropped my stuff at my hotel, I walked around Bremen's Old Town for a little while and hit everything on my list: Mühle am Wall, Bremer Stadtmusikanten, Rathaus, Dom St. Petri, Böttcherstraße, Schnoorviertel, the river, and I'm sure some other stuff. I realized pretty quick that there was no way I'd be able to spend all day in Bremen--there just isn't enough to do. It's actually a beautiful city and I think it would be a really nice place to live; there just isn't enough going on to make any trip longer than a few hours really worth it.

Park am Wall

So, I went to the train station to try to figure out where I could go for the rest of the day. I really wanted to go to the North Sea, but it's kind of hard figuring out where to go when you have NO IDEA what's around there. I decided to go to Bremerhaven, which is the other city, along with Bremen, that makes up the state of Bremen. Bremerhaven is right on the mouth of the Weser River, which means it's also right on the opening to the North Sea. Close enough.

I walked from the train station in Bremerhaven to the city center, stopping on the way to eat a crepe for lunch (there was some kind of festival going on, just like in Bremen and Hamburg). I walked around the harbor in front of the German Maritime Museum looking at the cool boats they have, and even went on one called the Seefalke. I really only went on it because it has the most awesome name ever!! but it turned out to be pretty amazing. The entire ship was open to be walked around in, so I even saw the engine room and all that good stuff.

In the engine room of the Seefalke

After that I went to the German Immigrant Museum, which was amazing! It was huuuge. Walking through the museum takes you through the entire "immigrant experience"--leaving home, boarding a ship, arriving in New York, then finding a place to live. It was definitely one of the best museums I have been to in Europe so far. I wouldn't say I learned a ton (just because in the US, being the immigrant magnet it is, we learn a lot about immigration in school), but it was really interesting. A very engaging museum. Wow, I sound like a loser for saying that.

Well, I was pretty tired after the museum, but I forced myself to walk through the main pedestrian zone (seriously--did all German cities get together and decide that they were ALL going to have these? I haven't been to one single city here that doesn't) hoping to see something interesting. Unluckily, there wasn't much. Instead I walked back to the river, laid down, and almost fell asleep. The temperature had finally reached the perfect point, so it was really nice laying there, even though the beach had disappeared due to high tide. I can't believe how weird the weather is here! The end of June and I legitimately needed my (admittedly thin) jacket most of the day.

The next day I ate breakfast (included, yay!), checked out of my hotel, then took a train to Hamburg. On the train I was coincidentally sitting right in front of a British lady, who also coincidentally had problems with her ticket, and the conductor barely spoke English, so I got to translate! That is seriously my favorite thing. It makes me feel so cool, even though it maybe shouldn't. Once I got to Hamburg, I walked from the train station down the pedestrian zone (see?? everywhere!), but since it was Sunday, all the stores were closed and it was boring. After that I hit up the Rathaus, where there was yet another festival-type thing going on, the former St. Nikolai Church (bombed during WWII and left as is as a memorial), St. Katarina (?) Church, Deichstrasse, and then HafenCity, which is a huge complex built out on the river.

Tour boats docked along the Elbe

I walked all the way out to the end of it, but it kind of sucks because it's mostly apt/office buildings, and they're doing a ton of construction, so there was no shade and it was HOT. After that I went to Miniatur Wunderland, which is the largest train layout in the world. That was pretty disappointing. I thought it would be one huge gigantic train layout, but it was divided up into separate rooms. And there weren't nearly as many trains as I thought there'd be! Roadside America is better.

After that I walked some along the river, while it off and on thunderstormed (is that a word?). I decided to put my day pass to good use and rode the U-Bahn up to the Justice Palace, then walked back down through the park in front of it (very nice, but not that great in the rain). Then I killed time for a while before going to see DIRTY DANCING!!!! Which was a big disappointment. I was really really looking forward to it (who wouldn't???) but it ended up being pretty much a stage version of the movie. It was exactly the same, with a pointless side story about the civil rights movement in the 1960s that never got resolved. I have a feeling that all Germans who saw Dirty Dancing the "musical" probably now think that blacks didn't have the right to vote in 1963. That's another thing! It totally was NOT a musical. Yes, there were songs, but most of them weren't even played live!! They were piped in over speakers. There were a few live songs, but they were sung by the two--count 'em, two-- singers in the show. Of course the end dance scene was AMAZING. How could it not be? Although apparently the German version of "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" translates in English to "Baby belongs to me. Is that clear?" Umm, that is nowhere near as good as the original.

After DD, I rushed to the train station, only to find out that my train was delayed 70 MINUTES, which meant I'd miss my connection, but luckily the train I was supposed to connect with was also leaving from Hamburg and was delayed, so I could get on that one. Unluckily, it also ended up being delayed 90 minutes. Whatever happened to German efficiency? Can't I just once have a train experience where I do NOT have a delay?

Oh, in other news: Germany lost to Spain in the EM final last night :-( Very disappointing. It would have been pretty amazing to be here for such a huge win! I'm glad to have been here for soccer at all though, and especially in a year when Germany did so well! It was really cool to see everyone get so excited. I don't know anyone who didn't watch the game last night, and I also don't know any big soccer fans!

Next weekend is Vienna, next week sometime Stuttgart, then the weekend after that Jugendtreffen in Schwäbisch Gmünd. I can't believe that I have less than 5 weeks left here. Crazy! I really wish I could stay after and travel. It went by so fast.

2008-06-24T19:28:00.001+02:00

Also, I went to Bremen, Bremerhaven, and Hamburg (where I saw Dirty Dancing the musical!!!) this weekend, so I promise to write a blog post about it soon.

Fussball

2008-06-24T18:53:00.005+02:00

I think we all knew it was only a matter of time until I wrote a post about soccer (I refuse to call it football, because that is not what we call it in the US!). After all, I AM living abroad in Europe in a country that has a soccer team. Disclaimer: I really don't care about soccer. I think it's exciting to watch, in person, because it's fast moving, but that it's really boring to watch on TV for more than about 3 minutes. I would never seek out a soccer match, ever, in my life, to watch on TV. On the other hand, I REALLY WANT GERMANY TO WIN! This has pretty much nothing to do with soccer and a lot more to do with the fact that I think Germany is the best country in Europe.

So, this got me thinking about a lot of different things, actually. I think that my feelings kind of get to the crux of people's sports obsessions and loves: everyone wants their team to win because they feel that their city/school/whatever is the best one ever. I think this sometimes kind of gets mixed up, because at least at home it is so taboo to "jump on the band wagon". You have to pretend that you have secretly liked and followed the sport the entire time, and are just now expressing a real interest in it that coincidentally is at the exact same time as that big tournament where the team is doing really well. Here everyone is jumping on the band wagon. I know there are people who legitimately like soccer here, but I don't know any of them. Somehow it's different though, because it's Germany playing, and not just FC Bayern or whatever. Everyone suddenly is a HUGE fan of soccer. Every time there is a soccer match, and especially if Germany is playing, every bar, biergarten, coffee shop, any place that serves food sets up a huge TV and the place completely fills up with loud, costumed, makeup-ed, excited crowds. It's hard NOT to get caught up in the excitement.

That is the main thing that confuses me. Patriotism is something that is not common here--at least not of the American, flag-flying variety. It isn't hailed as a virtue here the way it is in the US. I'm not exactly sure why, but I have my theories, not the least of which is that Germany was dumped on or oppressed almost non-stop in the 20th century. I think another part of it is that a lot of people tend to very closely identify with the region they come from, like Bayern, Schwabenland (where I am), etc. A while back I was thinking about how weird it seems to me that so few people move far away from where they grew up. But the more I thought about, the more I realized that it isn't that weird. In Germany, you grow up in an area, you learn a dialect that only people where you live can easily understand, and not only that, there just aren't that many options! Germany ain't that big. You move from one end of the country to the other and you're maybe 6, 7 hours away from where you grew up. In that case, why even go that far away? Why not just stay near what you know? It makes sense that people stay where they grew up, and it makes sense then that they have a stronger regional identity than national one.

Wow, I think I'm making soccer way more complicated that it has to be! But what I'm trying to say is, I have never seen anything that has caused this much patriotism, and by patriotism I mean blatant and obvious support of Germany, the country--wearing German flags, painting the German colors on their faces, stuff like that. It's pretty insane, and actually pretty fun to watch. Any time I travel somewhere in Germany now, if there's a game that weekend, I'll see crowds of people in train stations traveling to somewhere to watch the game, all decked out in their Germany gear (and of course carrying the requisite cases of beer).

Now the real question is, which team is there a bigger turnout for: Germany or Turkey? That's a tough one. I think the excitement is about equal. I obviously knew there were a ton of Turks in Germany, but they all seem to come out of the woodwork for soccer! That and ALL THE MALES HAVE MULLETS. All of them! I don't know if I've ever seen a Turkish male who doesn't have a mullet. But that's beside the point. The point is, it bugs me that all the Turks who live in Germany are rooting for Turkey and not Germany! Um, hello? Aren't you living in a country with such a wide social net that it catches even people who aren't citizens and just happen to be residents? It really bugs me that they don't support the country they live in. I know it's just soccer, but still. It's just soccer! Cheer for your home team--the one you make your home in!

Anyway, that's enough about soccer. I really don't like it. Honestly. But GO GERMANY!

Zoooo

2008-06-11T19:17:00.003+02:00

Today I went to the zoo with Johanna! It was a trip with kindergarten, and parents were allowed to come, but obviously Stefan and Stephanie couldn't, so they asked if I wanted to. I figured Johanna would love it if we had some time just the two of us, so of course I said yes! It was alooong day though (at least for a four-year-old). We left at 8:30 and the bus ride to Augsburg took an hour and a half. Once we got there, a little after 10, we walked around the zoo for a while. Unfortunately the zoo is pretty small, so even with all the bathroom stops and eating breaks, we took, we were completely done by 12:30. Luckily there is a huge playground at the end of the route through the zoo, so all the kids played there until it was time to leave, shortly before 3. It just kind of sucked for me to sit there, because first off, the mamas are all way older than me so I don't know what to say to them/they don't know what to say to me, and second, none of them ever even try! That is the thing that really bugs me. They all obviously knew that I was new when I got there, but no one EVER tried to talk to me in the beginning, not even just introducing themselves! I still don't know some of their names, since they've never told me! And of course in the beginning I was not exactly confident with my German skills, so I wasn't exactly going to walk up to a group of people all 10-15 years older than me and start talking to them. Ugh. I really don't get them. I guess they're content on having their own little exclusive circles. Just shows you women are the same all over the world.

Anyway, so it kind of sucked having to sit there and not talk to anyone, but Johanna had a lot of fun. She was still really wound up on the ride home, so she didn't sleep at all (I'd really been hoping she would). She was pretty antsy and kept wiggling around. An hour and a half is looong for a little kid! I took some cool pictures, which I'll post on facebook, so look there eventually.

Oh, I almost forgot--I finally climbed the Münster in Ulm! 768 steps and the highest church tower in the world. Here's a pic:

In other news, I went to Wittenberg last weekend (June 6-8) to finnnnally, after four years, go to Luthers Hochzeit, Wittenberg's big festival every year, and also to visit my old host family. The festival was really cool, and a lot bigger than I thought it would be. There's not really much to say about it, since it was really just something you walk around and look at. There were a lot of bands, although they were all kind of odd, middle-ages type bands. The weirdest thing is that they play middle ages music at times other than during Luthers Hochzeit. On Saturday afternoon there was a big parade with the bridal pair, since the whole festival is to commemorate Martin Luther's marriage to Katharina von Bora. It's weird enough that she was an ex-nun; what's weirder even is that he was an ex-monk! The parade was neat, and luckily since the festival isn't THAT big and the parade route was long, it was easy to get a spot in the front (unlike the big parade in Munich for Oktoberfest...). At one point some adorable little boy walking in the parade came up and gave me a flower. Aww!

I ran into Herr Owens in the evening, just as I was contemplating going home. He showed me where the USC students were so I hung out with them the rest of the night. I didn't know any of them, but they were all pretty nice. The group this year is much smaller than when I was there, maybe 13 people? I think we had at least 21 or 22.

The next day, Sunday, I just stayed and hung out with my host family, since I had only seen them for a few hours on Saturday morning, plus I was leaving Sunday afternoon so I wouldn't have had time to do anything at the festival that day. It was really great to see them, and really great to be able to easily speak German to them! They are exactly the same and their apartment looks exactly the same. We even played the same card game that we played every night while I was there 4 years ago. I have got to get a Mau Mau card deck. Sunday afternoon they took me to the train station, and after three trains and one delay, only got home one hour after was expected. For Deutsche Bahn, that's pretty good. So is only 1 delay out of 3. Do not believe it when people say Germans are efficient. The train system has got to the be the worst, and most expensive, in Europe. Granted, the trains are nice, but they are NEVER on time. There have been a few times when trains I've been on have been on time, but they've always been short trips. Every time I've made a long-distance trip there has been a delay. But, enough about Deutsche Bahn and my loathing of them. It was so great to go back to Wittenberg, see my old host family, and just to see the city. Heidenheim is the same size as Wittenberg, population-wise, but Wittenberg is way above Heidenheim in terms of niceness of the city and just things to do. Wittenberg also isn't as in the middle of nowhere as Heidenheim is, so that probably helps, plus it's a short drive or train ride away from Berlin, Leipzig, Magdeburg, and other places.

In other other news, I'm going to Bremen and Hamburg next weekend! I'll only be up there for two days, but from what I've heard and what I've looked up, one day might be too little for each city, but there's not that much to do in either one. And, next Sunday night in Hamburg....I'm seeing Dirty Dancing the musical!!!!!!! Ahhh!!! God, I love that movie. Patrick Swayze, I'm saying a little prayer for your cancer right now. And then the first weekend in July, I"m going to Vienna! I'm hoping to get in one more weekend trip after that. I was thinking of going to Zagreb, but I'm just not sure it'll work out. Maybe I'll do a weekend in Stuttgart, or Zurich. I'll have to think about it. I can't believe I have only a little over a month and a half left here! There are still so many places I want to see, but oh well. My money is starting to run out.

Prague

2008-06-11T17:47:00.004+02:00

May 31-June1

No, I'm not going to make any lame jokes like "Czech yourself". It always really bugs me for some reason when people do that. Summary of Prague: the most beautiful city I have been to so far! Oddest thing about Prague: it really really reminded me of Budapest--not in the stuff in the city, but in the physical layout of it. It's divided into two parts by a river, just like Budapest. The left side has two big hills, just like Budapest. The southern hill (mountain?) is larger than the northern one, just like Budapest. The northern hill has a large castle, just like Budapest. I didn't realize the similarities until I was on the top of the southern hill looking down at the castle on the northern one. I felt like I'd seen it all before....I guess that's kind of what happens traveling around Europe for a year, though.

I was only in Prague for two days, so there's not too much to say. I took a bus Friday night from Ulm and arrived into Prague on Saturday morning. At 5 AM. It was already light out. Needless to say, not much was going on. I walked to my hostel (Prague is a very walkable city, by the way), and no one answered when I rang the buzzer. I had to call them from my cell phone and ask them to let me in. Their response? "Someone will be there at 9 AM." AKA in 3.5 hours. Uh, no thanks. Luckily, getting angry gets results in every country, and they told me someone was coming at 7 AM to take people to the airport and he would let me in (why didn't they just say this the first time?). So I sat in the Old Town Square for an hour and a half and read a book. One great thing about being out so early is that there are NO other tourists. I never saw the Old Town Square that empty again. It was pretty nice actually.

Old Town Square at 7 AM on a Saturday

After I dropped off my stuff at my hostel, I walked across the Charles Bridge, also pleasantly tourist-free, and up to Prague Castle. There wasn't too much to see there since it was so early, but I walked around a little bit until it was 9, and then I went to a musem about the history of Prague Castle. It was incredibly boring. I do not recommend it if you're there. Luckily it was cheap, so I only wasted about $3. There was some kind of military band playing up there as I was leaving. That was pretty neat. I was gonna go into St. Vitus Cathedral, but the line was insanely long, so I vetoed that. Instead I walked back down, swung by St. Nicholas Church (one of the two St. Nicholas Churches in Prague), decided against that because it cost 50 Kr (what kind of church costs money to get in???), and instead walked to Wallenstein Palace, which had really nice gardens and some loud peacocks. Then after lunch I went on a river cruise which I 95% decided to go on because it was so hot out. It was pretty expensive, but whatever. I was so tired from the bus and walking around that I could barely keep my eyes open on the boat. Then afterwards I rode the funicular (no way was I walking) to the top of Petrin Hill, then climbed Petrin Tower, supposedly a mini-version of the Eiffel Tower (although still a good 90 m high).

View from Petrin Tower

Then I exhaustedly walked back down the hill. Mistake. That sucker is STEEP. I also inadvertantly walked more to the right, making it a lot longer. For some reason after that (maybe I was feeling like torturing myself) I walked across one of the bridges to see the National Theater, and then down to the Fred and Ginger Dancing Building, which is SO COOL. I didn't go in or anything, but you don't need to. It's just awesome-looking. Afterwards I walked to Wenceslas Square, which was a big disappointment, since it's not so much a square as a strip in the middle of the road with some benches. After walking about 18,975 miles, I ate dinner, went back to my (burning hot because it's Europe and they don't have air conditioning anywhere) hostel room. Oh well, at least I had my own room and a nice view.

The next day I woke up semi early, because there was a sign that said that check out was by 10 AM. At 9:30 I went to check out.....and no one was there. I waited for a few minutes, checked the common areas, and then had to call the hostel. Again. They told me someone would be there at 10:30. 10:30! FYI: If you ever go to Prague, do NOT stay at the Condor 1, because they have HORRIBLE service! Actually, it's non-existent, since no one is ever there! They also said I couldn't leave my bag, because my bus left late at night, and naturally no one would be there. Great. So I had to walk to the bus station and leave it in the luggage place there (luckily really cheap) and then walk back. I wanted to go on a free tour at 10:30, and with having to walk there and back, I just made it. The free tour was pretty good. I learned a decent amount about Prague. We also saw a lot of stuff that I had seen already, which means I could have saved myself all that walking. We saw a bunch of the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter, the Charles Bridge, the National Theater, and the theater where Mozart's Don Giovanni premiered, plus assorted stuff in the Old Town Square, including the astronomical clock, which is really cool. After the tour I ate lunch then went into the other St. Nicholas Church, which luckily was free to get into. Then I couldn't hold out in the hot weather anymore and went to one of the parks on the Lesser Side and read for a while, and afterwards was finally able to find the Lennon Wall! Which wasn't that exciting. I'm still not sure what it's about. Something about John Lennon, obviously. Then the Municipal Hall, which I got stuck inside for a little bit while it rained, then the mall since I decided that would be more interesting, and then dinner, since it was still raining. After dinner I walked up to the metronome (what's it keeping time for?) on another hill above the city, where there were a bunch of slightly sketchy people hanging. I walked back through the Jewish Quarter again, which is actually pretty nice, and since I wasn't on a tour I could stop and look at stuff.

The Spanish Synagogue

Then, back to the Old Town Square where I whiled away some time before heading to the bus station to while away some more time. Then I came home. The worst part--the train I took from Ulm to Heidenheim got into Heidenheim at 6:58, the exact same time as the bus to Heuchlingen was supposed to leave. I got out of the train the second it stopped, ran as fast as I could while carrying my bags to the bus station, and got there just in time to see the bus pull out. I was too far away to flag it down. I even tried running to the next stop, but since no one was waiting there, I had no shot. Instead, I had to wait 3.5 hours until the next bus left. Luckily in that time I was able to take a 15-minute power nap in the mall.

Prague overall: really cool and a beautiful city. Two days was enough though. If I wasn't museum-ed out, I probably would have wanted more time, but as it was I thought one weekend was perfect. Europe has GOT to get air conditioning though. Or at least fans.

Paris

2008-06-05T22:25:00.004+02:00

May 22-25

I'm finally getting around to writing about Paris, only two weeks late! I figured I'd better write about it before going on yet another trip--tomorrow I leave for Wittenberg, to visit my host family from four years ago and finally see Luthers Hochzeit! Who knows, maybe I'll even see the USC study abroad group there.

So, before I say anything else about Paris, I have to say that above all, Paris was a bit of a disappointment. Not that it wasn't a great and exciting city, and an awesome trip, but I think it has been built up so much as such a fabulous, amazing place, that there was no way it could live up to my expectations. Surprisingly, it wasn't as beautiful as I thought it would be. Everything was really nice, of course, but the buildings were all pretty much the same, nothing too distinctive. Prague (where I went last weekend) was a much nicer city to walk around. I also think what spoils my view of Paris a little bit is all the freakin TOURISTS. I mean, not that other people shouldn't go to Paris and enjoy it, but there were SO MANY other tourists there. It seems like most tourists are just completely absent-minded too, and don't think at all about the fact that there may be other people walking around with a different agenda. They're like, "Hmm, I can't figure out where I'm going. How about I stop here in the middle of the sidewalk with my eight children, husband, parents, and dog?"

Aside from the tourists, Paris was really nice. The weather was perfect. It only rained one day, and only about half the day at that. It wasn't too hot and it wasn't too chilly.

The first day I got into Paris around 10 (a 3-hour delay that no one mentioned, due to construction), and after dumping my stuff at my hotel (which was really nice for only 33 euros per night, by the way) I began my Paris sight-seeing experience. First I went to the Arc de Triomphe and climbed it, walked down to the Eiffel Tower (eating a crepe for refreshment along the way), took one look at the line and decided no way was I going up right then. Instead I walked to the Hotel des Invalides, where Napoleon's tomb is. I didn't go in because I thought that it wasn't included in my museum pass, but I found out two days later that it was. Oh well. After that I went to the Rodin Museum, which was disappointing. I like the one in Philadelphia much more. Afterwards I walked along the river, thought about going to the Sainte-Chappelle but the line was too long, and instead went to Notre Dame. I climbed that (second climb of the day!), which was pretty cool, especially all the gargoyles.

The Rodin Museum

The next day I tried to get to the Eiffel Tower exactly at 9:30, which is what time it opens. The line was pretty long, but luckily it moved fast since I didn't want to take the elevator (I'm too cheap). I climbed the stairs to the first and second levels, but from there you have to take an elevator to the top. I wasn't about to miss out on that, so I forked over the 4 euros. What an amazing view! It felt so surreal to be so high up, at the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was kind of hard to get a good view though, because there were so many people up there. I'm glad I didn't go any later, because the line only got longer. After Eiffel Tower-ing, I ate some lunch then went on a free tour. The tour was good, but I was expecting it to be better--I think from my free tour experience in Berlin, run by the same company, which was excellent. Almost all the people on the tour were young college-age students, and I met a girl, Yvonne, from Canada traveling around by herself. We walked around a little bit together after the tour, and made plans to meet up the next day to go to Versailles. After we ate dinner I went to Sacre Coeur, which wasn't too far from my hotel. That was quite an experience. The church was pretty amazing, but the shady people selling lame bracelets outside weren't. I'm glad I didn't go any later than 7:30 or 8; I would have undoubtedly gotten raped, mugged, and clothed in string bracelets.

Third day I met up with Yvonne near her hostel so we could take the train out to Versailles. Versailles=biggest disappointment of the trip. The palace was nice and all, but it was kind of boring inside. Of course it was ornate, but it looked pretty much like every other palace I've seen, plus it had almost no furniture inside. I shared Yvonne's audioguide with her (since one didn't come with my museum pass and no way was I paying 6 euros for one), and I'm glad I didn't pay extra, because it didn't give much info at all. On top of that, it costs 8 euros to get into the gardens! Neither of us went in because 8 euros on top of the 13.50 entry fee is just a little too much. After we got back into Paris we walked around a little bit in the rain and ate dinner. Then we parted ways and I went back to my hotel, making a detour to see the Moulin Rouge and peek through the gate at the Montmartre Cemetary.

Versailles

My last day I had designated my Museum Day. My goal: go to three art museums in one day without keeling over. Somehow I succeeded. I started my day off my walking down the Champs Elysees (another highly overrated Paris attraction) to the Jardin de Tuileries and the Louvre. In the Louvre I decided to see the Mona Lisa first just to get that out of the way. It was cool and all, but there were about 50 people standing in front of it all trying to take pictures. I'm glad I'm small; it took me about 5 seconds to squeeze my way up to the front. Luckily once I got away from the Mona Lisa and to the opposite end of the museum, there was hardly anyone around. My Louvre highlights: the Spanish painters, Napoleon III's apartments, and the Dutch painters. After two hours in the Louvre, I fortified myself for my next museum by eating some crepes in the Jardin de Tuileries, then head to the Musee de l'Orangerie. The Orangerie was by far my favorite museum. It has two huge oval-shaped rooms housing a bunch of Monet's Waterlilies paintings. Downstairs it has the Walter-Guillaume collection of impressionist paintings, which I loved, since impressionism is my favorite art movement. After the Orangerie I dragged myself across the street to the Musee d'Orsay. I breezed through most of that, because I really only wanted to see the impressionist paintings.

Family Reunion by Frederic Bazille, my favorite painting in the Musee d'Orsay

After finishing with all the museums I walked along the river for a while, trying to not fall over from exhaustion. Somehow being in museums wears me out much faster than just walking around. Afterwards I went to the Place de la Bastille just to see if there was anything interesting. There wasn't. Then I went and ate dinner, collected my stuff from my hotel, and went to the train station to wait to go back home. When I got back to Heidenheim the next morning, I had to wait a while for the bus, but while there I was able to get the second part of Johanna's birthday present: sparkly, flowered flip flops from H&M which she LOVED. Every time she wears them now she tells that her flip flops are much prettier than mine.

Glasgow

2008-05-28T23:12:00.004+02:00

May 15-17

So yeah, I got to Glasgow Thursday afternoon. Best thing about Glasgow: I had a hotel room!! It was quite a nice change from the hostels, and actually a pretty nice and big room, considering it was only 25 pounds per night. Bad thing about Glasgow: there are a ton of steep hills, atop one of which my hotel sat. Good thing: makes for great views.

Glasgow was very different from what I'd expected. Actually, I'm not really sure what I expected, but I think maybe a mini London? One thing I did not expect was that I would not be able to understand ANYONE. I mean, in England and Northern Ireland it was kind of like, oh teehee, they talk funny, but at least I could understand what they were saying. In Scotland I felt like an idiot pretty much every time I had to talk to anyone, because I almost always would have to ask them to repeat themselves, usually twice. When walking in large crowds I would try to listen to what other people were saying, but I honestly couldn't understand it. I was torn between thinking they were speaking other languages, and thinking that I just can't understand the accent. I think it was the latter. Made me wonder though: did all the Scottish people have trouble understanding me? Or is the American accent so prolific (through TV and stuff) that they don't have trouble with it?

Anyway, Glasgow. The first day I went on a (free!) tour of the Glasgow City Hall, which is pretty amazing. It's nicer than the State House in Columbia, and that's saying something--not only because the State House is nice, but also, it's for a state! Glasgow's is just for a city. The tour guide was talking about St. Mungo (apparently the patron saint of Glasgow) and the "medicals" he had performed, and I stood there thinking, "Medicals? Huh? I guess that's some kind of Scottish thing. Maybe St. Mungo is a patron saint of hospitals" (where did I get this thought? That's right, from Harry Potter and the Mungo's hospital). Um yeah. Took me about 10 minutes to finally realize that she was saying "miracles". She also pronounced "worldwide" with three syllables.

After the tour I walked around Glasgow a little bit to just look at some of the buildings. I went to Glasgow Cathedral, where St. Mungo's tomb is. That was pretty confusing too. My map showed the cathedral as being in a place where it actually isn't, but that was hard to figure out, because there was a church there, plus a hotel called the Cathedral Hotel. Fortunately I found the cathedral (and the oldest house in Glasgow) and also the St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art. Another good thing about Glasgow: all the public museums are free! Bad thing: the museums aren't that great. The religious museum was mildly cool, but not that exciting. I walked around it for about half an hour, and that was enough. Afterwards I made my way down to Glasgow Green, but the road I walked down looked kind of shady so I opted not to continue. Instead I walked along the River Clyde (most Scottish name ever) and just looked around. All the buildings in Glasgow are so cool! They're all old and stuff, but they're all really different. It's probably the only city I've been to where walking around and looking at buildings could be an actual activity.

See? Cathedral House Hotel!

River Clyde

The next day I managed to find the metro (there's only one line and it has, like, 10 stops) so I could go to some other museums. I went to the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow, which was cool, but I was able to see the entire thing in about an hour (like I said, the museums are kind of lame). The coolest part was the attached recreation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's house. Mackintosh was an architect who designed a few famous buildings in Glasgow, as well as several interiors. The house was awesome. Of course it was forbidden to take pictures, and there were guards hovering everywhere so I couldn't sneak any. After the Hunterian I went to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Again, disappointing. It was pretty much aimed at people between the ages of 10 and 12, although there were a few paintings by actual well-known people. I was able to breeze through that museum pretty fast. In the afternoon I went to the Tenement House, which is a flat inside a former tenement that was occupied by a woman who saved pretty much everything. They've set it up the way she most likely had it, and had an interesting exhibition about what life was probably like for her, complete with pictures, ticket stubs, concert programs, etc. (she really did save everything). That was probably the coolest part of my Glasgow visit. Later on I went back down to Glasgow Green to look around a little bit more, since I found a brochure showing some of the cool stuff there. Luckily I discovered that it's actually quite nice--and no one else goes there! Much better than in London where in the big parks every square inch of space is taken.

University of Glasgow

Forbidden picture inside the Tenement House

So, did I mention that Glaswegians apparently LOVE to shop? There is a huuuge pedestrian mall there, probably the biggest one I've ever seen, complete with at least two malls. I think there were more, but I'm positive there were two. And, of course, since it's Glasgow, the buildings were all amazing. I can't even really remember what stores were there, but I can picture the buildings! Oh, and there was a Nelson Mandela Square?!

Saturday I woke up early and took the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh, then Edinburgh back down to London. I didn't see much in Edinburgh, but I did see the castle from the train. It looked pretty cool. In London I pretty much had time to go to my hostel, poke around the Portobello Road market for a while (my hostel was in Notting Hill), then go see a ballet at the Royal Opera House. Then I came back and went to bed around 9:15 so I could wake up at 3:15 AM to get my plane back to Germany. I think my roommates just loooved that.

And then I came back. And while waiting for the bus, I ran into Eveline and Tobias. I seem to always run into them when I'm coming back from some long trip. All in all, it was a really good trip, I think my favorite one so far. I liked Northern Ireland and Scotland a lot more than I thought I would. Also, it was REALLY REALLY nice to finally go somewhere where I KNOW they speak English. That makes things a lot less intimidating.

OK, finally done with my UK trip summary! Stay tuned for Paris, hopefully coming soon.

Belfast and Northern Ireland

2008-05-28T17:53:00.007+02:00

May 12-15

No, I didn't get killed. Or maimed. Or anything. Belfast was a lot nicer than I expected, plus it seemed really cheap compared to London. My hostel was about 83 times better for about 2/3 the price. It wasn't in the city center, but luckily, Belfast is so small that I could walk to the city center in about 10 minutes. I only had to use the bus once the entire time, and that's because Belfast Castle is on the side of a mountain.

The first day I wandered around Belfast looking at the random sites. Unfortunately, there isn't really THAT much to see there, and both the city hall and the Ulster Museum were closed for renovation. The bonus: almost everything is free! I saw the city hall, St. Anne's Cathedral, St. Patrick's Cathedral (Church?), the Prince Albert clock tower (which apparently leans to one side, but I didn't really notice it), and the river. I also saw a bus on fire. I wasn't sure if that was really what I was seeing, but everyone who was walking stopped to watch it, so it definitely was. I also saw the fire trucks come to put out. Luckily it looked like all the passengers had safely gotten out. Didn't make me too eager to ride a city bus, though.

After lunch I went to Belfast Castle which I incidentally did have to take a bus to get to. Fortunately it did not catch fire. I walked around the castle for a little bit, but it wasn't really a castle, more like a very large house. It's pretty much just a place where they have weddings and stuff now, but on the top floor was a visitors' center with a history of the castle and the area. Afterwards I hiked up to the top of Cavehill, also called Napoleon's Nose (if you look at it from far away, it really does look like a face with a nose). It was a lot harder of a hike than I thought it would be. I had been planning to do the whole route, but I was assuming that the times they told you for the routes weren't accurate, since a lot of times they say it takes a lot longer for the out-of-shape tourists. I guess they don't get too many tourists there though. It was a good hike though, and the view from the top was amazing! There were some serious cliffs up there too, so I tried not to get too close to the edge. Later, in the evening, I walked down to the Queen's University Belfast campus and the botanic gardens. Nothing too interesting, but it was nice. Would have been nicer if it had been warmer out.

The second day I went on a tour up to the Giant's Causeway in the very northern part of Northern Ireland. We also made stops at Carrickfergus Castle (kind of ugly), Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge (fishermen originally built the rope bridge so that they could get to a small island which had better access to salmon), and Bushmills brewery (honestly, why did we stop there?). Carrick-a-Rede and the Giant's Causeway were really awesome. There's not much I can say about them. I'll just upload a bunch of pictures, but of course they won't do them justice. The day was really really good, with perfect weather. The only downer was the bus driver/tour guide, who was without a doubt the worst tour guide I have ever had in my life. He did not shut up the ENTIRE ride up to Giant's Causeway. And that includes several stops. I would highly recommend going to Giant's Causeway, but I do NOT recommend taking the Mini Coach tour from Belfast. I would have rather had no info from him than his constant yammering.

The next day I left early in the morning to go to Glasgow. I took a boat from Belfast to Stranraer, and the boat was soo awesome. It was pretty much like a mall. It had an arcade, mini movie theaters, restaurants, coffee shops. I couldn't believe it, mostly because it was so cheap (23 pounds for the boat ride and my rail ticket from Stranraer to Glasgow). I guess booking ahead of time really is a good idea! The boat ride was pretty cool, and I ended up in Glasgow by 12:30. But that's for the next post...

Carrick-a-Rede:

Giant's Causeway:

London!

2008-05-28T11:11:00.004+02:00

May 9-12

What a great trip! We were so lucky--the whole time the weather was amazing. It didn't rain at all the entire three days we were there. In fact, the sun shined the whole time. The only bad thing about it being warm out was that our hostel was SO. HOT. Obviously it didn't have air conditioning (since it seems like nowhere in Europe does), but that would have been ok if the room we were in had a window larger than a doggie door. It was actually cool at night outside, probably around 60, but it was at least 20 degrees hotter inside the room. Not exactly the most comfortable sleeping conditions.

We got to London super late on Friday night, then the next day we had to wake up kind of early so Jonathan could check out of the hostel (it was complicated--because he booked later, he wasn't able to get a room there the second night and had to move to a different hostel, so he had to check out and check back in the next day, but then the third night we weren't in a room together...like I said, complicated). After getting some pounds, we walked to Buckingham Palace and saw the changing of the guard. Boring. (Yes, I said it.)
Then we saw Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey (which we didn't go in because the line was long), the London Eye, all that good stuff. Then we ate lunch at Borough Market and walked across the London Bridge. After discovering that the London Bridge isn't the cool one, we went to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge (indeed the cool one). We passed on the Tower of London because it was way too expensive. Then we rode the tube to Regent's Park and walked around there for a little bit, which wasn't that exciting. We wanted to do the paddle boats, but it was 7 pounds per person for a half hour! After sitting down for a little bit and a brief rain scare (it almost started drizzling), we went to Chinatown and ate some dinner, then walked to Piccadilly Circus, then to Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column. Then we went back and went to sleep.

The next day was the British Museum (cool, but we just weren't that into it), Covent Garden, and of course lots of walking. We ate lunch at Subway because it was the cheapest thing we could find (two people having lunch for 6 pounds? Sounds good to me!). After lunch it was more walking and then the Tower Bridge Experience (I think it's actually called that). It showed how the bridge was designed, built, etc., plus we got to go up to the two walkways above it.
After that we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, where we got lucky and since it was Sunday it was "no visitors allowed" aka we didn't have to pay 10 pounds to get in. We just weren't allowed to take pictures. After that we went to Regent's Park and walked around a little bit, then ate dinner in Covent Garden.

Monday, our last day. We didn't have the entire day since I had to leave for the airport from our hostel by 4:30. We went to the British Library, where we saw the Magna Carta and some other famous stuff. There was also a video about the Magna Carta starring a woman with the worst teeth I have ever seen. Very British. Then we sweatily rode a double-decker bus part of the way back to the hostel (It was just way too hot to go the whole way. We gave up and rode the tube). Hence the sweaty, unfortunate picture of the two of us:
Jonathan rode with me to the airport, and then I headed off to Belfast. He went back to the US the next morning. It was sad to leave him, but we'll see each other again in two months, and then it'll be all the time!

My birthday

2008-05-28T11:03:00.004+02:00

May 8

Let's start there. My birthday was really good. Jonathan, of course, was here, so that was nice. The day before my birthday the family took me out to dinner. It's crazy how going anywhere with small children is such a process! We played Go Fish in English and German (difficult for Jonathan, since he doesn't speak German) while waiting for our food. I think Johanna won. After we'd eaten, Dominik threw a mini fit and ended up changing his entire outfit because of a tiny bit of tomato sauce spilled on his shirt. Once he'd calmed down, he decided he wanted to figure out how much the bill would be. He and Johanna went up to the waitress and asked for a pencil and paper (Johanna almost threw a tantrum over being allowed to walk the three feet with Dominik). Dominik then added up the entire bill, then when the real bill came, he discovered that they had accidentally not included the waters Jonathan and I had ordered, and wanted to rush up and tell them to add it in. Luckily every adult at the table stopped him.

The weather was sooo nice on my actual birthday. Jonathan and I walked around for a while after I was done working, and then after dinner Judith picked us up and we went into Heidenheim to meet up with some other people from Gegenwind. Ingrid, the nicest woman ever, had organized everything last-minute (I hadn't been sure if I'd have to work or not that night) and gotten together a good-sized group of people. We ate ice cream and then walked up to the castle. It made me really happy that all the Gegenwind people tried really hard not only to include Jonathan, but to speak English to him. I know that a lot of them don't speak it very well and have trouble understanding, but they all made the effort. All in all, a really good day.

I know

2008-05-27T22:07:00.003+02:00

I know, I know. It's been forever since I've written anything. BUT I have a good reason. Well, several. Jonathan was here in Heuchlingen for a couple days (including my birthday!) and then we went together to London for three days. After that, he went back to the US and I continued on to Belfast, then Glasgow, then back to London shortly, then back to Germany. I was back here for three days, then I went to Paris for four days and got back yesterday morning. Cleary I have a poo ton of stuff I need to write about, so I'll break it up into smaller blog entries. That way you (my rapt, often-commenting audience) won't have to deal with a massive, unmanageable post. I'm sure it'll take me a while until I actually get to all of it, so at least it'll give you something to look forward to?

2008-05-05T18:49:00.003+02:00

Looks like I'm way behind on the posting.

Last week was nuts. I was alone with the kids from Wednesday afternoon until Saturday morning, while S&S were in Barcelona. Luckily the weather was really nice (excluding several heavy rain showers), they went to friends' houses, and friends came to us. We had a good time all around, although I wouldn't say that my favorite part was the getting woken up at 6:30 every morning.

On Saturday and Sunday I was completely alone...which was niiice. I baked a cake Sat. afternoon to take to Gegenwind with me. I found a recipe online, because I wanted to make something typically "American" (I've never seen any cakes here that are like the ones people typically have at home). It came out well and everyone seemed to like it. I'm pretty proud of myself for actually making a cake from scratch. I think the last (and first) time I did that was 7th grade.

In other news: I have done a ton of trampoline-jumping. Johanna is a bouncing machine. Every time I'm alone with her, or even just have her in the afternoon, we jump on the trampoline. I'm getting a lot better too; I can actually jump for more than 10 minutes without getting tired! The downside: jumping always makes me have to pee, even if I went just before going outside.

Jonathan's coming tomorrow! I'm really excited! Hopefully he'll make it to Heidenheim by 11 so that we can take the bus back together. If not...he'll somehow have to make his way to Heuchlingen on the bus and then to my house, on his own. This really is quite a challenge. The stops are only listed in German (obviously), and I would say about 50% of the time does the bus driver actually press the button to move the stops along showing what the next stop will be. It was hard enough the first time for me, and I speak German and know what Heuchlingen looks like!

Then Friday, we're going to London together, where we'll be until Monday night. I then go on to Belfast, and Jonathan goes back to the US. After I get back from London, I'm going to Paris a few days after that, then the week after that I'm going to Prague. I still have several trips to get in, including one to Wittenberg for Luthers Hochzeit. Hopefully I'll be able to fit everything in.

Oh yeah, and my birthday's on Thursday! Send me potato chips!

Hop on Pop

2008-04-23T17:05:00.002+02:00

The weather has been so nice lately! Not as a rule, but as an exception. It's actually generally been pretty bad, but we've had a few realllly nice days. There's a German saying about the crazy April weather: April, April, er macht was er will (April, April, it does what it wants). For example: on Friday, there was snow on the ground until about 10 AM; in the afternoon, it was warm enough to sit outside without a coat. Sunday was also really nice. All the other days I'm not mentioning were pretty bleh and rainy.

Since it's starting to be pseudo spring-like, they put the trampoline back up! On Monday Johanna and I jumped for a while. She kept wanting to play games that she'd make up, but her games always involved me crawling around under the trampoline on the wet grass. No, thanks. Instead we just jumped around for a while. It's really tiring to jump on a trampoline for a long time. Since Johanna's little she of course has endless energy; I, unfortunately, do not. Not a good combination. Every time I'd sit down for a rest, she'd wait about five seconds and then say, "Jump! Jump!" Kind of like when she tells me to tickle her, then yells that I should stop, then as soon as I stop, she tells me to start again.

Yesterday I just had Dominik since Johanna was at Oma and Opa's. Lukas and Lena (Lukas's sister) came over. They also came over on Sunday afternoon; apparently they had been talking all day about getting to jump on the trampoline! They called to ask if they could come, and about 3 minutes later they were there. I suspect that the reason Lena wanted to come yesterday was largely to jump on the trampoline. They of course only jumped on the trampoline for about 15 minutes, leaving me to have to put the wet cover back on by myself (it's too big for little kids to put on alone). When they came back inside, they colored for a while. Lena colored me a picture and wrote on the back, "Für Laura, von Lena". Little kids are much more likeable when they draw you pictures (not that I didn't like Lena before).

Hmm, what else have I been doing? Not too much. Still reading about Sophie Scholl, of course (same book). Downside to reading stuff in German: it takes a long time. Of course, this is a more academic book so it's bound to be harder. That makes me feel a little better. What makes me feel a little worse is that it's a kids' academic book. That's right. I got it from the juvenile section of the library. Well, at least it's meant for teenagers. I hope.

Jonathan's coming in two weeks!!! And we're going to London!!!!! The more I read about stuff to see in London, the more excited I get! It will also be extremely nice to go somewhere where I know people speak my language! Oh, speaking of traveling, I discovered a bus line that has really cheap (as in, 65 euros or less) round-trip bus tickets to cool places like Zagreb and Ljubljana. I had pretty much given up hope of getting to go those places, so I'm glad that I'll actually be able to. I'm also hoping to go up to Wittenberg in June for the Luther's Hochzeit festival. Not sure if that'll work out, but I hope it does. While I was typing this, I booked a trip to Prague for the weekend after I get back from Paris!

My birthday's in two weeks! Send me potato chips!

"Ich würde es genauso wieder machen"

2008-04-15T22:55:00.003+02:00

Ahhh, I've been meaning to write an actual (as in, non-travel) update for a while, but I just can't seem to force myself to do it. Every time I write a blog entry I get in the groove, but if I don't write another right away, I never feel like doing it again. So, since this is about me learning German, I guess I should write some stuff about German.

Well, I've been trying to read stuff in German more, since I've already pretty much mastered speaking with people (okay, not mastered, but I can do it without any trouble). I figure I might as well take advantage of having tons of German reading material at hand while I actually can. One thing I've discovered: I must read really easy books in English. I've read a few books in German by either authors I've read in English or comparable ones, and the books have all been fairly easy. Example: chick lit. I mean, I knew chick lit books weren't exactly heavy literature, but after reading a few in German, I think I need to beef up my reading list in English. The good thing about reading books like that in German is that I learn more everyday words and phrases, ones that maybe I've heard but never knew what they meant. One bad thing about reading in German: it's easy to read stuff with words I don't know and still get the gist of it. That sounds like a good thing, but it means that I'm not learning what those words mean. It's not always possible to figure out what a word means just from its context, and unless the meaning of the sentence is completely lost on me, I'm not going to bother to look up the word (that gets old fast). Anyway, I've made a rule for myself that, once I finish the two English books that I already got out of the library, I can only read German books from now until I get back to America.

So, one thing that sucks is I'm already forgetting how hard it is to learn another language. To remind myself:

Laura's Progression of Oral Comprehension:
1. Understanding conversations I am participating in
2. Understanding conversations I am not participating in, but where I know the people involved (example: at dinner)
3. Understanding conversations where I have no relationship to the speakers and am eavesdropping (example: random travelers on the train)

It's crazy the stuff I take for granted in English! I am learning so much stuff about language in general, and how much attention it really takes to process it. I think (I hope) this will help me next year. But I wonder if there is a level of comprehension after 3? It's tough for me to compare it to English comprehension, since I never hear English spoken. Until I went to Italy and came in contact with other groups of native English speakers, I wasn't sure if I easily understood conversations that I overheard (turns out that, yes, I do), so I realized that it was a big thing when I could understand overheard conversations in German.

New and exciting: Sophie Scholl and the White Rose. OK, not exactly new...and maybe exciting isn't the right word either. The White Rose was a resistence group against Hitler in the 1940s. They published (anonymously, of course) six extremely critical pamphlets against the regime and mailed them randomly to people in Germany. The stakes were so high that they didn't even send them from Munich, where they lived (most of them were students at the University of Munich). They would have them delivered to other cities and then mailed from there. They only published six, because after the sixth one they were caught. Sophie and Hans Scholl, brother and sister from Ulm, and Christoph Probst were the first ones arrested; the others were caught within a few months. All of the members were arrested, tortured, "tried", and shortly thereafter (as in, a few hours after) executed by beheading. I know that if we lived in a society like theirs, I would never have the courage to do what they did. I only hope I can attempt to live my life even a little bit as well as they did. More info here. You can read the six pamphlets in English or in German.

I'm reading a book about Sophie Scholl now, a book in a series called "rebellious women". The subtitle of the book is "Ich würde es genauso wieder machen"; "I would do it exactly the same again."

Amsterdam

2008-04-11T15:38:00.006+02:00

April 5-7

Amsterdam is crazy, for several reasons. I give you the support of my thesis:

1) The pot is everywhere. And it stinks. I didn't even go in any "coffeeshops" and my coat still ended up smelling like.

2) The prostitutes. Here's my fun tale: I was walking from near my hostel to the Old Church, but I didn't feel like getting out my map. Instead I followed the signs posted around. I walked cluelessly down one street and looked up when I heard knocking on glass. There, in the windows, were many many prostitutes banging on the glass to get the attention of the group of men in front of me. I also realized at this point that most of the people on this particular street were male...oops. One good thing: the prostitutes all looked like the type of girl in high school who was really popular and you secretly hope will end up on the street. Wish granted!

3) Dutch is the craziest language EVER. OK, not really. But it sounds almost exactly like German! I would venture to say that I understood about 25% of what was said without trying hard. It got so that when I heard people speaking Dutch/German I had to stop and listen to at least a sentence or two to figure it out.

4) I CANNOT keep "Dutch" and "Danish" straight. I probably called the citizens of Holland Danish more often than I called them Dutch. Somehow I didn't have that problem in Copenhagen.

K, quick summary. The first day I met up with my parents. They're on one of those organized tours that takes them through several cities in Holland and Belgium. They got in the same morning I did, so we were all tired. We ate lunch near my hostel and then went to the Anne Frank House, where we waited for almost an hour to get in. Why? Because there was ONE ticket seller--who left for about 20 minutes as soon as it started pouring. I would say the Anne Frank House is the second-biggest disappointment of my trips in Europe (first being Sagrada Familia, biggest rip-off ever!!!). The house is mostly empty, giving you pretty much no picture of what it was like for eight people to live there for two years. There were a few artifacts and stuff displayed, but they were accompanied by...quotes from the book. Can you guess what was sold in the bookstore in about 15 different languages? I found the book more informative and more moving than the actual house.

Afterwards my parents went back to their room for a little bit and I walked around for a while. It had stopped raining and the sun had come out, so it was really nice. Amsterdam is a great city to walk around in. Well, except for all the mopeds and bikes (which all want to kill you). After we ate dinner I went back to my hostel...where I unfortunately had the rudest neighbors/roommates ever. I found that quite surprising for a Christian hostel.

The next day I went to Delft to meet up briefly with my parents, and after tagging along on their tour, I walked around the town for a little while and ate lunch. For some reason all of the churches in Delft were closed the entire day to visitors--even though it was a Sunday. I know they have services, but don't most churches usually welcome visitors, especially on Sunday? So, after looking at the churches from the outside, I went to the house of painter Paul Tetar van Elven (yeah, I'd never heard of him either). The only reason I went was that it was free. The inside was really nice and it was cool to see a well-preserved 19th-century Dutch home. Oh yeah, and I also saw the place where Johannes Vermeer's house used to be until it was accidentally torn down or something. Now there's a chapel there (typical).

I hung out in Delft for a little while, but it was really cold, so I went back to Amsterdam. When I got back it had sort of warmed up, so I walked around again, looking at stuff that I had missed the day before (this is when I had my run-in with the prostitutes). Luckily when I went back to my hostel, all my roommates had checked out and new ones had checked in. Those girls didn't come back until about 2:30 (what are these Christians doing??), so I was able to sleep pretty well.

The next day, I got up early and went to Keukenhof Gardens, where there are a ton of flowers and tulips. It was really nice, but the bus takes forrrrever. Also, I had been expecting more tulips. There weren't many at all. And it didn't really feel very spring-like since it was so COLD.

After I was done at the gardens, I went back to the city and met up with Felicia!

We walked around for a while, got lost (thanks, Felicia! haha), then went to the Van Gogh Museum. I liked the museum a lot! It was a little expensive, but it was worth it. Along with all the Van Gogh stuff, there was an exhibit of works by Millais, who I previously knew very little about. I can now tell you practically his life story. Some highlights: he married his friend Ruskin's wife Effie after the two got an annullment, due to the fact that Effie and Ruskin had been married for years but had never consummated the union. Scandalous? I think so. Effie and Millais went on to enjoy much much marital bliss--they had eight children. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Millais's paintings. Many of them look boring from first glance, but the emotions his subjects express are very evident on their faces. He also painted "Ophelia", which I had never known the name of or who painted it.

"The Huguenot", a Millais painting we both liked a lot

Millais's "Ophelia"

Overall: thumbs-up to Amsterdam. It felt much more authentic than Venice, where I heard more English than Italian. The pot and prostitution are not exactly my cup of tea, but both are easily avoided (unless you walk around cluelessly, like me). It's also fairly small and very walkable, which saved me a ton on public transportation. I only had to take a tram once, and even then, walking probably would have taken about the same amount of time as that whole journey did. I really wish I had rented a bike or something though, because while Amsterdam is really nice to walk around, it would have been a lot nicer to ride around. There's not that much to actually stop and look at, so I think biking would have been a great way to enjoy the city. Too bad it was cold and I'm cheap.

Berlin: Weltstadt mit Herz

2008-04-03T15:55:00.004+02:00

March 27-30

At least that's what all the kitschy little souvenirs say. Def my most interesting city visit so far. Berlin isn't really a beautiful city the way many other European cities are, but it has a ton of history. Most of the stuff that has happened in Germany in the past few centuries (good and bad, although obviously a lot of it bad) has centered around Berlin. I went with two other aupairs I know. It was kind of good, because our only common language was German (the one from South Africa speaks English of course, but the French one doesn't), so we had to speak in German. The only bad thing is--it kind of sucks speaking German with non-native speakers, at least for a long period of time. We all have fairly limited vocabularies so it kind of makes speaking a little uninteresting. I was sick of it by the end of the weekend.

Unfortunately my travel companions and I did not have similar traveling styles. Their main goal (they even expressed this out loud) was to visit famous stuff and get their pictures taken in front of it. I mean, I like taking pictures as much as the next person, but I also like actually seeing a city. One of them said she'd go in museums as long as it wasn't too expensive....expensive being 6 €. Um, 6 € isn't a lot. On the other hand, they were perfectly willing to buy chocolate and tacky souvenirs that cost that much or more. I had kind of had a feeling that maybe they wouldn't be the same kind of travelers I was (my first hint was when one of them showed up with a large, wheeled suitcase packed full for a 3-day trip), but this just proved it. Luckily the last day I was able to go off on my own and see the museums I was interested in.

Day 1
We got in super early in the morning from our night train, rode out to our hotel (which was farther than I thought it would be), and of course our room wasn't ready. We left our bags then rode into the city to go wait in the massive line for the Reichstag. After standing there for two hours in the cold, we finally got in. Unfortunately the only part open to the line is the cupola (I wanted to see the big room where they hold the parliamentary sessions, but you have to make a reservation to do that). The cupola was still cool. It's totally made of glass and you can walk up to the top. I remember from one of my previous trips to Berlin that the cupola is glass to allow anyone to see into the government. Almost the entire last century in German history was dominated by closed, secretive government, so it's a symbol to show that that will never happene again. The view was pretty good and there was a small exhibit with pictures showing German history since about 1920.

Afterwards we saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, ate lunch, then went to the Berliner Mauer Gedenkstätte. It has a set-up of how the wall used to look: eastern wall, no man's land, then western wall (those Commies weren't taking any chances). We looked at that for a little bit then rode down to Alexanderplatz to see the world clock and the TV tower (368 meters high!). There was some kind of festival going on, so of course we stopped and ate crepes. After that we went back to our hotel and crashed.

Day 2
We were gonna sleep in....except we went to bed so early that Carole and I both woke up super early (Vianca slept all the way to the alarm). We went on a free walking tour of the city at 11 that ended up lasting 4.5 hours...luckily it included a stop for lunch. We saw Pariser Platz (where the Brandenburg Gate is), the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial, the site of Hitler's former bunker (where he killed himself at the end of WWII), Checkpoint Charlie, Topography of Terror, Bundesfinanzamt, Gendarmenmarkt, Bebelplatz, and the Berliner Dom. It was quite a good and informative tour. I learned quite a bit about the city.

After the tour we went to the East Side Gallery, which is a 1.3-km section of the wall that was left up so that commissioned artists could paint murals on it. It was really cool to see, but unfortunately most of it has been almost completely destroyed by idiots who spray paint over it and write stuff on it (one of my travel companions took it upon herself to write on one of the murals--horrible). The murals were originally painted in 1990, then a good chunk restored in 2000. It's pretty sad that it only took 10 years for them to almost completely deteriorate due to erosion and vandalism.

Day 3
I went off on my own to visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the Topography of Terror, and the DDR Museum. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum is (duh) right next to what used to be Checkpoint Charlie, the checkpoint between the DDR and the American sector, so named because it was the third checkpoint (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...). Most of the stuff in the museum was about the ingenious ways people managed to escape. The actual museum has quite an interesting history too--it's housed in a building that is just over the DDR border into the American sector, and was opened in 1962. It has been adding to its collection ever since.

My next stop was the Topography of Terror, an open-air exhibition located in the ruins of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters. It's an exhibit detailing the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and what life was like under Hitler. It was a very good exhibit, but unfortunately it was just too long for me to be able to read it all. Plus it was outside and it was raining on an off. I read about half of it before giving up and heading to the DDR Museum.

The DDR Museum was a little bit disappointing, mostly because I had hoped it would be bigger! The museum is about what daily life was like in the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). It was really interactive and hands-on, and it had a lot of cool/weird facts--like how in kindergarten, all children were made to go to the bathroom together. They all had to sit down on a "potty bench" and relieve themselves at the same time. No one was allowed to stand up until the last person was finished. Also, apparently people were really into nude beaches and bathing! There were a ton of pictures of beaches and summer spots, and everyone was naked and hanging out (no pun intended, hahah).

Updates?

2008-04-02T16:37:00.003+02:00

I haven't written much lately about the kids, some here's some cool stuff that's happened lately:

Johanna asked me if I saw a tiger in Berlin. When I said no, she asked if I saw a kangaroo. I told her I didn't go to the zoo, but she didn't seem to see why that would affect my sightings of animals.
The things that make a 3-year-old laugh! I put my hand on Johanna's head when we were walking home from kindy, and she moved away. I put it on her head again and pretended it was glued there. I followed her around not moving my hand, and she thought this was hilarious!
Dominik has been coloring these things called mandelas, and he has a whole big paper with hundreds to choose from. He made a list for Stefan to print out, and he told me that I should pick out some too, so that we'll both have some to color. Afterwards, he brought them down to my room so that I'd have them, even though I told him that I'll just color when I'm with him. He said I should keep them down here in case I want to work on them anyway. I love how he thinks I'm just down here frantically coloring!
Me and Dominik read a story the other day about a girl who has a pet sheep. I have to admit...I genuinely enjoyed it.

Another update that I forgot about: I'm going to University of Georgia next year! I'll be in an M.Ed. program in Speech-Language Pathology. I've never actually even visited the school, but I applied there so that it will be easier for Jonathan to commute. (If I went to FSU, he'd have to commute to Atlanta from Tallahassee. Doable, but a pain) The reason I'm going to UGA is mostly financial--I got a graduate assistantship from them that pays all of my tuition, plus a stipend of $1500/month for 21 months. I really liked Florida State and I would have loved to go there, but they didn't offer me any money. I applied for the University Fellowship and apparently the department put me forward as the #1 applicant, but I didn't get it. Oh well, I'll go with the school that wants to pay me!

It's kind of crazy that I'll be living in Georgia, but even crazy is that we'll be living in rural Georgia. Me and Jonathan are going to get an apartment that's about halfway between Athens and Atlanta so that neither of us has to have a 2-hour commute. I'm not looking forward to all the long drives, but it's better than Jonathan having to fly to Atlanta all the time.

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen

2008-04-02T15:48:00.006+02:00

March 21-23

Ehh, it wasn't that wonderful, I just had that song in my head the entire time I was there. Well, not really that song, more like that one line. Since I don't know any of the other words.

Speaking of songs stuck in my head, I had that one line from "The Producers", "I was born in Düsseldorf, that is why they call me Rolf" in my head the entire time I was in Düsseldorf. The worst part about that was that I know other words to the song, but that line just kept running through my head. It's probably not a good idea to go around quietly singing "Springtime for Hitler" in Germany.

Anyway, Copenhagen. A warning to anyone thinking about visiting: it is REALLY EXPENSIVE. And not like when people say Italy is expensive. No. Much much more expensive. We thought it was expensive before we even knew the true exchange rate. We thought it was about 7.5 Kr to 1 USD, but it's really 4.5 to 1. Umm yeah. Here's an example: a one-day public transportation pass costs 115 Kr. That's about 25 USD. Granted, you could travel anywhere in the system with that (including on real trains), so that may not seem so bad. How about this? A standard meal at McDonald's (burger, fries, drink) cost at least 50 Kr. That's more than $10. Need more convincing? We ate at a restaurant one night, but I decided to just get a bowl of soup (which was listed in the appetizers section). It was a fairly normal-sized bowl of soup, one I'd probably pay about 3 € for in Germany. Not at this place. It was 65 Kr, which is more than $13. Recommendation: don't go to Copenhagen until you have money.

Short summary:

Day 1
I met up with Jonathan in the train station as soon as my train got in. It was so great to see him! We hadn't seen each other since December, when we only spent 1.5 days together. This time wasn't much better (2 full days), but it was still good. We were both tired (me from the night train, Jonathan from an international flight) and it was freezing out and raining, so we decided to not do too much. We ate lunch, halfheartedly looked at a palace, went to a (free) museum for a half hour, and then went back to the hotel. We ate dinner at a fast-food-type Indian place because we (mistakenly) thought it wasn't that expensive. I figured out later
that that meal cost us about $40. Great.

Day 2

Thousand-year-old ship in the Viking museum

Jonathan and the Roskilde cathedral

Neither of us had really been that impressed with what we saw of Copenhagen the day before, so we decided to go to Roskilde, a town about 30 km away, to go to the Viking Ship Museum. We hadn't been sure if we'd be able to go because we thought there'd be tons of stuff we'd want to do in Copenhagen, but we thought it would be good to go to a museum since it was sort of raining. The museum ended up being a great choice, and it ended up being a really nice day! Of course it was still freezing and windy, but at least the sun was shining. We walked from the train station through the town of Roskilde to get to the museum. It was weird to see snow on the ground, especially since just a few days before it had been so warm! The Viking Ship Museum wasn't large, but it was cool. It was built specifically for 5 ships that were found in Roskilde Fjord. They had been scuttled in the fjord about 900 years ago to create a blockade (in Viking times, Roskilde was not only the capital of Denmark, but also the most important city in the country). The boats were discovered about 30 years ago, restored, and the museum built specifically to display them. The museum also had quite a bit of information about Viking history and culture, which was nice, since I pretty much knew nothing about them before.

Day 3

I'm guessing a statue of King Christian (I have, like, a 90% chance of being right)

Nyhavn: Now this is the Copenhagen I imagined!

Changing of the guard at Amalienborg Palace. BTW, they were the lamest guards ever. Some of them were chatting with each other during the ceremony!

Jonathan and I said goodbye early in the morning (awww, sad). He had to get a flight back to Atlanta so that he could be on reserve that evening...talk about a tight schedule! Even though we didn't get to do too much in Copenhagen together, it was really nice to just be able to spend time with him.

After he left, I checked out of the hotel and went on a self-guided walking tour that I found in one of the maps Jonathan left me. It took me most of the day to do the whole thing, and I saw a ton of stuff. I discovered pretty fast that Copenhagen is a lot nicer than we had thought from our experiences the two days before. I saw a bunch of churches and palaces (Copenhagen has a ton), a bunch of statues of kings named Christian (seems like all of them were named that), the changing of the guard at Amalienborg Palace (the official residence of the royal family), the Little Mermaid, the only Episcopal church in Denmark, a really cool preserved fortification, some former barracks, a couple ports, and some other stuff. Overall, it was a nice walking tour, but again, of course, it was FREEZING. It was better than both of the days before, but still. At least it was sunny and nice out. It also gave me something to do on Easter, since nothing else was open (although the Guinness Book of World Records museum was...I contemplated going in, just to get out of the cold).

Overall, Copenhagen was a little disappointing. It's a nice city, but not as different as I thought it would be. It looked like many other European (and specifically German) cities that I've visited. I guess I thought it would have some kind of Danish flair...? Not that I know what "Danish flair" is. I also think I would have liked it much better in the summer, or at least temps above freezing. It definitely seems like a summer place, with all its ports and promenades.

As for working, the past few weeks have been nuts! I got back from Berlin on Sunday night and obviously I've been working since then, but in the previous two weeks, I had only worked 4 days. Man, I love traveling! All these trips have given me a much-needed break from the oppressive smallness of Heuchlingen and Heidenheim. Now that it's starting to get warm, though, I think I'll enjoy it more here. It'll be much more pleasant to be outside.

Up next: trip to Amsterdam this weekend. Hopefully once I get back I'll get all caught up with trip posts.

Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Bonn

2008-03-26T17:09:00.005+01:00

March 15-18

I promised to write a blog entry about my trips, mostly because I know I'll forget about them, but I'm leaving for Berlin tonight, so here is a seriously abbreviated version (for real, guys. I promise).

Cologne - Day 1

Kölner Dom (cathedral) -- highest cathedral tower in the world (not highest church tower--that's in Ulm)
Tour of the Roman churches in Köln (btw, Cologne is just the English name for Köln)

St. Andreas
St. Mariä Himmelfahrt
St. Ursula
St. Gereon
St. Aposteln
Klein St. Martin
Groß St. Martin

There's 12 Romanesque churches, but I didn't get a chance to see them all.
In between, I saw

Remains of the former city wall
Old Rathaus
Rhein promenade (really really nice! It was such a nice day)
Walked across the Hohenzollern Bridge
Synagogue

Hmm, I feel like I'm writing an outline for a class. It was a really nice day and not cold at all, so I really enjoyed all the walking. Cologne is not really the most beautiful city, but it has a lot of history. It was a Roman city, or colony, or something, so it's really old. Of course, practically everything was destroyed in the bombing after WWII so a lot of it has been rebuilt, but it's still cool. The churches were surprisingly interesting. I expected them all to look the same on the inside, but they all their own unique character and I enjoyed looking around (which is saying something, considering how many churches I've seen by now).

Cologne - Day 2

Today was rainy, but I had planned for that. I went to several museums:

Römisch-Germanisches Museum (museum about the Roman and Germanic history of Cologne, actually not that large of a museum, and a little boring, but prob just bc I saw so much old stuff in Italy)

Käthe Kollwitz Museum, which I had been really looking forward to. A fairly large collection of her work. Also not a huge museum, but I spent quite a bit of time looking around it

Ludwig Museum, which was some kind of modern art museum. It was interesting, but really really big, and honestly, modern art's not really my thing.

At the end of the day, I went to a Palm Sunday vesper service in the Cathedral, which was really nice. I thought it would just be ok since it was a youth choir singing, but I guess in the most-visited tourist attraction in Germany they don't do things halfway. Only downside: no heat. FREEZING.

Düsseldorf - Day 3

I went to Düsseldorf with no map and not a clue what I wanted to do or see. Luckily the tourist information office is near the train station, so I got a free map there. I followed a walking tour it suggested on there.
St. Andreas Church (nice, but eh. I've seen a ton of churches)
Jan Wellem Monument in the square by the old Rathaus
Schlossturm on the Burgplatz. A tower that used to be attached to the castle, except the castle is no longer there. Also saw a statue of a kid turning a cartwheel, and a rather creepy monument to the city history.
Walked along the river promenade. It was really nice, except it was windy and cold. Needless to say, I hurried.
Anna-Maria-Louisa-Medici Platz and St. Maximilian Church
Königsallee, the "Champs-Elysees of Germany", or so they claim. Not as nice as I expected it to be--not enough high-end stores. But it had a big mall that I walked around in to get out of the cold, so that was good.
Rheinturm and the Landestag. The Rheinturm is a 172 m high tower that you can take an elevator to the top of. Really cool. Also, the Landestag is right next to it, so that was cool to see from above.

Bonn - Day 4

Also did a map-suggested walking tour here. Along the way I saw:

Bonner Münster
Rathaus
Beethoven's birth house (really cool!!! even though Beethoven didn't like Bonn. Had a ton of original stuff)
Rhein promenade
Alter Zoll (old toll-collecting station along the river)
Egyptian Museum at the University of Bonn (not that impressive...only one room of artifacts)
University of Bonn (amazing. Why didn't I go there?)
Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany), one of the most interesting museums I've ever been to. I spent 3.5 hours there, and that was with kind of skimming the main exhibit, which was huuuge. It traced the history of Germany from 1945-present. It was really interactive and had lots of stuff to look at, but it was just too much info. There was also a side exhibit about scandals in Germany from 1945 to present, also really cool, but by then I was too tired to look through it in depth.
Walked past Villa Hammerschmidt and Palais Schaumburg, which were, respectively, the residences of the president and chancellor of West Germany, before unification when Bonn was the capitol

There you go, my 4-day trip written up in less than 4 posts. Impressive. I'm not sure if I'll get around to writing about Copenhagen before I leave tonight, but if I do, consider yourselves lucky!

Trip summary coming soon....

2008-03-24T18:14:00.002+01:00

For real, I promise. I know I said I'd write about Cologne last week, but I only had one free afternoon before I went to Copenhagen, and that was spent packing and trying to stay awake (stupid night trains). I got back from Copenhagen this morning and I'm trying to sort through all my pictures from both trips, but I promise promise I'll write something soon. I better, because I'm going to Berlin on Wednesday!

Wegetable?

2008-03-11T20:58:00.003+01:00

I really need to get back into the posting groove. I feel like I have a ton of stuff to say! Not too much has happened, but I have a bunch of cool stuff coming up!

I'm really that I've been able to meet all these other aupairs. I don't see them that often, because obviously none of us have cars and we are all slaves to the loser bus schedules in Heidenheim, but it's definitely nice to have people to do stuff with, especially people like me who WANT to do stuff. I met up with Carole and Milka on Saturday and we took the train to Ulm, where we met up with an aupair Milka knows through her agency, Vianca. Later on, Dianny (my aupair friend from my German class) joined us too, so there were 5 of us all together. Raffaella, the Italian one, couldn't come because she was in Italy taking a test (I don't know, that's just what Carole said). The weather was kind of gross naturally, since every other day that week had been beautiful. It was cold and overcast so there wasn't much to do besides just look in stores, but it was still nice to do something, and with other people!

After getting back from Ulm, I met up with Tabea and Judith so that we could eat a quick dinner before going to Gegenwind. Milka came with to eat, and ended up coming to Gegenwind as well (she didn't seem to like it very much though...). Weirdly enough, it turns out that the aupair who worked for Milka's family before her not only went to Gegenwind a few times, but was friends with Vivien, one of the Eders' old aupairs. I'm pretty sure Vivien and Olga (Olla? no one seemed to know) knew each other through their German class. And also weirdly, my German teacher gave me the name and phone number of a former aupair who she said still lived in Heidenheim...and turns out it was Olga/Olla (I never did call her). It's so weird how meeting an aupair completely randomly leads me to meeting another aupair who, if anyone had been paying attention, I could have known way before now. But after all this run-around and realizing that there are a lot more aupairs in Heidenheim than anyone realizes, I've decided I'm going to collect phone numbers and addresses of these aupairs' families so that the aupair after me will have some contacts as soon as she gets here. I definitely know how hard it is to meet people!

OK, here's the big news. Dominik has two weeks off for Easter vacation and Johanna has one week off, and in that time they're going to Oma and Opa's next Monday and Tuesday, then Dominik is going to the other set of grandparents for a week, and Johanna will be at Oma and Opa (here) for 2 days. Soo that's two extra weekends I have to travel! The family doesn't want me to go anywhere "just in case anything happens" and the kids can't go to Oma and Opa's, but I think that's kind of mean of them to ask me to stay on the off chance something happens. I don't have much time to travel, so I want to take advantage of every opportunity I have. Anyway, I'm going to Cologne this weekend, with side trips to Bonn and Düsseldorf (I hope), then the weekend after that, over Easter, I'm going to Copenhagen, where I'll be meeting up with Jonathan for two days. The weekend after that I'm going to Berlin for 3 days with Vianca and Carole. Thennn the weekend after that I'm going to Amsterdam to meet up with my parents. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks, and I already know I'll be exhausted from taking so many night trains, but I think it'll be worth it. I've already been to Berlin twice, but there's soo much stuff I didn't get to see. I saw a lot of stuff from the outside, but I didn't go in any of the major stuff, like Checkpoint Charlie, Fernsehturm, Gedächtniskirche, Reichstag, Deutsches Museum. Man, I'm so used to getting to travel on any weekend I have off, I don't think I'm gonna be able to get used to having a normal life when I get back to the US! Thank goodness my boyfriend is a pilot and I'll be able to go somewhere on a weekend if I feel like it.

Hmm, I think those are all my big updates. Now for the weird thing. Judith and Tabea came over last night and we watched "Freedom Writers" (ended up being better than I thought it woudl be). But afterwards, I don't know how, but we got to talking about weird accents and stuff, and I asked them why so many German people confuse the "W" and "V" sounds in English. For example, I've heard soo many Germans pronounce "vegetable" like "wegetable". Both Tabea and Judith said they had no idea what I was talking about. It turns out...neither of them could hear a difference! I said "vegetable" the right way and the German way, and both of them thought I was saying the same word. They both tried saying it, but neither of them could get it consistently right, and they didn't know when they were saying it right or wrong. I thought about it a little, and I realized that there is no "w" sound in German. "W" in German is pronounced like "V" in English, and "V" in German is pronounced like either "V" or "F" in English. But the "W" is a sound that is never at the beginning of words (although it's often in the middle of words, like "raue"). I guess it's one of those things that if you don't grow up hearing it, you can't distinguish the difference between the two sounds. It's like me with "R" in German. I'm better with it now, but I still can't hear it all the time in words, and I know I can't pronounce it the way a native speaker can, although I can fake a pretty good approximation.

Oh yeah, another cool thing about my German (this blog is called "Laura Learns German", so I feel like it's a good idea to write about stuff like that). First off, my reading skills have gotten much better. And even cooler, so have my skimming skills! Every since I got here I've realized that there are so many things in reading and writing that native speakers take for granted, and one of those is skimming. You have to have a really thorough, in-depth knowledge of a language to be able to skim stuff in that language. Well, I can finally skim stuff! Definitely not well, and I don't usually pick up extra stuff like I can when skimming in English, but I can do it! I don't have to read an entire page of German text where there's one specific thing I'm looking for. I can skim!!! And, I can understand when the kids yell stuff across the house, and TV shows that are playing on the TV upstairs (I never realized how hard it is to understand something when it's echoey and spreading until I tried to understand echoey and spreading stuff in German). I really really really really really x 10 hope that I can keep up my German skills when I get back to the US. I'm already realizing how fast it's gonna go downhill. I guess I'll have to find a group of native German speakers to hang out with or something...

So, that's my big update. Check back next week for a short run-down of my adventures in Cologne!

Barcelona, I'll miss you

2008-02-27T22:37:00.008+01:00

Short summaries, lots of pictures

Day 2

Attempted to go the Picasso museum. Line was way too long. Instead, we walked around the Gothic Quarter for a while just looking at stuff. It was at this point that we discovered Placa Sant Jaume, which we got pretty sick of because every time we tried to get anywhere in the Gothic Quarter we ended up back there. In our wanderings we saw the Barcelona cathedral and some odd stores.

Walked to Parc de la Ciutadella, a huge and really nice park. Canoed on the man-made lake there for only 2€! and had tons of fun.

Walked back towards Las Ramblas along the water, looked at the boats, and searched through a tiny flea market where I bought an incredibly tacky model of what Sagrada Familia will look like when it's done. Tried to eat lunch at the market on Las Ramblas, but it was closed!
After lunch, took the bus up to Parc Güell, a park designed by Gaudi. Walked up to see something Joy called the three crosses, basically three crosses on the top of a hill (Parc Güell is already on a hill, so there was a great view). Wandered around the park and went in the very small Gaudi museum in the park, housed in Gaudi's former residence.

Went back to the Gothic Quarter and finally were able to go to the Picasso museum. The main exhibit traced his evolution from "normal" painting to cubism. Definitely one of the highlights of my trip. Unfortunately we were only able to spend about an hour in the museum.
After the museum, we ate delicious paella! It was a little expensive for budget travelling, but worth it.

Day 3

Started our day off by going to Casa Mila, one of the two more famous Gaudi-designed houses in Barcelona (the other one cost 16.50€ to go in, so we opted for the one that was onlz 8€). Spent the whole morning in there. Really awesome house, plus an interesting exhibit about Gaudi's designs and methods.

Spent most of the afternoon wandering around the Gothic Quarter looking in the weird and funky stores, and searching for some of the Gaudi buildings scattered around that area. Finally ate lunch at the market since it was open--the cheapest meal I had on the entire trip. 2 euros total for watermelon and bread, which we split.

Walked down to the beach so that I could see it and say I'd been to the beach. I managed to stick my hand in the Mediterranean! And get some Mediterranean sand in my shoes.

Went with Joy to pick up her girls from kindergarten and school, and then said goodbye. Afterward I went to see a few more Gaudi houses and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. Tried to visit the Palau Reial, but the grounds were closed by the time I got there.

The end!

To sum up, Barcelona is amazing. And so are student discounts. If you go to USC, use that sucker anywhere you go! Since it has no date on it, I'm gonna use that thing until someone turns it down.

If you want to look at all of my pictures, click on my Picasa link to the right. I just spent an enjoyable afternoon looking through a bunch of my old pictures. All of my pictures from my trips are posted on there.

Before I continue with Barcelona....

2008-02-26T13:25:00.003+01:00

I had a great weekend! I met up with three other aupairs on Saturday for a day in Heidenheim (I know, super duper fun). One of them, Carole, I met for the first time about two weeks ago. She had posted a little ad on the bulletin board in the library saying that she was an aupair and was looking for other aupairs to hang out with, so I called her up and we met. We hit it off right away and made plans to meet up again (Saturday). She invited Raffaella, an aupair she knows from her German class, and Milka, an aupair their German teacher said was also looking for people to hang out with. Here's the rundown of countries: Carole=France, Raffaella=Italy, Milka=Namibia. And yes, Milka's name is really spelled that way, like the chocolate. I was surprised that we all hit it off so well! It ended up being a great day, and we're gonna try to meet up again soon.

Obligatory cute friendship pic:

I feel like that's straight out of the Babysitters' Club. Man, I wish the Babysitters' Club was my life. Mostly I wish I could date Logan.

Also, we saw "27 Dresses". I gotta admit, I was disappointed. I mean, obviously I knew going in that it would be a chick-flick, but from the premise and the trailer it looked like it would be at least an exceptionally fun chick-flick. Wrong. It didn't deviate one iota from the chick-flick movie formula. It was moderately entertaining, but it's nowhere near as good as, say, "Something's Gotta Give", which is probably my second-favorite movie ever (yes, I know, that makes me about 45). If you know me, you already know my favorite movie.

Get ready for more Barcelona!

Spain, the second-greatest country in Europe

2008-02-22T14:51:00.006+01:00

February 16-19

At least, that's my opinion so far. If you can't tell, I LOVED Barcelona! While I was there I met up with Joy, who was the aupair before me for my family. She's working as an aupair again, for a family that lives right outside Barcelona and she's been there about three weeks. It was actually a huge coincidence how we even ended up talking. I only met her once, when she was here for a day before she went back home, right after I got here. I never talked to her after that, but then she called about a month ago while I was here alone, and I saw the 001 country code so I assumed that someone was calling for me (I usually only answer the phone while upstairs when I know who's calling, like Stefan or Stephanie), so I picked up. It turned out it was her calling to talk to the fam but they weren't there, so we chatted a little bit. She asked where I'd traveled, and I told her what I'd done and that I was going to Barcelona soon. I knew that she was going to be an aupair again in Spain, but I had no idea that she would be in the city I was going to! We ended up spending all three days that I was there together, and it was a lot of fun. I definitely don't mind traveling alone, but it was a nice change to have someone to tour around with.

Anyway, I'll try to keep this fairly short and chock full of pictures.

Day 1
I had stayed overnight in Stuttgart, where I was flying out of, because my flight left at 7 AM. That meant that my day started at 4 AM. I got to the train station around 4:45, planning to take an S-Bahn to the airport that left about 5. Well, it turns out I looked at the M-F schedule and not the weekend one, so I had to wait until 5:25. This kind of ruined my plan of being to the airport of 5:30, but luckily getting there around 6 still turned out to be plenty of time. But umm there's not really much to do in a train station at 5 AM, so after wandering around and looking at all of the closed stores that I had already seen the night before, I went and sat in the waiting room which was full of three kinds of people: people starting their day early, people just finishing their night, and bums. Most of the people in there were harmless, but at one point one creepy dude started talking to me about his beer and cigars, and then farted while standing right next to me. I decided that was an excellent time to leave.

Once I got to Barcelona, I made it to my hostel with no problems (although the metro took twice as long as they said it would!). Joy met me there around 11 and we set off for Sagrada Família, a church designed by Gaudí. Well, at least at first. He started working on it in 1883, but then like all big projects it was delayed--a lot. It still wasn't finished by the time of his death in 1926, and then of course the plans mysteriously disappeared and there was no way to finish it the right way. So, they just kind of sat around for a couple decades, and now they're working on it again semi-based on Gaudí's plans, but largely not. One side of the church is clearly designed by Gaudí, and the other side is in a completely different style. It's expected to be finished in 2021 or something like that. Unfortunately we wasted 8 euros paying to go inside. Biggest rip-off of the trip. It would have been worth it if there had been anything at all to see. As it was, we saw a couple nice stained glass windows, and a ton of construction equipment. Oh yes, and an exhibit on what kind of stones are being used to build the church. That's right. Stones. I don't think it gets more boring than that. The plus side was that you could go up to the top of one of the towers--if you were willing to pay another 2 euros. We were willing, but it was an hour long wait, so we skipped it. Long story short: if you ever go to Barcelona, don't pay to go in the church (unless you really love stones).

Once we left the church, we ate lunch and then walked down Avenue Diagonal, a loooong diagonal (duh) street that runs pretty much through the entire city. We looked at a couple of the cool houses there, and then from there walked down Passeig de Gràcia, where a couple Gaudí houses are.

We ended up at Plaça Catalunya, a big square in the center of town. We then walked down Las Ramblas, which I'm not sure how to describe. It's pretty much one big tourist trap. There are a couple of restaurants there selling over-priced paella and a bunch of kitschy souvenir stands. There are also a TON of "performance artists" who stand there dressed up until you give them some money, then they do something either stupid or really really creepy. I took a picture of some of the stupid ones, but the creepy ones were seriously too creepy to stop and hover by. From there we walked down to the port and looked at the boats and stuff, and saw the huge floating mall (apparently called Maremagnum). It was a really nice day, so it was nice to walk by the water.

After that we took the funicular up to Parc Montjuïc, a park on a mountain on top of the city.

We mostly wanted to see the castle, and we thought we were going to the right place--but apparently we were the only people who couldn't figure out the short way to get there. The funicular dropped us at almost the opposite end of the park from the castle, so we had another loong walk to it. We did get to see some nice gardens though. We had aimed to get to the castle by 7 PM to see the fountain and light show, but we were early, so we walked to the Olympic park. At 7 the light/fountain show started, and it was really cool! But...it only lasted 15 minutes (which was fine with me, because really, how long can you watch water and lights?).

Joy's host family had told her that you could easily sit there watching it for an hour. Well, 15 minutes was enough for us. Joy tried calling her family to tell them that she wasn't going to ride back home with them (they were in the city for a birthday party), but of course her phone was dead. So...we ended up having to walk to where the party was. And then we couldn't find it. By this point I was ready to lay down on the pavement and sleep. Eventually we found the family, and on their way home they dropped us off at a restaurant. By the time we actually sat down with our food, it was 10 PM. We might have been fitting right into the Spanish culture, but I was tired. I didn't end up getting back to my hostel until 11:30.

Hmm, it isn't working to keep it short, so I'll have to write this in sections. I know you people read my blog, so you better be grateful. And you better read every word I've written (that means you, Jonathan).

Johanna can ride a bike now!!

2008-02-13T18:26:00.006+01:00

Some pictures, for you entertainment:

Johanna riding her bike!!! Seriously, adorable. Take notice of my bike in the background, with the huge red backpack filled with diaper, wipes, food, and drink that we have to take anywhere if we plan to be gone for more than 15 minutes. Parenthood=that giant red backpack

Johannski riding her bike!! She can start, stop, and ride without any help. We rode really far (for a 3-year-old) that day with a pretty strong wind, and she only fell off once.

Hahahah I love this picture because it looks like Johanna is the one doing the self-photo thing.

Eating her "picnic" snack of raisin bread. Not pictured: gummi bears

Johanna is really proud of that raisin bread! (She claimed she was using it to block the sun...? I guess when you're 3, that makes sense.)

So, Johanna can ride her bike now! She pretty much learned this weekend, and then on Sunday they all went on a "Fahrradtour" where she did really well, so me and Johanna did the same thing Monday afternoon. She even remembered the way! We packed a little "picnic snack" as Johanna called it, and I let her pick out two gummi bears to include. There is really nothing more adorable than a 3-year-old riding a tiny two-wheel bike.

On Tuesday I actually woke up early and went into Heidenheim to meet up with Carole, an aupair who posted a little advertisement in the library looking for other aupairs. I'd never met her before so I was a little worried how it would go, but it turned out she's really nice! We hit it off right away and we've already made plans to meet up again. She's from France and (claims) she speaks no English (I say "claims" because everyone I've met who says they speak no English really knows practically half the language, just isn't fluent), so we talked in German, which was fine with me. We're both on about the same German level, so it was good. I had a lot of fun with her, and I'm really glad to have met another aupair.

Tuesday afternoon ended up being another really good day with the kids. We've had a string of good days lately. They both behaved really well and we had a great time together. It was just the three of us for dinner, and they were being so silly and laughing a lot. It always makes me so happy when they behave! The only bad thing about that is that it makes me unhappy when they're bad. I hate that my perception of how good or bad a day I've had is based on their whims of if they'll talk back or not and if they'll behave well. Usually they behave well with me and we rarely have any real problems, but sometimes they are exceptionally good, like the past couple days.

Highlight of my day: I got a package from home containing..................potato chips!!!!!!!! There were only three small bags, but it's better than the none that I usually have. Not gonna lie, I already ate a bag of them. I couldn't resist. Man, has it really been 6 months since I've had regular chips? Ahh I miss the potato chip aisles in the grocery store. Those and Little Debbie brownies. Mmm. Chocolate here sure is good, but I really miss potato chips and brownies.

I really can't wait until it gets warm

2008-02-09T17:12:00.000+01:00

Woo, I must be on some kind of roll! Updating twice in one week! This week was really good. The weather wasn't so nice earlier in the week, but it's been amazing since Thursday. I've gotten a lot of good walking and bike-riding done.

I had off on Monday and Tuesday, so I took the time to just relax. Monday I didn't really do anything all day, mostly because the weather was not that great. Tuesday the weather still wasn't nice, but at least it wasn't raining. I rode with Stephanie to her practice and she checked my teeth (since I hadn't been to the dentist in a year). Her office is so nice! I'd been there before so I already knew what it looked like, but it was different being a "patient". Everything is so new and modern. Since it was Fastnacht (the day before Lent starts, Fat/Shrove Tuesday as we say in America) Stephanie was having a little celebration in the practice. She and her helpers were all dressed up. She had a crazy orange wig that she was going to wear, but Dominik put it on and was running around with it on. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, but imagine a tiny little blond-haired German kid with huge crazy orange hair! He looked like Thing 1 or Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat.

After getting my teeth sufficiently prodded and scraped (no cavities!) I took the train to Ulm to meet up with Dianny, an aupair I met through my German class. She's from the Dominican Republic, and she's hilarious! I don't think she means to be, but she still is. She speaks Spanish originally, so we speak in German since that's our common language. Of course she says that she doesn't speak any English, but she knows a good amount! I don't even want to try to talking in English with her though, because even her German isn't very good. Actually, that just contributes to her hilariousness. We wandered around for a little bit, and she told me all about the awful family that she works for, as well as her friends (and boyfriend!) in Stuttgart who she met when she worked for a family there earlier. She hates her family here so she constantly lies to them about what she's doing--even though it's just stupid stuff. She told them that the friend she goes to see in Stuttgart is her aunt; seriously, why even lie about that?? It got confusing later on though, because she said she had to buy a birthday present for her "aunt"--I'm still not sure if she meant a real one or her fake one.

Smile, Dianny!!

(Also, awesomely enough, she has a sister named Diana, hahah)

The kids were really good yesterday. Dominik had off from school and Johanna stayed home from kindy. I love it when they're good! We all have such a good time! Here they are playing outside:

Notice the awesome chalk drawings me and Johanna made on Thursday

Last night Eveline and Irene (both from Gegenwind) came over and we watched "Little Miss Sunshine". Eveline was hilarious--she kept saying things like, "I hate the father. I hate him!" and "Leave him. She should leave him." and her favorite, "Oh, nein." After the movie was over we talked for awhile and we laughed A LOT. This morning Stefan asked, "So, did you guys just laugh all last night, or did you actually watch a movie too?"

They discovered my Mardi Gras beads (courtesy of Jonathan) and Irene kept checking herself out in the mirror afterwards. Irene and Eveline, imitating hippies

Irene also told me that she never wants to go to America to live, and not even for a vacation. Her reason? Because of what she sees on TV. I tried to tell her that America is NOT like it seems on TV, but she didn't seem very convinced. She thinks all we do there is "party". Message to all Germans: Grey's Anatomy is not real life.

Catch-up

2008-02-04T14:30:00.000+01:00

Turns out it's been a while since I've updated. Today is kind of weird. It's some kind of holiday celebrating something, but I'm not really sure what. So, happy two days before Ash Wednesday? Fasching has been going on for a while and I know it has something to do with that, but I have no idea what today specifically is. I guess I'd make a terrible Catholic.

So, Fasching. Fasching is pretty much the German version of Mardi Gras, except it happens all over Germany and lasts a lot longer. It's actually kind of weird--at Halloween hardly anyone dresses up, but EVERYONE dresses up for Fasching. I was in C&A the other day, which is the closest approximation to a department store I've seen here, and there was a huge section of what I would call Halloween costumes, except I guess they're Fasching costumes. Apparently in Köln (Cologne for all you non-Germans) they celebrate Fasching starting in, like, November, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get up there at all. I also really wanted to go to a Fasching parade yesterday, but I couldn't find anyone to go with me. I guess that's the price I pay for knowing actual Germans. None of them want to go do any of the typical German stuff, either because they've done it a bunch times before or because they can do it next year.

Adorable!!!

This week I did....pretty much nothing. I'm going to Ulm tomorrow, where I'll meet up with another aupair I know, so that should be fun, as long as it doesn't snow. I am such a snow Scrooge. OK OK, it looks nice, but for me pretty much what it means is that I have to wear my huge snow boots when I go outside, so I sound like an elephant when I'm walking. I don't know how big the other aupairs were, but they must have had some HUGE feet.

Oh yeah, I finished reading Pride and Prejudice! Why did no one ever tell me how good that book is?? I loved it! I now feel a little bit bad dissing the poor English-language-book selection in the Heidenheim library, because it's forcing me to resort to reading classic books that I really should have read before this point in my life. Although maybe it's good that I'd never read it, because I probably just would have hated it. I'm already biased against John Steinbeck from reading The Pearl in 8th grade. I would still hate F. Scott Fitzgerald because of The Great Gatsby if I hadn't read one of his stories in an English class two years ago. Next up: Mansfield Park, which I've already seen the movie version of. After that, I hope to conquer Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Poor Brontës. I'm sure they wrote those books with the intention that people should look forward to them with anticipation, not dread. I think that is unfortunately the trade in being a great writer; most of the world thinks that your books are a major contribution to literature, but most of the world also has no desire to read them. I would say 90% I want to read those books is that Brontë is such a cool last name, because of the ë. I wish my name had something cool like that. I really have the most boring name in the world. Actually, that's a lie. I have a boring name in the US, but Smith sounds surprisingly exotic here. When I tell people my name, they can tell from it right away that I'm not German and most likely English-speaking, therefore awesome (because that's how it goes: English-speaking => awesome). Mostly though, my name is dull.

And right now? I'm mostly looking forward to my trip to Barcelona in two weeks. It's not even that cold here right now, but I'm looking forward to being somewhere where the temps are in the 60s. And obviously I think it will just be a really cool trip. I'm getting excited for my upcoming trips and am trying to stop spending so that I'll have some money left.

Speaking of trips, I don't think I've said where I'm going. Obviously I'm going to Barcelona Feb 16-19, then in March I'm going to Copenhagen, April to Amsterdam, then I have a week off in May, where I'll be going to London, Belfast (N. Ireland, ooo scary), and Glasgow. I also have another long weekend in May where I right now plan to go to Paris. That one's not set in stone yet, because you can't buy train tickets until 3 months in advance. Way to thwart my travel-planning, Deutsche Bahn. I also plan to make some weekend trips to Prague, Salzburg, Vienna, and obviously some German cities too. It's kind of sad actually. I did so much more traveling in Germany the other times I was here, when I wasn't even living here.

Just realized that I didn't even comment on the Tupper-Party. It was kind of time-warpy. I sort of felt like I was in The Twilight Zone: I was at a '50s style party, but everyone was wearing modern clothes, and they were all speaking German. I never really knew that Tupperware made so many products until I came to Germany and started working for a Tupper-obsessed family, but at this party I found out that Tupperware is expensive. Fortunately I had absolutely no money, so it wasn't a problem. The woman who was selling the Tupper gave everyone a little Tupperware "gift", so I didn't leave empty-handed. As Stefan said, my first Tupper! Other than the sales pitch, the party was good. I knew most of the people there, and it was nice to catch up with them after I'd been gone for so long over Christmas.

Overall, I am at a contented point. My German is progressing nicely, to the point where I can watch movies in German (I saw P.S. I Love You with Eveline and Irene last week and understood almost the whole thing with little effort) and even read most websites pretty easily. I still feel like it's a constant struggle, but clearly things are getting better. I can't believe I've been here for five months, and that I only have six and a half left! I'm already thinking about looking for a German-related job for when I get back, just so I don't lose my speaking skills.

Since probably no one reading this is in Germany, I'll go ahead and wish myself a happy two days off. Now back to my new obsession: reading editorials on the Presidential primary.

One more thing

2008-01-23T10:58:00.001+01:00

My new favorite thing here: going to the library. The library in Heidenheim isn't that great, but they do have a fairly large selection of English books. I mean, most of them suck, but there are a few gems among the scum. And by gems I mean books I've been wanting to read but either could never bring myself to (read: classics that I always think will be boring) or books that I'd be too embarrassed to admit I'm reading except in a library where they don't speak English (read: chick-lit). Here are the books I read this week:

A Christmas Carol: How had I never read this before? How had I never read any Dickens before?? I really enjoyed it, although I think that if I were to tackle a longer Dickens novel I would get bored quickly. The writing is just so different from what I'm used to reading that I'd find I'd read an entire page and couldn't remember what had happened. I know, after that high praise, who wouldn't want to run out and read it? But seriously, you should. It's good. Also, I'm glad to finally know what the 84 different movie versions I've seen are based off of.

Summer Sisters: Um, I remember when people were reading this in, like, middle school. This book is NOT APPROPRIATE for middle schoolers!!! I guess some people thought the natural progression was from Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret to Summer Sisters, but I gotta say, I'm not letting my kid read this book that early. It was good, but there was a lot of sex. Like, a lot. Yeah, I liked it and all, but I wish someone had warned me.

And today I'm going back to the library so I can load up again. There's also a huge section of travel books, which I keep getting out and not reading. I got one out for Copenhagen and have dutifully not read it all week, except for one day when I slipped up and skimmed a few pages. I'll probably get one for Barcelona today, just to pretend that I'm planning for my trip.

Hopefully more together

2008-01-23T10:46:00.001+01:00

Hm. I just re-read that last post. It wasn't very coherent. Let's just pretend that I was still sick...yeah. We'll go with that.

Travel update: I have a week off in May, and I'm going to London, Belfast, and Glasgow! I booked my ticket and everything! Now here's hoping that EasyJet is reliable...

The month of sickness

2008-01-20T16:13:00.001+01:00

Hmm, I guess I should get back into posting. How long has it been since the last one?

Well, not a ton has happened since I posted about my Italy trip. I was sick after I got back, but I got better pretty fast. Last Saturday was my last German class, which I'm glad about, but it was also kind of sad. The class had a really good group dynamic, and we were all on about the same level. On the other hand, I'm glad I don't have to get up early on Saturdays anymore! And this also means I can start traveling more. I enjoyed the German class, but honestly, I didn't learn that much. It was too easy for me, but it was still a good review. And on the last day the teacher "took requests" and went over some stuff that we all had questions about, like passive. I would say the best thing about the class was that I got to meet some other aupairs, plus I got to brush up on passive and subjunctive.

I went to Gegenwind on Saturday night, and it was nice to be able to go out and see other people. Now the kids are sick this week, so I've had to work a lot more (they have chicken pox, so they can't go to school at all). It's not that bad, it's just that I have to work more hours, plus since we can only stay inside we wore out all of the games and activities in about the first two days. Hopefully they'll be going back to school on Tuesday or Wednesday this week. I know they're both sick of being here!

Eveline (from Gegenwind) came over on Friday night and we watched "Message in a Bottle"--in English, which was nice! If you haven't seen it, I don't recommend it. We were both looking forward to watching a girly movie, but even for us it was disappointing. It's kind of boring, actually, and it was definitely too long.

I didn't get to go to Gegenwind last night because Stefan and Stephanie went to a Fasching party in Heuchlingen. Fasching is pretty much the German equivalent of Mardi Gras. There's a ton of parties and people drink lots of beer and wear crazy costumes. Stefan dressed up as a German woman, complete with dirndl, blond braids, and blow-up breasts. Stephanie dressed up as a German man with lederhosen and a painted-on beard. I have to say, they were disturbingly convincing.

Tabea is having a Tupperware party on Friday, so I'm going to that. I've never been to a Tupperware party, though--I thought people only had those in the '50s. I don't plan on buying any Tupperware, but it'll be nice to get out of the house. It's kind of unfortunate that my excitement threshold is so low. I'm actually looking forward to a party where someone will be selling Tupperware, all because it means I'll be able to get out of the house and interact with other people. The good thing is, I now expect everything to be more fun than sitting in Heuchlingen doing nothing, so I have fun pretty much everywhere I go. Hmm, maybe I've just discovered the secret to living an exciting life--have a low baseline, that way everything else vastly exceeds it in comparison.

I'm really looking forward to going to Barcelona in less than a month! I saw in the newspaper today that it's 17° C there today. If it's that warm in January, it'll be even better in February! Ahh, I can't wait to experience some warm weather! Although I have to admit, even though it's cold here, it's finally been sunny for the past few days, so it's beautiful. Everything is finally starting to look green again, instead of just brown. I guess because there aren't that many houses here and there's a lot of farms, but the sky looks so big here! It reminds me a little bit of Montana, but no sky will ever look as big as it did there. I love being able to see stars here at night, too! I mean, when it's not cloudy (which it usually is).

Just to prove I can actually speak German: Ich wünsche Euch alle eine schöne Woche! Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland!

All men in Italy look like Rocky

2008-01-12T14:34:00.000+01:00

Fine, not all of them, but definitely more than I was expecting. Luckily not too too many talked like him (if you've ever seen Rocky, it's a good movie, but he sounds like an idiot) (yeah, yeah, I know Sylvester Stallone talks like that because of a birth defect, but still!).

I realized that I wrote about the bare-bones of my trip (maybe a liiiittle bit more than that) but a lot of other crazy stuff happened too, so I'm trying to remember some of my good stories. Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. The very first day that I was actually going into Rome to do stuff, on my very first Metro ride (this makes me sound like I've never been on a Metro before, but I just mean in Rome), this crazy lady on the train stands up and starts singing opera. Everyone in the car gets really quiet and tries to pretend like they don't notice her...really effective, since obviously they'd all stopped talking. That went on for a little while, and then she walked around trying to collect money from people then moved on to the next car (aside: crazy people doing stuff like this on trains did not turn out to be an unusual occurrence, although even for the crazies she was quite odd). The craziest thing? I saw her two days later, on Christmas, just walking around the streets like a normal person! I mean, she looked a little nutty, but I probably wouldn't have noticed her if she hadn't been the opera-singing lady. In Naples a similar thing happened. On the train back to my hostel, some guy started playing--and singing--both "Happy birthday" and the Macarena on the saxophone.

2. In the hostel I stayed in in Florence, there were 4-bed rooms but for most of the time it was just me and 2 other girls. The second night we were there, this Italian lady comes in, who actually was really nice, and she was there for the night. From what we could discern from her limited English and our limited Italian, she had just had surgery on her back and had gotten out of the hospital that day...why she was staying in a hostel, who knows? I'm also not sure she really understood English that well, because at some point someone asked her where she was from and she said Romania, but she didn't look Romanian, didn't have a Romanian accent, didn't have a Romanian name, and didn't seem to speak Romanian. But she was clearly in a lot of pain, though, and the bed sucked (I had passed it over myself). She kept making these weird sounds of pain that were kind of half-groan, half-sigh. I went to take a shower, and after I got out of the shower I brushed my teeth/went to the bathroom, and I heard these really loud moans of pleasure that sounded like someone was having sex. I was like, dang, guys, keep it down! But when I got back to the room, I realized it had just been her, making her pain sounds...

3. On Christmas Day in Rome, all the metros stopped running at 1 PM, even though there were no signs informing anyone of this and no one really seemed to know that it would be happening (except, I would assume, the Metro employees). It took me forever to figure out how to get back to my hostel because none of the tourist information offices were open (OF COURSE) and none of the bus-ticket-sellers at any of the tabacco stands was willing or able to help me. I wound up having to call my hostel from my German cell phone, which I'm sure cost about 2 euros a minute, but eventually I found out what bus to take so that I could meet up with the second bus I'd have to take. Well, after this long adventure, I was relieved to be on the second bus, the one that would take me to the stop by the hostel. My relief was short-lived. Somehow, even though I'd never seen another accident (I'm not sure how--people are INSANE drivers in Italy) the bus got in an accident. It was a hit-and-run--the car merged into the bus and then took off (I have a feeling that car was pretty messed up after that). Luckily we were only stopped for about 15 minutes, but it was quite a frustrating end to Christmas. That isn't even the end of the story. I must attract accidents, because on the last day that I was in Italy, I woke up early to take the bus so I could get to the airport. I get to the bus stop, and what do I see? Another bus that had been involved in an accident. To the bus drivers' credit, it was neither of their fault either time. Moral of the story: never rent a car in Italy.

Opera in Milan, snow in Venice

2008-01-10T10:44:00.000+01:00

Before I start part 2, let me take a second to tell you about the hostel in Florence. It was called Hostel Sette Santi, and it was right next to a church of the same name. In fact, it used to be a convent. Walking in the entrance it looked fairly modern, but the breakfast room was pretty awesome--it still had the long wooden tables with wooden chairs. The rooms were pretty normal too. My room had only four beds, which was really nice, and I got lucky having good roommates (Meghan and Victoria, the two girls in the picture). But, some odd things for an ex-convent: our overhead light didn't work; the one working light in the room only turned off when you unplugged it; the bathroom was disgusting; AND the bathroom was co-ed, even the showers. In general it was pretty quiet though, which was really nice. The worst part, though, was that on New Year's Day, two of the sinks in the bathroom were filled with puke. It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen, made even worse by the fact that the toilets were literally five feet away. Why couldn't you have stumbled just a little further, eh, drunky?

Now on to Milan and Venice.

Milan

Day 10

All three of us slept in, and then went to the train station together. I scrapped my plan to go to Cinque Terre because it would have taken too long to get there and I would have only had about two hours of sunlight to walk around, then a long train ride to Milan. We all ended up getting on the same train, and Meghan and Victoria got off to change trains and go to Venice, while I went on to Milan. It was nice to have some company, even if only for a little bit. In Milan I saw

The Cathedral (I didn't go inside because it was closed, but it was still pretty cool. The weird thing, though, was that the front was covered by an advertisement...)
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (An old and nice, but rather small, shopping center. Most of the stores in there are big-name expensive ones, like Prada and Louis Vuitton. Apparently it's been used as a model for many other malls.)
Teatro alla Scala (I just saw it from the outside, and it's actually not that impressive. Still really exciting to see it though!!)

Day 11

Slept in a little bit, then went back to the cathedral to see if I could go in. I decided not to, since it cost money. After that I went back to La Scala to see if the ticket office there was open, so maybe I could get a ticket. It was closed, but it said the official ticket office was in the Metro station. When I got there, a woman told me that if I wanted to get a ticket for that night, I could go give my name back at the theater, because they were selling 140 partial-view gallery tickets for 12 euros. I hurried back there, and was really lucky to get on the list--I was number 120 of 140. The guy told me to come back at 1 PM. After that I walked to
Castello Sforzesco (Pretty ugly, actually. I had no desire to go inside, so I just walked around the courtyards for a little bit. I walked all the way through to the back, though, and happened upon this thing they were calling "Snow Park", where people could go tubing and skiing down these big ramps that look like those ones at fairs where you slide down on a burlap cloth. The ironic thing? It was actually snowing that day.)
After I ate lunch, I went back to La Scala to stand around and wait for my name to be called. While I was there, I ran into the woman I'd seen before, who thankfully spoke very good English, and told me what was going on. She said this round was just so they would call all of our names to see if we'd showed up. After that, we had to come back again at 4 PM, where they'd call our names again then give us vouchers for tickets. After that, we had to wait in line until 4:30 when we could finally buy tickets. She said she'd done this before and that usually you only have to come back at 1 PM, but since it was the last show of the first opera of the season, they were practically making people beg for the tickets.
The way they called the names was crazy! All 140 of us had to crowd around this old guy yelling out last names (in Italian, mind you) and somehow we all had to indicate that we were there. I feel like there are so many ways to make the process more efficient, but I think it was designed to see just how desperate we were. The best part: when I first gave my name I had to show ID (I guess to prove that's who I really was) and since it says Pennsylvania on the license, he wrote down "Laura Smith Pencilvania", and then called that out when he called my name. After that I walked down
Via Torino (supposedly a street where there are tons of big-name stores, but I hardly saw any. It was pretty much like any other shopping street I've seen in any other city.)
San Lorenzo Maggiore (I walked past this church and was going to go in, but decided not to because there was a crazy guy sitting on the steps singing opera at the top of his lungs.)
Navigli (My guidebook told me that this was a really nice section of Milan with canals running through, and that it looked like Venice, but it didn't. It was ugly.)
Sant'Ambrogio (This church was really cool. It had a ton of mosaics inside that were really nice, as well as the 1600-year-old body of S. Ambrogio...on display.)
After all that, I killed some more time until 4 PM and just walked around a little bit. At 4 I went back to La Scala to wait for my name to be called. This time it was a woman calling the names, and she just said my last name. It sounded like she was saying "Smeet!" But I got my voucher and then waited in line for 30 minutes, since of course they couldn't open the box office right after the vouchers had been given out. By the time I got my ticket it was 4:45 and the opera started at 6:30, so I pretty much had time to eat dinner and come back.
The opera!!! (The opera was good, but my seat was not. Where it was, I could not see one inch of the stage. I ended up walking around to the back of the theater where I could see the whole stage, but then of course I couldn't see a subtitle screen. I tried looking off a few other people's, but most of them had Italian. Eventually I was able to find a spot where I could see the opera and read English, but it involved standing up. I wasn't really looking forward to doing that for 4 hours. By the way, the total time of the opera was 5 hours and 20 minutes: 3 acts of 1 hr 20 mins and 2 intermissions of 40 minutes. Those Italians take their opera seriously. I had to leave after the second act because the metro stopped running at midnight and I would have missed it if I'd stayed for the whole thing. I'm really glad I went, but I would have enjoyed it a lot more from a seat that I could see the stage from. But how many people can say that they've seen "Tristan and Isolde" at one of the most famous opera houses in the world?)

Day 12

This day mostly involved getting to Venice. I got in around 2 PM, but then I had to get to my hostel. When I went to the tourist information office, I met a girl who asked me what hostel I was staying in. When I told her, she asked if she could come with me since her hostel was already horrible. She told me she was from Australia, traveling around Europe for a few months after her graduation. She ended up staying at my hostel, in the bed above me. She was really nice though. She seemed to be one of those rare Europe-travelers who actually cares about seeing stuff, rather than getting drunk every night. Once I got settled in, I went to
San Marco Basilica (Amazing inside! Unfortunately it was against the rules to take pictures and they seemed to be strictly enforcing it. It was covered in mosaics, but they had the lights dimmed really low so it was kind of hard to see them. I would have liked to spend more time in there looking around, but there were so many tourists that I kept getting pushed along.)
Ponte Accademia (I ended up here by accident. I was just wandering, trying to find a way to get to the church on the other side of the canal. While I was walking, I saw a bunch of cool stores. All the stores I'd hoped to see in Milan were in Venice instead. I window-shopped for a while, looking at the amazing clothes, and eventually just followed the line of tourists. There was a nice view from the bridge.)
Santa Maria della Salute (really cool from the outside, not that exciting on the inside. This seemed to be a trend in several Venice churches.)

Day 13

I woke up early to be able to cram stuff into the day. On the boat I met a girl who was also in my hostel, and she asked if I'd like some company for the day, so I said yes. The odd thing was, she didn't seem to like me very much. She seemed nice enough, but we never really seemed to click. It was fine walking around with her because we were both only really interested in wandering around. Some things we saw:
Ponte Rialto (bridge over the Grand Canal)
Fish Market (smelled extremely fishy)
Exhibition about Vivaldi (I'd briefly looked at it the day before, but this time I read all the info. I had no idea that Vivaldi had even lived in Venice. It actually had never really occurred to me that he was Italian. It said that he originally became a priest, but was never satisfied with it and was always trying to do stuff with music. It also said that even though he was an excellent composer, since he was born not very well-to-do, pretty much all of his music undertakings were so that he could earn money and live well. There were also a couple cool instruments there, but the instrument exhibit at the Accademia in Florence was better.)
The store that made the masks for Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" (the masks really were well-made, although I'm still not sure if I think they're cool or creepy.)
Murano Island (where the famous Venetian glass is made. Here I bought a necklace and a bracelet, both made out of glass beads.)

Rome

Day 14

My last full day in Italy *tear*. I got up super early to take the train to Rome. I even paid 15 euros for a seat reservation so that I could take a faster train and get to Rome two hours earlier. Of course it ended up being half an hour delayed. So glad I paid that extra money. It also ended up being the worst train ride. There was a group of American girls who confirmed every stereotype that everyone in Europe holds about Americans. They were college-age, probably traveling around after a college trip to Europe. I can tell you practically their whole life stories. They go to Hofstra, some of them are seniors, and according to them, there were people even more obnoxious than them on the trip. They also were cursing loudly, despite the fact that there were families who spoke English riding with small children. And since I had 4 hours to contemplate why they were so annoying, I finally figured it out. They never asked questions about each other. Their entire conversations consisted of trying to get a word in edgewise....to talk about themselves. I think that's what really gives Americans a bad rep. There are plenty of us out there who genuinely care about seeing a new place and experiencing the culture and language--but there are also Americans who think that everyone should speak English not because it's a common language, but because they speak it. They expect things to happen for them just because they're American. OK, end of complaining.
In Rome I visited:
The Baths of Caracalla (One of the most famous baths in Rome in its time. Many of the artifacts found there are some of the most highly prized of Ancient Rome. I was lucky to see many of them at the National Archeological Museum in Naples, which apparently has a better collection than I realized when I was there...)
The Capitoline Museum (Not gonna lie, kind of boring. I was exhausted after a long day of travel, plus this was about my 15th museum displaying ancient sculptures and pieces of broken stuff. There are only so many fragments of broken vases that I can be interested in. I did, however, see the famous statue of Romulus and Remus (which was kind of creepy) and a thousands-year-old statue of Marcus Aurelius.)

And thus ends my Italian odyssey. The next day I went back (which, let me tell you, was also an adventure: it involved a bus, a metro, a train, an airplane, another train, yet another train, then a car ride). I had a great time and I loved being able to travel around, but I'm also glad to be back. When I think about it, though, it's pretty cool that I was able to plan this trip completely on my own and actually execute the entire thing. I didn't even need anyone to drive me to the airport. I'm pretty proud of myself, especially since I speak very little Italian.

Enough patting myself on the back. Time to plan for my next adventures: Barcelona in February, Amsterdam, Paris, and Belgium in April (hopefully), and Madrid, Lisbon, and Sevilla in May! In between I hope to go snowboarding, take a weekend trip to Prague, another weekend trip to Vienna, and who knows what else? I need to see more German cities too! Otherwise what am I living here for?

Christmas in Rome, trash in Naples, New Year's in Florence

2008-01-09T14:24:00.003+01:00

December 22-January 6

I'm back from Italy! And what was the first thing I did when I got back? Got sick. Of course. I'm not too disappointed though, because I figured after spending 2 weeks living in youth hostels it was pretty much inevitable. I'm just glad it didn't happen while I was actually traveling around. I feel much better now, but yesterday was horrible. The last time I remember feeling that sick was when I got my wisdom teeth out, 6 1/2 years ago. It's nice to be back home though (despite the sickness) and it's especially nice to sleep in my own bed, with no one else sleeping in the room! Youth hostels are great for price, but no so great for privacy.

OK, if I tell every detail of my trip, I'll lose you all before you even start reading, so I'll condense it to short, bullet-itemized summaries of my trip. Let's start with Rome.

Rome

Day 1

Roman Forum (really cool, but they're not kidding when they call it a ruin)
Palatine Hill (freakin awesome to see where all the richest people in Rome used to live)
Colosseum (cool, but kind of a disappointment, I think because there wasn't much displayed historical information inside it)
Piazza Navona (nice, but would have been nicer without the INCREDIBLY TACKY Christmas market)
Palazzo Altemps (also nice, but focused more on the collection housed in it rather than the history of the people who lived there, which I would have liked to know more about)
Pantheon (HUGE--and, since it's Rome, now a Catholic church)
Temple of Minerva (also now a Catholic church)
Crypta Balbi (used to be a Roman theater, but of course is now in ruins--yet another collection of ancient Roman artifacts. The ruins in the basement were really cool, but hard to decipher since the tour was in Italian.)

Day 2

Piazza del Popolo (cool and really big plaza)
walked past the Justice Palace and the Castel Sant'Angelo
St. Peter's Basilica (huuuge and amazing inside)
Museo Storico Artistico in the Basilica (I thought this would be kind of a let-down, but it was amazing! It included an audioguide and had an amazing collection of rare and historical reliquaries and other religious artificats related to the Vatican)
climbed to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica (551 steps is a looong trip, but it was a great view from the top)
Vatican Museum (probably the biggest museum I've ever been in. You really need an entire day to see the whole thing. I also, naturally, saw the Sistine Chapel, which was quite impressive.)
went to the Piazza Repubblica and saw the Baths of Diocletian (only from the outside; it was closed) and the church there

Day 3: Christmas!

San Paolo Basilica (the only major church in Rome located outside the former city walls)
Circus Maximus (cool to know what it is, but it's just a big sloped field now)
San Giovanni in Laterano (I was trying to hit the major churches today since it was Christmas) where I also saw the former Aurelian city wall
Santa Maria Maggiore
Trajan Forum (one of the forums that I missed on the first day)
It was right about now that I discovered that the Metro stopped running for the day at 1 PM, so I mildly started to freak out (I needed the Metro to get back to my hostel), but decided that since I couldn't do anything about it, I'd just keep seeing stuff. BTW, there were no signs or anything mentioning this. In fact, no one else in Rome seemed to know that this would be happening either. Everyone I asked told me that the Metro was open--although of course it wasn't.
Trevi Fountain (cool, but really really crowded)
Spanish steps (um, I had no idea how many steps there would be. It was a lot.)
Villa Medici (closed, but cool to see)
Long adventure trying to figure out how to get back to hostel

All in all, Rome was a good trip. I did a ton of stuff and had a lot of fun. Of all the places I went to, I think it was the best one to pick to be in for Christmas. It also had the best weather!

Naples

Day 4

By the time I got into Naples and had dropped my stuff off at my hostel, it was lunchtime, so I went back into the city, where I ate then went to
The National Archeological Museum (had a very impressive collection, but unfortunately many of the rooms were not open. Oddest thing I saw on my trip: the room containing erotic art from ancient Roman times. A lot of it was quite graphic.)
Since there was nothing open (the day after Christmas), that's pretty much all I did

Day 5

Pompeii (I spent the entire day here. It was huge and, with the audioguide, really interesting, but it all started to look the same after a while. Overall, though, really cool. Also, since I stupidly didn't bring food with me, I had to pay 10 euros for a small plate of pasta and a dry piece of cake. Weird story: When I was buying my food, the lady told me it was 7 for the pasta and 4.50 for the cake. I told her I didn't want the cake then, since it was too expensive and she says, "No, take it, I'll give you the whole thing for 10. Consider it a student discount." Since when do they negotiate in restaurants??) I have to say though, it seems like no one learned their lesson after Vesuvius, which is still an active volcano!, erupted and decimated several towns. There is practically no open space left around it because there are towns everywhere.

Day 6

I was pretty unimpressed by Naples in general, mostly because it was really really dirty and didn't seem very safe, so instead of going back into the city (my hostel was in Portici) I took the Circumvesuviana train down to
Sorrento (It was so nice. It's a town built high up on a cliff over the Gulf of Naples, and the town is beautiful. It's also famous for its inlaid wood artists, and all of the stuff was great. It was also CLEAN, which was a nice change from Naples and Portici. The view over the gulf was great, and even though it was a little foggy, I could see all the way across to Naples.)
Went back to Naples and tried to see the sunset over the gulf, but the Metro there is so confusing and illogical that somehow I ended up lost in a shady area (seems like all Naples has is shady areas).

I'm glad I went to Naples, just to see what it was like, but I definitely would not go back there again alone. Most of the time I was walking around, no matter where I was, I did not feel very safe. The Archeological Museum was good, but I had no desire to see much else of what Naples had to offer. Good thing there were easy day trips in the area.

Florence

Day 7

Since I didn't want to pay 20 euros for a seat reservation, I took a slower train up to Florence, meaning that the trip took 5 hours. Even with it leaving at 8:30, it still took up a good chunk of the day. It didn't help that the train didn't stop at the central train station and I had to find a way there once I got off. Once I got to the main station, I met up with Bonnie, a friend from high school who's teaching English in France, and her boyfriend Scott.
Cathedral (We went here first because they hadn't seen it yet and it's a short walk from the train station. I'm glad we went when we did because we waited in line about 3 minutes, and every other time I walked by there while I was in Florence, the line looked like it was about 30 minutes. The cathedral is amazing and huge from the outside, but rather uninteresting on the inside.)
Ponte Vecchio (In the course of wandering, we ended up by the Ponte Vecchio, and a really cool and really touristy bridge that goes over the Arno. Of course we took pictures.)
Piazza Michelangelo (After walking over the Ponte Vecchio, we walked up the Piazza Michelangelo, so named because it has a copy of the David in the center, where there was a great view of Florence. We got there just as the sun was setting, so it was an even better view.)
After all that, we ate dinner and I made the (confusing) trek to my hostel.

Day 8

I met up with Bonnie and Scott again and we went to the Medici Library, which interesting, but a lot less library-ish than I thought it would be. Also smaller.
After looking around the market outside the church/library/chapel, we ate lunch and then went our separate ways (they were headed to work on an organic farm outside of Florence for a week). And I went to:
Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (Small, but nice. Had an amazing chapel inside decorated floor to ceiling with huge frescoes. It also had a really interesting exhibit on restoration of antique and ancient objects.)
Afterwards I just wandered around for a while. I went to the Accademia to see if I could get in, and the line wasn't even that long, but I didn't feel like waiting.

Day 9 (New Year's Eve!)

Accademia (I went first thing in the morning, and I waited approx 30 seconds. I guess no one else thought to go at 10 AM on New Year's Eve day? A lot of interesting stuff, but obviously I was only there to see the David. It was totally worth it. The David is probably one of the most amazing pieces of art I've ever seen. It was much bigger than I expected, but also much more life-like. After seeing it, it's hard to not think less of other statues and sculptures.)

Casa Buonarotti (A disappointment. It's advertised as having a large collection of pieces by Michelangelo Buonarotti, but it really didn't. It had maybe 10 things by him. Most of the rest of the objects there were things collected by his relatives, who actually lived in the house.)
Pisa (The Leaning Tower and the Cathedral were really nice, but the rest of Pisa is a dump. It also didn't seem very safe. It's cool to see the leaning tower in person, but it's 15 euros to go up, which I was not willing to spend. I spent about 1 hour in Pisa, and that was enough.)
New Year's Eve (Insane. I met up with two girls I met in my hostel who are from Canada and were traveling around Italy during their winter break. It was definitely nice to have some company on New Year's Eve. Since everything was closed, we wandered around pretty much the entire night, until right before midnight we found where all the fireworks were being set off so we watched for a while. It was REALLY loud. Fortunately, I had earplugs (really!). I'm also glad that I had some people to walk around with, because 1) all the people were really creepy, and 2) for some reason the buses stopped running at 8 PM so we had to walk back to our hostel.

Overall, Florence was good. It wasn't as interesting to just walk around as in Rome, but there's a ton of stuff to do (mostly museums). And it was nice to see Bonnie again after all these years, and definitely a crazy place to spend New Year's!

This post is now getting really long with all these pictures, so I'll start a Part 2. Eventually.

I went to Nuremberg--and it was FREEZING

2007-12-19T23:06:00.001+01:00

December 15-18

I'm leaving for Italy on Saturday, so I guess I really better catch my blog up before I go. If I don't, I'll just be setting a precedence of laziness, and then I risk not writing about Italy! Now that would be a shame. I know how much you all are looking forward to those incredibly long posts.

Well, this time I'm going to spice things up again with pictures. It gets kinda boring looking at posts with just text. And if I'm saying that about my own blog, then I know it must be boring.

Saturday I took the train to Nuremberg with Judith and Tabea, two girls I know from Gegenwind. We were planning on getting the Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, which is a really good deal because it only costs €35 and you can use it for up to 5 people. We figured, eh, €10 a person is pretty good. But while we were buying the ticket, two other people came up to us and asked where we were going. When we said Nuremberg, they said they were also going there, had already bought a Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, and did we want to split it with them? So we each ended up only have to pay €7. It was even better for Judith and Tabea, because they came back Saturday night, so they got a round trip for really cheap.

We got in around 11:30, ate lunch, then went to my hotel so I could drop off my stuff. I was really glad they were with me. I definitely could have found it myself, but it helps having people who speak native German! The trip out to the hotel took longer than we thought, mostly because it was reeeeeally cold. When we got back into the city center, the first thing me and Judith did was buy long underwear. That was probably the best €5 I've ever spent. Long underwear may be dorky, and come up almost to my armpits, but it's warm. We walked around the Christmas market for a while after that, looking at all the booths and food. There wasn't really much different from the Christmas market in Ulm, but this one was way bigger and there were a lot more people. I was surprised by how many Americans (and Japanese) there were. I know this is supposed to be the most famous Christmas market in Germany, but I'd never heard of it until a few weeks ago. Maybe I'm just culturally ignorant.

Anyway, we bought gingerbread and Christmas gifts and called it a day. Judith and Tabea took their train back to Heidenheim and I went back to my hotel. The next day I got up early to take advantage of the free breakfast at my hotel, then I checked out and went back into the city center. It was really really cold again, so I decided I couldn't stand being outside the whole time until Jonathan got there. Instead, I went to the German National Museum, which was pretty interesting. There was an exhibit of silver made in Nuremberg in the 1700s and 1800s. There were also several rooms filled with objects found in a "typical" Renaissance home, which was really cool. Another huge room had all sorts of musical instruments from different periods. Probably the most interesting exhibit was one about changes in clothing in Germany from the early 1700s to present. It was fairly predictable--I think American clothing followed about the same progression--but it seemed like German clothes were always just one step behind. For instance, it seems like women in America started wearing pants earlier than women in Germany. The exhibit went into a lot of detail about the styles of clothing, when they changed, and what caused it. One thing I was really surprised about was that apparently a lot of women, not even that long ago, used to wear black wedding dresses! There were a few examples and several pictures from only about a hundred years ago.

I spent a while in the museum, probably 2.5 hours. After that I went to the train station, scarfed down some lunch, then met Jonathan! He was able to find his way to Nuremberg all by himself. I mean, I did have to coach him a lot ahead of time, but it worked out. We put our stuff in a locker so we wouldn't have to go to our hotel first, and walked around the Christmas market for a little bit. It was, of course, really really cold out, so we didn't stay for too long. We got some food to go and then found our way to our hotel. It wasn't actually that far away, but we had to take the S-Bahn and then the bus, but since it was Sunday, the bus came approx. once every hour and a half. Luckily our hotel was only a ten-minute walk from the S-Bahn stop, but it was freaking cooooold. Oh well, better than waiting outside forever.

The next day we got up semi early and went back into the city. First we went to the Imperial Palace, which is at the top of the old city. On the way, we stopped and looked in a few of the really huge churches, partly because they looked cool, and partly because we were freezing. If it's possible, it was even colder on Monday than it had been on Sunday. We also found Albrecht Dürer's house, but didn't go in because it cost money. When we got to the castle we looked around a little bit, but again didn't go in because we're cheap. Afterwards we walked back down to the Christmas market and got some lunch. It was so cold out that I convinced Jonathan that we should go into McDonald's and I'd buy some fries so that we could sit at a table. Jonathan is pretty anti-McDonald's, but he was cold. After lunch we looked around the Christmas market a bit more then went on a tour of the dungeons under the old city hall. The tour was (of course) in German, so naturally Jonathan didn't understand, but I had a hard time too. The guy had a fairly heavy Bavarian accent. I'm just finally able to understand Schwäbsich--there's no way I can learn Bayerisch too. The tour was interesting, but not very long. Apparently the Nurembergers weren't too concerned with finding out the truth back in the day. Either that or they were very confident in their detective work. They mostly just tortured whatever confession they wanted out of the prisoners.

After the tour we walked around a little bit more, then decided it was way too cold to do anything else and went back to our hotel. We ate at a Chinese place near the hotel (all the German places were too expensive, plus I eat German food all the time) which ended up being pretty good. Then we came back, went to sleep, and Jonathan got up at 4 AM to take the train to Stuttgart to fly back to Atlanta.

Annnd, now that I've finished this post a few days later, I'm off to Italy! Look forward to some cool pictures!

Another Christmas-filled weekend

2007-12-10T19:31:00.000+01:00

After my German class on Saturday morning, I took the train to Ulm to visit....the Christmas market!!!!! It was everything I had hoped it would be, and more. Well, except for the weather, which wasn't ideal, but at least it didn't rain much. Get ready for a picture, because here it comes:

As you can see, the booths are adorable! The Christmas market is held on the big plaza in front of the Münster (the huge cathedral in Ulm). It's a pretty big square, but it felt really cramped on Saturday--which could be because it was insanely crowded. I could barely make my way through the crowd. The little alleyways that the booths made weren't very wide, so it wasn't easy navigating down those. And forget about trying to turn around if you changed your mind. There was also, of course, lots of stuff to eat. I ate Schupfnudeln, which I found out (after I ate them) are noodles made out of potatoes. Whatever they are, they're good. Also, all the booths that serve Glühwein serve it out in special "Ulm Christmas market" mugs which are really nice. The way they try to get them back is by charging you €1 extra for it and then giving you the extra Euro back when you return it. Well, I didn't really want any Glühwein but I did want a mug, so I asked how much they cost alone. Turns out, only €1! So I naturally bought three--one for me and one for each of my parents for Christmas. It was probably the cheapest thing in the whole Christmas market.

OK, here's the stuff I bought: two ball ornaments, a regular ornament, an ornament with the Ulm Münster on it, three stars made out of something I didn't recognize, and two Ulm coasters. I know, I know, I went a little overboard, but I couldn't resist! And honestly, when am I ever gonna be back in Germany to buy stuff at a Christmas market? I can't wait until next weekend when I'm at the Christmas market in Nuremberg!!!

That's right, another Christmas market. The one in Nuremberg is apparently the most famous one in Germany. I'm leaving Saturday morning, meeting up with Jonathan on Sunday morning, then staying through til early Tuesday morning, when I'll take the train to get back in time to work. Yesterday I went to some kind of church thing (I'm still not exactly sure what it is--what's a Bezirkstreffung?) with some people from Gegenwind (the youth group). I was talking to Judith afterwards, and she happened to mention that she'd always wanted to go to the Christmas market in Nuremberg, so now we're gonna take the train together on Saturday. She'll be going back Saturday night, but that actually works out really well. That way I won't have to walk around alone all day Saturday, but I'll still be able to spend time with Jonathan.

Oh yeah, here's a few pictures from the Christmas market in Heideneheim, which I went to very shortly again on Saturday before my train left.

Here's a picture of the actual Christmas market. As you can see, not nearly as big as the one in Ulm, but still nice.

Here's a picture of the brass-instrument-wielding Santas that have been shaking up the streets of Heidenheim. They're good, but....they need to expand their repertoire.

Christmas markets...

2007-12-07T14:01:00.000+01:00

...are my new favorite thing. I went into Heidenheim yesterday afternoon, and while walking around, I discovered that they have a small one! Apparently it's only through this weekend, but I walked through it and it was surprisingly nice. I thought it would be kinda dinky since Heidenheim's pretty small, but they stuff was all good quality. Pretty much everything I saw I wanted to buy...good thing I didn't have that much money with me. Even without buying stuff, I love walking around these different markets, with Christmas music in the background, and the smell of Glühwein and gingerbread in the air. Normally I don't like gingerbread that much, but my mom and I got some in Munich and it was nice and soft, not hard and cold the way gingerbread usually is. And now all I can think about is getting some more. Man, I love Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, Advent is really big here, which is kind of surprising since it really is not in America. I mean, people know what it is and stuff, but a lot of denominations don't celebrate it plus it is clearly a religious thing, so no one really talks about it. Here, every town that has any Christmas things going on advertises them as "on Dec. 16, the 3rd Sunday of Advent" or whenever it is. Advent shapes the holiday season here--little kids have Advent calendars (which really start on Dec. 1, not the first day of Advent) and Advent wreaths are everywhere. I guess that kind of makes sense though. Here Advent tends to mark the beginning of the Christmas season (no need to say "holiday season" because, let's be honest, not many Jews in Germany) while in America the holiday season "officially" begins the day after Thanksgiving.

I love how no one has objections to Christmas-themed decorations here though, because it makes everything so nice! No one gets angry when Heidenheim puts up dozens of Christmas trees throughout the town. No one writes letters to the editor about the gigantic creche set up outside the old city hall. I fully agree that in the US other religions need to have their holidays represented (although, come on--we all know Hanukkah is just there to compete with Christmas) but that doesn't mean that Christmas should be downplayed. With the exception of some Turks (I assume), most of the people who admit to observing a religion in Germany are Christian, so I imagine there's not much of an objection to decorating like crazy. Also, it looks really nice.

Here are some of the odd things I've seen in and around Christmas markets: guy standing with a llama begging for money; guy standing with a camel begging for money; guy standing with one of those small horses begging for money; sheep with the most gigantic udder I've ever seen; members of a brass quintet walking around Heidenheim, all dressed like Santa.

Munich

2007-12-04T22:27:00.001+01:00

This weekend I went to Munich to meet up with my mom. She was in England all last week for business, so she flew down to Munich on Saturday and flew back to the US on Monday. It was nice to see her, and more importantly, it was nice to get out of the house! I feel like I am here allll the time, so it was a relief to actually be able to go DO something. For anyone who complains about not having to take the bus/train/whatever: is it as bad as not having a car and living in a small town in the middle of nowhere? Yeah. I didn't think so.

So, one thing I didn't realize about Germany is that around Christmas, most of the cities have Christmas markets. Can we talk about how this is probably my new favorite thing? I had a little stop-over in Ulm when I was heading down to Munich, so I walked around the Christmas market there very briefly. It looked really nice, but unfortunately it was raining and there were a ton of people, which adds up to a not so fun Christmas market experience. I thought I'd be able to look around more on Monday morning on my way back, but it must open later in the day, so I missed it. The Christmas market in Munich was pretty lame--kind of like Oktoberfest but with some half-hearted crafts. The Christkindlmarkt, however, was great! We walked around there for a while and of course bought some stuff. I got a bunch of ornaments plus a cool little manger scence thing that has candle holders, and when you light the candles the heat makes this propeller-like thing on top spin around. Oh man, I can't wait til I have my own apartment or house so I can decorate for Christmas! Even though I complain endlessly about the cold here, there really is no better place than Germany to be around Christmas. I'm sure next year if I'm living in Atlanta I'll be whining that there's no snow.

Anyway, on Sunday after our disappointing Christmas market experience and our very fulfilling Christkindlmarkt experience, we took the subway out to the Olympic stadium and walked around there a little bit. It really is gigantic. We also went into the swimming pool arena, partly because it looked neat and partly because it promised to be warm (it was extremely windy the entire weekend--I'm still not sure if it was better than the rain). It was pretty awesome to see a true Olympic pool, complete with one of those really tall diving boards. Apparently it's open to the public to swim in, and it's not even that expensive.

After the Olympic stadium we walked over to a BMW building, which I think is a museum, but I'm not sure because another building that wasn't this one called itself the BMW Museum. I didn't find the cars that exciting, but then again, I don't usually. The building was pretty awesome though. We walked around in there for a few minutes and then took the subway back into town. Then we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant where the waiter spoke a mixture of German and Italian to us...the food was good though.

Speaking of food, the hotel we stayed in had an amazing breakfast every morning. It was a fairly big buffet with all sorts of hot food, fruit, breads, vegetables, meats. The day I left I ate there around 6:45 and I was full all the way up until lunch at 1. Ahh....I love food.

Please be proud. This is all I am writing about my trip! I know what you're thinking--without me sharing every single miniscule detail, how will you feel like you are living my trip along with me? Well, dear reader, you'll just have to miss out this time. But be prepared--I'm going to Nuremberg in a week and a half to see their Christmas market/eat gingerbread cookies, and after that Italy, so you have lots of long trip entries to look forward to!

It snowed. Again.

2007-11-28T10:27:00.000+01:00

I'm beginning to think that the ground is going to be white until I leave. It's already been snowy here for, what, almost a month? I can barely remember the warm weather. Then again, it never was that warm while I've been here. Snow looks nice and all, but I'm already sick of the cold, and unfortunately it's gonna be cold until, like, April. Man. I'll have to start psyching myself up for that.

K, time to talk about my digital camera. I love it! It has so many more features than my old one, plus it zooms in really far, plus it has optical image stabilization! Which is excellent, because usually no matter how hard I try, my pictures are just a tiny bit fuzzy. The downside is that it sucks batteries dry, even when I don't use the LCD screen. Thank goodness for rechargeables.

Saturday was actually a little bit warm, that was nice. I only froze a little bit on my way to German class instead of a lot bit. And Saturday night I went to Gegenwind again. It was ok...not great. But afterwards we went to McDonald's--that was my first experience actually eating in a German McDonald's (usually I only go in to use the bathroom). It was PACKED. Although I guess that could be since it's the only restaurant that stays open past 10 PM. It actually stays open until 2 AM, which I was very surprised about. Also, it's really expensive! I got ice cream, and it was €1! That junk back in the US is like 50 cents! I didn't even feel like I was eating in an American fast-food chain. I mean, the food was the same, but there was other stuff too, a lot more healthy options (also more expensive). And the inside was actually clean and nice. Plus, there was this McCafe, which was kinda like those cafes in Barnes and Noble, selling coffee and little cakes and pastries.

Sunday...did nothing. It was pretty great. Oh wait, I did do something. I finally booked my hostels for Italy. The only ones left that I have to get are for my last night, which I'll be spending in Rome, and my trip to Cinque Terre. Nothing there is within my price range, but I really really want to go. I'll figure something out. Here is my agenda: Rome Dec. 22-25; Naples Dec. 26-28; Florence Dec. 29-31; Cinque Terre Jan. 1; Milan Jan. 2; Venice Jan. 3-4; Rome Jan. 5; back to Germany Jan. 6. Two weeks in Italy! How great is that!

Monday was alone with Johanna, then Tuesday was alone with Dominik. On Monday the weather was crazy--it was pretty clear out, then out of nowhere, in the space of about 30 seconds, this huge storm of snow comes in. It snowed and hailed for about 15 minutes, then it stopped, after which the ground was completely coated in snow. It snowed even more Monday night, so now we have about 2 inches. Dominik played outside for a while yesterday and built a tiny snowman, which is now sitting on the terrace. Adorbs!

Oh, and I've been practicing some English with the kids too. Just to get you up to speed: they both understand everything I say in English, but really struggle with speaking it, Johanna especially since she's never really been forced to. But yesterday, when I practiced with Dominik, he did a great job! He said full sentences in English, which he has never done with me before! I was so impressed. I think if we keep doing that a few times a week, by the end of the year he'll be able to speak English with me.

I always feel like I have to come up with some conclusion to these posts. Well, this time I'm not. I'm stopping right here.

German is much more efficient at describing my moods

2007-11-23T14:13:00.000+01:00

This week was long. That's it.

That was a lie. Obviously I have more to say. I guess I'll start with last Saturday, since that's the first thing I can think of that was exciting since I've last written? I went to Gegenwind again, and instead of it being the normal youth group thing, we went to Schwäbisch Gmünd, a town about 45 minutes from here (I no longer judge distance in length, since I can't wrap my mind around km) to this sort of lecture-type thing. It was some evangelical-type dude talking and there was some music too. That part was....well, boring. I tried really hard to listen, but it was too much talking. It didn't help that I was really tired. Plus it was really warm in there. I actually closed my eyes for a little while. It would have been nice to sleep.

Well, after it was over, we met up with the rest of the Gegenwind people (since we had driven up separately) and went to a cafe nearby. That part ended up being pretty good. I met a few new people who seemed very nice. And, of course, it's always nice to be able to have conversations in German. I always feel like my German is so awful (I know, this is a theme in every post), but whenever I meet new people they always say that my German is good, so that makes me feel much better. And, even better, I asked a few people if I had an accent in German, and they all said not really. Well, they said I have a little bit of one, but that it's not obvious just from me talking in German that I'm an American. That makes me feel even better, since American pronunciation is very different from German pronunciation.

And this week, Jonathan came to visit! I didn't find out until Tuesday morning, and he got here on Wednesday afternoon. Luckily he doesn't have to start work until Saturday morning, so he was able to stay all day Thursday and left incredibly early this morning. We didn't really get to do much since I had to work a lot, but it was really great to see him! The kids were sooooo excited for him to get here, and of course, as soon as he got here Johanna started crying (because he's so tall) and Dominik ran and hid (because he was shy). The next day Dominik warmed up to him and they played Legos for a couple hours, but Johanna never really did. I'm sure next time Jonathan's here she'll be better about it. It was pretty crazy though; Dominik can understand English but can't speak it, and Jonathan can only speak and understand English. Jonathan was able to figure out some stuff that Dominik was saying, but it was pretty funny for me to be translating stuff that Dominik was saying to Jonathan. But overall, Dominik had a great time with him and I think he's already looking forward to when Jonathan comes back in a few weeks.

Nothing else too exciting this week. I've been working on a craft project with Dominik and Johanna for their parents for Christmas, and they're really into it. We're decorating some stuff with glitter, so it's quite a production every time we do it, but they've been working really hard and doing a good job. No matter how hard I try though, all three of us always seem to end up covered in glitter afterwards.

Oh yeah, and I got a new digital camera! I bought it a little while ago and had it sent to Jonathan's apartment and he brought it over with him! It's much better than my old one, and of course since my old one is a whopping 2.5 years old, this new camera was actually cheaper than that one. I thought about waiting until I got home to get one, but I figured I'd get it now since I'll be taking lots of cool pictures this year.

OK, let's talk about how everything is SO expensive over here. Especially electronics. The camera I bought was refurbished, and the price including everything, shipping and all, was $170. The exact same camera (not refurbished) in Germany is €280, which is more than $400. Also, the exchange rate is killer right now! It's up to almost $1.50 per €1. Because of this, I've tried to avoid paying for things with credit cards, because it means that while prices here are staying the same, prices in dollars are going up. Sometimes it's unavoidable though, which sucks, especially since I just discovered today that one of my credit card companies is actually charging me an exchange-rate fee! I hope they realize that they won't be getting any more overseas charges from me.

Snow!

2007-11-18T20:08:00.000+01:00

I know I'm such a grinch for saying this, but normally I really do not like snow. It's not so bad here though, mostly because I don't have to drive, I don't have to shovel, and I'm living in a Christmas card.

It snowed almost every day last week, but only enough for us to have a few inches. The kids went crazy over it though! I have to admit, I had fun playing outside with them. We built snowmen, igloos, and made snow angels. Plus, Dominik and Johanna look adooorable in their snowsuits!

They also went sledding a lot, because there's a hill in the backyard, as you can see in the picture above. Dominik and Johanna both have these really cool sleds that have brakes and steering wheels! Their friends came over a few afternoons this week too, and of course they all went sledding together. In fact, they sledded so much that there isn't really very much snow left on the hill.

Hmm, I just discovered this post today (Nov 27), so I guess I'll publish it? I really don't feel like adding any more to it. The kids were adorable with the snow though. It's so fun for them, and for me, because there's a lot more stuff to do outside when there's snow on the ground!

Bratislava and Budapest: The Saga Finally Ends

2007-11-18T18:59:00.000+01:00

So, since I know you, my loyal and faithful and no-comment-leaving readers, have been just dying for the final installment of my trip behind the Iron Curtain, I'm here to deliver. Prepare yourselves...for another long, and possibly boring, account.

OK, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, that's right, after lunch on my last day in Budapest. After eating lunch at the extremely cheap Chinese place, I went back to a bakery I had passed while looking for a place to eat and bought these three little chocolate pastry-fudge-like things. The lady was not very nice. I mean, she spoke in English, but when I asked her what things were, all she'd do was tell the name. In Hungarian. And I was like, "...Can you describe it a little bit?" And she was like, "No, not really." But whatev, they ended up tasting pretty good (although a little bit odd) and cost me less than 1 USD. Oh yeah, during my wanderings I came across an Indian restaurant called Kama Sutra. And it wasn't a strip club. I know, because I looked in the window. It looked like a nice restaurant. Either the owners were not Indian and could think of only one thing associated with India, or they were Indian and have so little faith in the general population that they figured they'd better name their restaurant after a sex book. I also saw a restaurant called Nimrod Etterem (Restaurant). I'm hoping, for the owners' sake, that nimrod is a Hungarian word that means something completely different.

After lunch I walked towards the river so that I could walk past Parliament, which so far I'd seen from just about every possible view except up close. The girl who checked me in at the hostel had told me that there was some kind of promenade or something running along the Pest side of the river (where I was) that I could walk along and see all the sights. Well, she neglected to tell me that there was no sidewalk going past the nice buildings, and that the promenade was on the other side of a 4-lane highway. On top of that, there wasn't even a real entrance to it. To get across you have to run across the highway and then jump over the guard rail. Which I did. Just my luck I also happened to be crossing at a part where there was an entrance to the highway, meaning that not only did I have to make sure cars weren't coming from both ways, I also had to check and make sure no one was coming up the entrance ramp. Even though I was mighty tired of walking, let me tell you, I ran across that highway faster than I thought I could. Walking along the promenade didn't really help with views of Parliament, mostly just because it's so large, but there was a great view of the Buda side. Buda looked a lot nicer from across the river than it had looked up close. Anyway, I of course took a bunch of pictures of Parliament, then once again took my life in my hands and ran back across the highway. By that point I was almost at the Margaret Bridge, so I took the tram across, took the HEV up a stop, then from there somehow managed to find the bus stop for the bus I wanted and took the bus to Pal-Volgyi Cave. Apparently there's a huge network of caves running under Budapest, and with my Budapest Card I got into the Pal-Volgyi one for free. One thing I hadn't considered was that the tour would be entirely in Hungarian. A German lady even asked at the beginning if the tour guide spoke any English, and when she said a little bit, the German lady asked if she'd say anything really important in English. Shock of all shocks, the tour guide spoke not one word of English on the entire tour. Not even when she turned out all of the lights in the cave, leaving us standing there in pitch black. I was pretty annoyed that she didn't give ANY warning for that, especially when someone had already asked her to make sure to do just that!

Whatev, it was a cool-looking cave, but the tour was really long and caves are not interesting enough to warrant a long tour in a language you don't understand. But after that, I caught the bus back, took the HEV back, then took the Metro to Heroes' Square, which is at the end of Andrassy ut. I'd been contemplating not going because I was so tired, but I'm really glad I did. It was pretty amazing. It was this huge open square with a statue of the angel Gabriel on top of a really tall pedestal. Behind that statue were two more sections of statues of some kings of Hungary (but I guess only the heroic ones). I happened to be there just as the sun was setting (at 4 PM), so the sky looked pretty spectacular behind the square. After that I walked around the city park a little bit. There was (yet another) castle there. I have no idea what it was called or who originally lived there. It looked nice though. I also accidentally found the Szechenyi Baths, one of the most famous and popular thermal baths in Budapest, while I was trying to find the Metro (fyi: never found it). I ended up having to walk back to my original metro stop, then I took the metro and the tram back to my hostel and picked up my stuff. I asked the girl who was working if she knew of any good places to eat nearby. Her suggestion? McDonald's. Not even kidding.

Needless to say, I didn't eat at McDonald's. I walked back to Liszt Ferenc Square (walked because my Budapest Card had expired, which meant I now had to buy pub. trans. tickets) and found a place to eat there. While I was eating there, a group sat down next to me, and from my eavesdropping I figured out that the girl was American, her boyfriend was something that was not Hungarian (couldn't figure out the accent), they were eating with her Hungarian grandparents, and the girl was at some university there (she also spoke Hungarian). I also learned that her grandparents had just recently been to--get this--Cape May, New Jersey! It was pretty interesting to hear non-Americans describe it to people who've never been there.

After dinner I decided to just go to the train station. I wanted to be there around 8, and it was about 6:30, so I figured now would be a good time to leave. I had enough time to make a short stop, so I took a detour to Dohany utcai Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe. Of course, like everything else, it was closed, but I was able to at least walk around the building and look at it. After that I took the metro, and then the tram, to get to the train station. I had been there before (on my adventure getting to Memento Park), but it hadn't looked so.....ghetto. At night, it looked pretty bad. When I went in, I, like a typical train-goer, looked at the big board to see when my train was coming. It took me a few minutes to realize that it didn't work (I happened to get there at a time when all of the times on the board would have been about accurate). So I was kind of like...umm, I guess I'll just sit here and hope I figure something out. There was this pretty awesome family sitting next to me. It consisted of a woman with THE largest and thickest glasses I've ever seen (if ever you could call glasses "Coke bottle", these were the ones) and her two grandsons. The entire time they were there, the woman was eating these nuts that she had in the pocket of her (10 sizes too large) coat. Her method of eating them was: put the nut into her mouth, crack the shell loudly with her teeth, spit the shell out, then eat the nut. She did this non-stop for about a half an hour. Needless to say, I found this just a tiny bit annoying. Once her daughter got there, though, it immediately became clear: oral fixation. When her daughter walked in, the woman pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started dividing it up between the two of them. Ah, the joys of mother-daughter bonding. Then the whole family walked out so they could have a mother-daughter smoke break.

OK, side note. Topic: smoking in Hungary. INSANE. I thought Germany was bad. After going to Hungary, I'll never complain again (OK, that's not true, but I won't complain as much). I swear, half the population there smoked. One of the cafes I ate in one night, I was literally the only person in there not smoking. And there was no concept of smoke-free buildings. I mean, some buildings and restaurants half-heartedly posted signs, but they were really small and easy to disregard. In Germany they don't enforce it at all either, but at least the signs they put up are really big and don't look like I printed them out on my computer in 1995. In Budapest people smoked EVERYWHERE, including the train stations.

Back to the train station. Around 8:15 I looked at the posted schedule and walked to the track that was on there, hoping there would be more accurate information. Luckily the boards down there worked, so I found where I was supposed to be. Down side: it was freezing down there, there were no benches, and it smelled like pee. It also looked like people had recently peed there. About 20 minutes before my train was supposed to leave, I went up onto the track, because sometimes the trains come early and sit there for a while before they leave. I waited up there until, at about 8:48, two minutes before my train was supposed to come, there was an announcement saying that the train was going to be 40 minutes late. So, I went back down, waited for a while, then went up a little bit before it was supposed to come. Another announcement: now it was 50 minutes late. By the time it got there, it was almost 1 hour late. This all wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been windy and FREEZING.

Anyway, the train got there, and after wandering around confused for a while, I found my train car and my couchette. Those sleeper berths are niiice! I had a blanket, pillow, and sheets, as well as an actual bed. The best part was, it was actually cheaper than the seat I had reserved leaving from Munich. That is the way to travel.

And then, I got back to Munich, took the train to Heidenheim, took the bus to Heuchlingen, walked to kindy, and picked Johanna up. The end. Finally!

Momentous day

2007-11-12T22:14:00.000+01:00

Why? Because I saw my first German pick-up truck today.

P.S. I am seriously obsessed with Josh Ritter's music. Like, I think it's getting a little unhealthy.
P.P.S. Despite all their incredibly annoying technical difficulties and insanely sensitive download manager, I love eMusic.

Before I finish Budapest and Bratislava...

2007-11-11T15:41:00.000+01:00

Here's an actual Germany update, since I guess I haven't written anything about that in a couple weeks.

This week=pretty boring. Things I did:

finally finished all my visa stuff (which ended up involving an experience too embarrassing to post on a public website)
took items out of the library for the first time (they charge €1 to borrow DVDs, what the heck??)
went to choir on Wednesday night (full of old people and one 16-year-old, but it was nice to get out of the house and do something musical)
went to German class on Saturday morning--in the snow. For real.

I also realized this week that I can understand Stefan and Stephanie's conversations with each other. They talk differently to me than they do to each other. To each other they talk faster and not as clearly--and I can understand them! I paid more attention the rest of the week, and realized that I can also understand almost all conversations with only slightly more effort than when I listen to conversations in English. I still have the usual struggles with speaking and everything, but I'm really settling in and I feel very confident with speaking now. I no longer feel intimidated or nervous when making phone calls, or when starting/participating in conversations (that's kind of a lie, but I'm keeping it in to make myself feel good). I'm also reading a book in German, and I'm about halfway done. It's pretty cool to do that, since I usually feel very intimidated when looking at stuff written in German, mostly because there are a lot of really long words. Actually, I really like reading books to Johanna because she almost always picks German ones and hers are right on my level. ...OK, that's a little sad.

Stay tuned for the rest of my Budapest trip. Unless you're sick of reading my long updates, in which case I have to say....I understand.

Bratislava and Budapest: Part 2

2007-11-10T16:27:00.001+01:00

Let's see, I think I left off on barely making the train to Budapest?

BTW, hopefully you guys don't think this is too long or boring to read. If it is, don't read it all. If it isn't, then at least I've provided with tons of reading material for when you should be doing something else. I am forever grateful to other peoples' blogs for my hours' worth of procrastination in college.

K, Budapest. Well, the train got in around 2:30 or something. OK, before I talk about that, let me tell you about this couple that was in my compartment. The train was only compartments again, like the night train from Munich, so I had to find one that had spots that were unreserved. Most had open seats, so I tried to find one with the fewest people already in it. There was this (Irish? British?) couple in the compartment sitting across from each other by the door and another lady sitting in one of the seats by the window. Now, I've already told you how little leg room there is in those compartments. Being part of a couple is excellent, because you can stretch out across the aisle and your significant other doesn't care if your feet are all up in his/her space. But both of these people had put their stuff on one of the seats next to them, meaning that the only actually available spot was across from the other lady. Of course this didn't occur to me until I'd already climbed over the couple by the door and I didn't feel like looking for another compartment, so I just sat down. Luckily the lady across from me got off at the first stop so we didn't have to be uncomfortable for long. But I don't understand why people do that! It was a long trip, plus there were luggage racks. Why couldn't the Irish/British/whatever couple have shared some leg room with the rest of us?

K, Budapest. As soon as I got in I went to my hostel. Thank goodness they had given excellent directions, so I didn't get lost or anything. First adventure in Budapest: taking public transportation. In itself not that exciting or adventurous, but the tickets were. In Bratislava I bought tickets sporadically for the buses and trams, but I could have gotten away with never buying one. In all of the cities I've been to so far, the public transportation profits rely on the assumption that you're actually buying and validating your tickets before you ride the tram or whatever. In Budapest it was the same way. I decided that, to be on the safe side, I'd buy a ticket, even though it looked like I could get away without it. As soon as I came off the escalator getting out of the metro, I was grabbed on both arms by these two random people meanly saying stuff in Hungarian to me. I'd read that in a lot of these countries people will come up to you and pretend to be ticket-takers, tell you your ticket is invalid, then try to get you to pay them. And I didn't understand what they were saying, so I just kept walking. The lady kept yelling at me, so I was like, "I don't speak Hungarian", and she was piossssssed. She goes all meanly, "Ticket." And by that time I was freakin annoyed too, so I was like, "Show me some ID first." She did NOT like that, so she just kept saying "ticket." Finally I got in her face and grabbed her ID, then I showed her my ticket and she huffed away. When I got to my hostel, I asked the girl who checked me in about it, and she told me that it's really easy to identify the ticket-checkers--just look for the ugliest person on the platform.

After I checked in at my hostel, I went to one of the tourist information offices to pick up my Budapest Card, which I'd already bought and paid for. Well, I got there--and it was closed for 4 days for All Saints' Day (seriously, what is with these long holidays they like to take??). So I was pretty confused, since I wasn't really sure where the other office was. I eventually found it on my map and walked there, which took a lot longer than I thought it would. By this time it was dark, because it gets dark freakin early in Budapest! So I ate dinner at a place near the opera house. One cool thing about Budapest is that there are a ton of cool cafes. If that's the kind of thing you like, Budapest is the place to go. I ate in several while I was there. One not so cool thing is that there aren't a lot of places to get take-out food from. It's a lot more expensive to sit and eat, which unfortunately I was forced to do most of the time.

After dinner I went to a concert (Verdi's Requiem) at the Hungarian State Opera House. It was pretty cool because I got my ticket for 1000 Forints, or about $5.50 and I could still see really well (even though I was in the highest section there was). It was even better, because not only did I get to see the inside of the opera house AND a concert, it cost about 1/3 the price of a tour of the opera house. After that I went back to my hostel and went to sleep. Yes, it was only 9, but I was tired!

The next day I got up early so that I could cram as much stuff as possible into my day. And indeed I did. I went to the grocery store first, and got a Coke, a bag of chips, and 2 rolls for less than $2. Man, I love cheap food! Then I walked across the Margaret Bridge to the Buda side of the river (my hostel was in Pest) and walked along the river until I got to the bottom of Castle Hill. I took the bus up, because I was already tired of walking (plus it was free with my Budapest Card). Before I got up there I thought, oh, there's just a castle, I'll spend an hour or something looking around. Wrong. Turns out that in addition to Buda Castle, there was also Matthias Church (where King Matthias or someone was crowned king of Hungary) as well as the Fisherman's Bastion, plus a surprisingly large neighborhood of houses and apartments. Um, yeah, I ended walking around the entire thing. I thought it would be about half as big as it actually was. The views were great and everything was cool, but I was kind of too tired of walking to really enjoy it. I ate some overpriced goulash for lunch (did I mention that I love goulash?) and walked around the castle a little bit. That too was pretty neat and there were some semi-interesting looking museums, but 1) they cost money, and 2) I was really sick of walking and standing. I took the bus back down the hill and decided to go to Memento Park, which is a park in the southern part of the city full of sculptures, statues, plaques, monuments, etc., that the Communists erected in honor of themselves and used to stand all around Budapest during the Soviet occupation. I had really wanted to see this, but not gonna lie, my main motivation for going at that exact moment was that it promised to involve lots of time sitting on the tram and the bus.

This was yet another adventure. I took the right tram to the end of the line...but the Memento Park brochure I had didn't provide great directions. The bus station was hidden behind this huge construction site, plus I couldn't figure out which ticket to buy. Fortunately the lady at the counter saw the brochure in my hand and gave me the right ticket. After that I paid 80 Forints for the bathroom, but only because I was desperate.

The sculpture park was cool, but not as cool as I thought it was gonna be. There were no signs or anything describing the stuff, so I had to pay 600 Forints for an English guide book (not that expensive, but still. It's the principle!). Reading was a little bit better, but it didn't go into that much detail about the sculptures and stuff, a lot of it was more about who sculpted it or something kinda lame like that (hahah, oh man, this makes me sound so ignorant!). All I mean was that it could have been done better.

After coming back into the main city, I decided to go to Franz Liszt house, which turned out to be a Franz Liszt memorial apartment inside the Liszt Academy of Music. It had a lot of cool stuff, but didn't really explain them very well or even that much about the composers life. Apparently he was BFFs with Edvard Grieg, because there were a ton of letters between the two displayed there. Also, thank goodness I can read German, because almost none of the descriptions were written in English.

After that, I went to a museum that was probably the highlight of my trip, the House of Terror. The museum was in a building on Andrassy ut, Budapest's most famous and most beautiful street, that had been the headquarters of the Nazis that occupied Hungary--and was later also chosen as the headquarters for the Hungarian Communists. Unfortunately almost everything was in Hungarian, but in each room there were extensive information sheets about the subject of the room in both Hungarian and English. The info sheets didn't really explain the exhibits, which was pretty disappointing, but it gave a lot of really good background info. The whole museum and all of the exhibits were very well done. In the basement there were recreations of the cells the Communists used to detain and torture people. It was a very modern museum, one that I really wish I would have been able to understand more of. Well, I'm not planning on learning Hungarian, so I guess I'll have to scratch that. Before going to this museum, I had no idea that there had even been a Nazi occupation of Hungary. It seemed like it was mostly towards the end of the war, but it sure explained a lot of the "Soviet Liberation" statues in Memento Park--I guess the Communists thought ridding Hungary of the fascists and putting in place their own dictatorship was "liberation"? It also had never really occurred to me that Hungary had been controlled by the Soviet Union. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I sort of knew that--most of Eastern Europe was under Soviet control, after all. I just didn't realize Hungary specifically (and actually, I didn't realize Slovakia either) had been Soviet occupied.

Hmm, OK, after the House of Terror...I was starving. So I went and ate dinner in a restaurant on Liszt Ferenc ter, the place where there were a ton of nice cafes. Liszt ter was really the only place around (unless you count McDonald's) that had not too expensive restaurants. After that I was exhausted and went back to my hostel. I definitely way overdid it that day; by the time I got back to my hostel, all I wanted to do was go home and not have to walk around and see stuff anymore. Luckily I got a really good night's sleep and woke up ready for another full day.

Side story: there happened to be two German girls staying in the same room as me, and they were really nice. One of them came in, and asked if she was German (bc I'd heard them speaking German that morning) and she said yes, and was struggling to speak to me in English. I offered to speak German, and she seemed extremely relieved. It was nice to speak German after a few days of only English. I mean, I'm obviously very used to speaking English since it's all I speak with the kids (and, duh, because I speak it as a first language), but I'm not used to hearing responses in English. My little four-day break from German really makes me wonder, though, what it will be like when I get back to the US. I won't have anyone to speak German with, and I know I'll forget a lot of it really fast.

OK, Budapest, full day #2. I got up early again and had a little bit of trouble finding something to eat for breakfast since, like all of Europe, everything was closed since it was Sunday. So I figured I'd find something eventually, so I took the tram across the bridge so that I could take another tram to Gellert Hill. Except I took it a little too far...oops. Once I got to the right stop, I realized that I'd thought the two trams connected up when they really don't, so I had to take another line called HEV, which apparently runs to the suburbs of Budapest. In the HEV station I found a bakery that was open (thank God!!!! It was the first bakery I'd seen since Germany!) and got this odd and kind of expensive muffin. Anyway, I took the HEV, connected up to the tram, and rode to Gellert Hill (I'd learned my lesson about walking too much too early). I started walking up the hill, and the first place I stopped was this weird Cave Church. Yeah. That's right. It was a church in a cave in the side of the hill. There was a service going on, so I could only look at the exhibit right inside. I kept walking up the hill and eventually got to the part right above the cave church, where there was a huge cross. It was pretty cool but kind of reminded me of those KKK crosses that they set on fire...even though it was wasn't wood and wasn't on fire. I don't know, it was kind of creepy, so I kept walking. It wasn't very nice out and even started raining a little bit, but I had come prepared with my umbrella. And even though it was gray and gross out, the trees all looked these amazing fall colors. I went a little overboard taking fall-foliage pictures, but it really was beautiful. And, of course, I saw graffiti. There was some kind of monument that had been completely graffitied over, so I couldn't even tell what it was. And I even saw a tree with graffiti on it. I mean, really, who cares enough to graffiti a tree?

So, I finally got to the top of Gellert Hill, and it was really cool. It was way higher up than Castle Hill and the view was amazing. If it hadn't been so gray and overcast, it would have been a really great place to spend the morning. There was also a gigantic citadel up there with a Liberty Statue. It's so big that you can see the statue from all the way down the river. The citadel was pretty cool, but of course it cost money to go in, so I didn't bother because it was still raining a little bit.

On my way back down I went into the cave church since the service was over and looked around a little bit. It was really weird and not what I'd pictured. It must be difficult to hold services in there. It looked more like a few small chapels coming off of one central point rather than one big church.

When I got back down the hill I walked across the Liberty Bridge. There's a big central market right on the other side of the river, but it was closed! It's usually open every day, but since it was the weekend after All Saints' Day, it wasn't. Instead I took the metro to the botanical gardens, which was free with my Budapest Card. I got there...and it was really lame. It was small and not well kept up. There were, like, 5 flowers. And leaves ALL over the place that I guess they didn't feel like raking up. I'm glad I didn't pay money for it.

After that I was like, ummm, I'm really hungry, but there was nowhere around to eat. Instead I took the metro up to St. Stephen's Basilica in hopes that I could find somewhere around there (as well as go to the top). I decided I'd go up before lunch. Thank goodness for elevators. It was a really amazing view, especially since you can walk all the way around the cupola and see Budapest in every direction, but it was also really cold so I only stayed up for about 5 minutes. I took the elevator back down (I was tired, ok?) and ate lunch at this really cheap Chinese place.

OK, side note about Chinese food. So, if Chinese food in the US is fake Chinese food, how come Chinese food is the same everywhere??? I've eaten Chinese food in the US, Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary, and it was all the same! Did all of the Chinese emigrants get together and decide before they left China that they WOULD NOT under any circumstances reveal what real Chinese cooking is like? And an even better question is, do all those Chinese restaurant owners eat REAL Chinese food at home?

K, this is getting too long again so I'm gonna end it here and start a part 3.

Bratislava and Budapest: Part 1

2007-11-09T20:30:00.001+01:00

November 1-4

Last weekend I took my first big trip, to Bratislava and Budapest. I'm really glad I went, although I'm still tired from all the walking I did. I'll try to keep this post relatively short, but I'm not sure that's possible.

OK, I'll start from the beginning. I took the night train heading from Munich to Budapest. Unfortunately there were no beds available on this leg, so I could only reserve a seat. Even more unfortunately, the seats were in 6-person compartments with 3 seats facing 3 either seats. That=not very much leg room. Luckily there were only two other people in my compartment, so we each got two seats to ourselves. The three of us ended up having two languages in common--English and German. One was a woman who lived in Vienna and was heading home, and the other happened to be a Slovak guy who was going to Bratislava! I feel like my trip was characterized by good luck, and here was my first lucky break. I had been planning on traveling all the way to Budapest then getting a train from there to Bratislava, but this guy told me that this train stopped in Austria right outside Bratislava, and that I could ride along with him and he'd point me to the right bus once we got into the city.

My next adventure: trying to buy a bus ticket in the Bratislava Petrzalka train station. The woman who ran the kiosk was...not very nice. I asked if you spoke English, and she shook her head and immediately turned away. I asked if she spoke German, and she rolled her eyes, turned back to me, and gave me a look that said, "Ugh...now I have to deal with you." Then she refused to sell me a day-long public transportation pass, for no reason. I'd read that people at kiosks do not like to cut tourists a break, so I decided not to push it and just bought a regular ticket.

I took the bus into the city, got off at the stop my Slovak bud told me to--and had no idea where I was. He'd told me that I'd be right in the city center near everything, but to me it looked like there was nothing around. I wandered around a little bit and eventually found a city map posted. From there I was able to figure out the direction of the historical center, but I was a good 3 or 4 blocks north of it. I somehow found my way to what I can only assume is Bratislava's main shopping drag. It featured such high-quality stores as Hello Kitty and Converse. It was kind of creepy, because it was completely dead. I didn't realize until later in the day that the Slovaks take their holidays very seriously--meaning no one works. I wandered a little bit more, accidentally walked into a church that was having a mass (it was All Saints' Day, hence everything being closed), and decided to walk up to Bratislava Castle. Big mistake. I still had my backpack on and that hill was steep. The view was pretty good, but I was pretty tired from having gotten approximately no sleep on the night train combined with my thousand-pound backpack weighing me down. I looked around a little bit, broke down and paid 10 SKK to use the bathroom, then walked back down and caught the tram to my hostel.

Now this was an adventure. My hostel wasn't really a hostel. I had reserved a room in a dorm of the Slovak Technical University. I found the building pretty easily, and the receptionist, but here's where the fun started. The receptionist didn't speak a word of English or German, and I don't speak a word of Slovak. Somehow I paid the rest of my balance, filled out the appropriate paperwork, and got my key. We then walked through what looked like a prison. I'm not kidding. Concrete hallways, gates blocking off different wings. The room was actually really good for what I paid. For $20, I had my own room (bigger than my dorm room at USC) and bathroom. Granted, it was pretty rundown, but it was clean. And how many of you can say that you've spent the night in a dorm in Bratislava? So if you're ever in Bratislava, I recommend the Summer Youth Hostel Mlada Garda (as it's called on hostelworld.com).

After finally dumping my bookbag, I headed back into the city center. This time I finally found all the historical stuff. First goal: eat lunch. There was not much open, and most of it was sit-down. I finally broke down and ate in a cafe because I was really hungry and that was all that was around. On this trip I sure missed the all the bakeries and take-away food Germany has.

After lunch I wandered around the old town a bit. There wasn't much to see because almost everything was closed, and honestly, I found the old town a little bit bland. It was nice and all, but it looked pretty generic. There were a few palaces, but they mostly just looked like large buildings. I found St. Martin's Cathedral, where Maria Theresa was crowned empress of Austria-Hungary. That was really nice inside, although it looked pretty ugly from the outside. One thing I noticed about Bratislava is that most of the churches looked rather unimpressive from the outside, but amazing inside. After finishing up wandering, I was cold and tired and decided to get some food to take back with me to my dorm. I found a Chinese restaurant that let me get something to go, so I got it.

I went to bed early that night (like, 8:30) because I was exhausted from no sleep the night before and a long day of walking around. The next morning I got up early to head out to Devin Castle before I got the train to Budapest. About 5 minutes after I got up, I heard a knock on my door. There stood yet another Slovak woman who didn't speak German or English (how do none of these people speak German? It's 15 minutes away from Austria!) who, after much gesticulating, I finally figured out wanted my receipt (still not sure why). For some reason she wanted me out of the room really fast, even though check-out wasn't until 9 AM. Anyway, I left a little after 8, got an extremely cheap breakfast at the grocery store across the street, and started my journey to Devin Castle.

Here's yet another adventure. I had to take the tram into town, take another tram from there, get off that tram, walk to the bus station, then take the bus from there to Devin. Now, all of the buses and trams in Bratislava stop at every stop--you don't have to request a stop unless indicated, which it wasn't on this bus line. The bus stopped at every stop, until about 2 stop before mine. There were a bunch of people waiting to get off, and they all started yelling at the driver when he blew past a few stops. Eventually he stopped at one a few past mine, letting every out. I was pretty confused and not sure where I was, so I asked a girl near me if she knew where the castle was. Coincidentally, there happened to be an American walking right behind us who overheard me, and was also walking to the castle. He said he'd walk with me, thank goodness. He said that he lived in Slovakia and was here with his wife for the long weekend, having a vacation while she was stuck in seminars. He was the first person I'd met who spoke native English probably since I was in Munich. It was so nice to speak English with someone who also spoke it fluently!

The castle was pretty neat. When we got there, it was closed, but apparently the gate was only closed by a latch that was easy to lift up, so we went in. The castle is on the Morava River, which separates Austria and Slovakia, so it was pretty cool to see Austria only a few meters away. The castle also sits close to the point where the Morava joins the Danube, which is also where Slovakia borders Hungary, so from the castle it's possible to see Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia. I'm sure I saw Hungary, but I'm not really sure exactly where it was.

I left the castle around 10:30, thinking that would be plenty of time for me to make it to the train station to catch my 11:45 train. Turns out I was wrong. First I had to find the correct bus stop, since the driver had let us off at the wrong one. Once I did that, the bus didn't come until 10:50, which meant I got back into the city around 11:10. After that I had to take a tram to a place where I could connect with another tram that would take me to the train station. When I finally got to a tram stop that I knew would take me to the train station, I looked at the schedule--and saw that if I waited, I would get to the station one minute after my train was supposed to leave. I decided to walk to another tram stop that I knew ran on a different line, in hopes that I could catch one that would get there earlier. Well, I couldn't find another that went directly to the train station, so I got on one that I knew went in the right direction. It didn't make the stops I thought it would, so I got off a little bit too late. Somehow, with incredible luck, it turned out that the stop I got off at also had a tram line running through it that went directly to the train station, and was scheduled to come at 11:43, taking 5 minutes to get there. With even more incredible luck, the tram came 4 minutes early! The whole way to the train station I just kept hoping and hoping that my train would be just 5 minutes late--that would be enough for me to make it. As soon as the tram pulled into the train station, I jumped off, ran up the steps, looked at the sign--it was running five minutes late! I ran my track and got on the train with about 1 minute to spare. Even luckier than that, the day before I had decided to ride to the train station just to see where it was, and I had bought my ticket then. If I had decided to wait until the next day, I would have missed the train.

OK, this is getting waaay too long. To be continued. Up next: Budapest

Winterzeit

2007-10-29T22:19:00.000+01:00

Whew, it's been a long time since I've written. OK, I guess a week is not that long, but still. Last week was really busy. Stephanie was in the hospital having an operation, so that meant that I had to get up early every day and work late every day. I felt bad for her though, because she was supposed to come home on Wednesday, but she ended having to have another operation. Poor gal (hahah). But she came home on Friday afternoon, so that was nice.

The kids were pretty good this week, although Johanna was a lot clingier than usual. I think she was a little bit sick, combined with missing her mama. Side note: the kids call their parents Mama and Papa, which I think is so funny! I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that what I learned in German class wasn't right, since there have been a lot of things that are different than what I learned! (What we learned was that kids call their parents Mutti and Vati, but Dominik told me that none of his friends call their parents that.)

I had an adventure on Wednesday morning when I had to go into Heidenheim to get my visa extended. I had to go to the Landratsamt (I know what it means, but I don't know what it is in English) and that part was pretty easy. All I had to do was give them my passport, my insurance card, and my visa application and I was done. And luckily, they let me take my passport with me so that I'll be able to leave the country this week! (more on that later) After that I had to go to the Gesundheitsamt (an office about health) because I had an appointment with a doctor whose job was pretty much only to talk to visa applicants and figure out if they have tuberculosis. I cannot figure out the obsession with tuberculosis here! I mean, I could understand being required to have a test before entering the country, but I've already been here for two months. If I have tuberculosis, I've been spreading it around to everyone I've met for a long time now. Also, they refused to accept my skin test as valid proof that I don't have tuberculosis, even though that would have saved everyone time and money. Anyway, so I went to the Gesundheitsamt and it turned out...the doctor was sick. And she's only there on Wednesdays. Of course. I made an appointment for this Wednesday, but now I can't go because Dominik has the week off from school. No biggie, it just sucks that this keeps getting pushed back. I also have to get an x-ray (to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don't have TB), which I couldn't do, because I couldn't see the doctor, because she was sick.

So, in my 2.5 hours that I had to kill until the bus left, I went and got a library card. The library is not exactly huge, but they do have a bunch of DVDs with an English-language option, plus a section of books in English, plus a huge section of travel books which I will be taking advantage of. The only thing that sucked was that I had to pay for the library card--12 euros for 1 year, which isn't bad, but still! If all those taxes the government collects aren't paying for the libraries, what are they paying for?

Hmm, then this weekend I did.....nothing! It was really great. After having to work so much, it was really nice to relax and rot my brain out watching TV and stuff. On Saturday night I went to Gegenwind, the youth group, which was pretty good. I'm getting to know the people there a little bit more, so it gets better every time.

And today, Dominik and Johanna both went to Oma and Opa's at 12, so I had the afternoon off. For lunch I actually cooked for myself (!!!!), soup with carrots, onions, and noodles. I'm impressed, because it ended up being really good. I never really have an opportunity to make stuff that I really want, so it was nice to have some free time! After that I went into Heidenheim and just walked around for a while. It was a really nice day, and (comparatively) not that cold. It was in the low 50s, which was a nice improvement. I also bought a battery charger for my digital camera batteries (10 Euros), and another 1 GB memory card (also only 10 Euros). I am quite pleased with my 1-gig card find. I would really like to buy a new digital camera, but 1) I can't find any I like that also have a viewfinder, and 2) they're all really expensive here! I guess I'll just have to wait til I get back to the US, but it would be so nice to have a new one here, where I'm taking tons of pictures.

And.....finally, the reason I need my passport is that I'm going to Budapest and Bratislava this weekend! I'm leaving Wednesday night and going by night train to Budapest, arriving Thursday morning, going direct from there to Bratislava, Slovakia, spending the night there, and then returning to Budapest the next day. I'm spending the rest of my time in Budapest, then Sunday night I'm taking the night train back, so that I can be back in time to pick up Johanna in kindy on Monday at 12. The only thing that sucks is that there were no sleeping berths left for the Munich-Budapest trip...at least none in my price range. I didn't really want to pay 200 Euros for that. I got one for the trip back, but the train leaves at 8 PM and arrives at 6 AM, so I still won't get a really good night's sleep. Oh well, either way, I think it's going to be a really good trip. The only thing I'm worried about is the language thing, but from what I've read, the two foreign languages spoken most often in Budapest and Bratislava are German and English, so I think I'll be ok.

Whoo, I'm really excited! I've spent quite a bit of time planning this trip, so it sure as heck better pay off! I've also started planning my Christmas trip to Italy--I've already booked a flight, in fact. It looks like I'll be spending Christmas Day in Rome, so I think that will be pretty cool. Oh man, I love planning trips!

Oh yeah, weird thing here: Standard Time starts one week earlier than in the US, so right now I'm only 5 hours ahead. It's also really weird that it starts getting dark at 5 PM. Seriously, why is winter already? Can we please have the warm weather back?

Bleh

2007-10-21T18:47:00.001+02:00

I'm in a bleh mood. There's nothing to write about. Except that I know that even though I said that, I'll go on to write a really long post.

For some reason I did not sleep well at all this week. Even the days that I didn't have to get up early, I couldn't get my act together and just go to bed at a reasonable hour so that I wouldn't be tired when I woke up. Then, when I did have to get up early, I went to bed on time and slept badly. So right now, I'm on one good night's sleep in the past 6 or 7 days. I can't really complain though, because I did NOTHING today. But I have to get up super early tomorrow and Wednesday (just regular early on Tuesday), so I'm not looking forward to that.

Things that have happened this week: It was really nice on Monday and Tuesday, nice enough that I didn't need a jacket to go outside, then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday it was freezing. Literally. It snowed this morning. Granted, not enough to actually stick, but it was real snow. It sat on the ground for maybe 30 minutes before it melted. It's October! How is this possible?? I'm really glad that I bought some new sweaters, otherwise I'd freeze to death here.

Speaking of sweaters, can we talk about how my wardrobe is clearly not adequate for a German winter? I guess I'd been lulled into a false sense of security by South Carolina winters, where the coldest it gets is 30, and that's only early in the morning. I think 30 might have been the high for today here. Anyway, I really only have long-sleeve shirts--you know, the ones that are pretty much like long-sleeved T-shirts and provide no added warmth except for keeping a little bit of wind off of your arms. Yeah, that's what my wardrobe consists of. Fortunately, I have some camisole things that I can wear under those, so that helps a little bit, but I had to break down and buy two sweaters, since I previously only owned 2. This was bad for two reasons, because 1) I'm really cheap, and 2) Clothes are really expensive here. And no, I'm not exaggerating. Clothes really are more expensive. My family here always buys stuff from Esprit and they told me to look online and see if there was anything I wanted to get bc they get a 10% discount (they're frequent Esprit customers) so I could use it if I wanted. Ummm, all the sale stuff was like, 40 Euros! And that was the cheapest! Not that I'll ever wear Esprit anyway; I refuse to. I'd only been looking because I was hoping that maybe some stuff was actually really cheap and then I could buy it. But nope, wayyy too much. Seriously though, Esprit! I had no idea their stuff was so expensive. And besides the whole clothes being expensive thing is the exchange rate. So all that stuff that's, like, 40 Euros is now close to $60. It really sucks to buy stuff with a credit card right now because the exchange rate is so bad, but sometimes it's unavoidable and I have to. I ended up buying two sweaters (not from Esprit, don't worry) for about 16 Euros, which is about $22 or $23, so I think that's pretty good.

In other news, I decided that if I ever move to Germany, I'm opening up either a bakery or an ice cream shop, because those seem to be the only places here that consistently do tons of business. I'm always a little surprised at how many people I see walking around with ice cream because it really hasn't been warm out for a while. Everyone always seems to have it though, but that could just be because it's delicious. Really, it's waay better than American ice cream, and cheaper too. Every time I'm in the city I buy ice cream. And Laugenbrot, which I am secretly addicted to. I even go to different bakeries to buy it because I'm ashamed of my habit.

Hmm, other things. I went to Ulm on Friday, but I didn't really do that much. I forgot to bring my camera unfortunately, plus it was freezing out, so all that=go in lots of stores to keep warm, AKA buy stuff. I bought two books in German, because I've decided that reading is how I'm going to get my German exposure. I mean, I hear German all the time and I speak it with the parents, but I don't get to speak it nearly enough. I think reading will really help me. I also bought a hat for €1, which turned out to not be as warm as I thought it would be, but can I really complain for €1? No. I also bought.....a Coke! I have had approx 4 Cokes since I've ben here, so this is a real luxury. I didn't drink the whole thing; instead, I saved it and brought it back here and I have been drinking a little bit every night. I am savoring it; I still have half the bottle left.

On a completely unrelated topic, I've decided to go to Italy over Christmas, and I'm eagerly planning my trip. So far on my agenda I have: Rome, possibly Ostia Antica, Naples, Pompeii, Capri, Florence, Pisa, Milan, Venice, and possibly Cinque Terre. Planning travels is maybe my favorite thing to do, and I'm also planning another trip! I'll have 4-5 days off in two weeks to travel, so I really want to go to Budapest and Bratislava. The only thing is, I have to get my visa extended this week, and if they take my passport, I can't leave the country (obviously). I'm hoping they will either a) be fast (highly unlikely) or b) let me take my passport and bring it back when they're ready to put the visa in it (I feel like this is probably also unlikely). But seriously, are they allowed to just...take my passport? What if I have to go back to the US for some reason? I mean, not that that'll happen, but if they have my passport, I'm stuck here. And while I want to see more places in Germany, I want to save that for shorter weekend trips.

OK, this post ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. In that case, I'll go back to doing my favorite thing--planning trips! I'm even planning trips that I don't even know when I'll take. It's so exciting!

2007-10-14T12:04:00.000+02:00

Remember everything I wrote in that last post about speaking well? I take it all back. OK, not all of it. But I feel like I've taken a massive step backwards or something. I feel like I'm struggling and not doing well again. Is this just how learning a language goes? I make a little progress with speaking, but then I feel like I lose it? It's really frustrating. It's a little bit reassuring that I can understand a lot more things, but I really want my speaking to get better!

Speaking of understanding, I really do feel a lot better with that. I can understand TV shows better, and even just regular conversations. TV might be easier because they always speak Hochdeutsch (where they speak without any accent). Conversations are definitely more difficult though, especially around here. A lot of people here speak the Schwäbisch dialect, which is quite hard to understand. What's funny, though, is that people here acknowledge that they're hard to understand, and other freely admit that they can't understand all German dialects! In the US, you'd never hear a Southerner admit that they don't speak normal English and that they might be difficult to understand, just as how it's totally taboo to say that people who speak Southern are hard to understand.

On a completely different topic, I've discovered playlists on my iPod. I always knew how to make them before, but for some reason I've always found them daunting. I never made any because I didn't feel...competent? I don't know. Making playlists isn't exactly an art, but in my mind I've equated it with deciding the order of songs on an album, which I highly doubt I'm qualified to do.

Anyway, I've gotten past that and now I'm playlist-crazy. Except I haven't really gotten it down, since my way of making playlists is saying, "OK, I'll make 3 broad categories and divide all the songs in my iPod between them." Somehow I put Michael Jackson's "Black or White" (which I love!) in the same general category as a song from O Brother, Where Art Thou? Even I'm not sure how I did that.

I've also gotten a little obsessed with eMusic.com, which I LOVE. If you've never heard of it, check it out. There isn't much music from the big-name artists because the big labels refuse to do business with eMusic--all because their music is DRM-free, meaning that it can be played on any player anywhere, unlike iTunes songs. My obsession with eMusic has frustrated me this week though, because their website has only been working sporadically. They also seem to think that I'm in the US, which means that I can't download music that other people in Europe can. I'm not sure why they think this, since when I first got here that music was available to me. They're also horrible about responding to customer service emails. I've sent them about 5, starting about 2 weeks ago, and haven't had a single response, except the automated ones saying, "Sorry that your eMusic download manager isn't working! We'll get back to you," which isn't even what I wrote them about.

Anyway, except for horrible customer service, the site is great and has a huge selection. It's also really easy to find new music from it. I've discovered soo many things that I never would have listened to without it.

Not much has happened since Wednesday. The most exciting thing that happened was that we had carrot soup on Thursday (maybe?) and it was delicious. I still don't like most soups, but I guess those vegetable ones are really my thing. I plan on eating them quite a bit.

OK, time to get back to music downloading and playlist making!

Gut sprechen

2007-10-10T14:10:00.000+02:00

I've been noticing the past few days that German is coming more easily to me. I still feel like I have to agonize over every single sentence, but when I talk, it just comes out. It's not totally natural, but it's a lot better. Lately I've been having this feeling where, after I say something, I'll think, did I really say that? It will be some complex sentence that just a little while ago I really struggled with, but without me even thinking, it came out of my mouth the right way. I feel like this happened all of a sudden, but I guess that's probably not true. Oh well, it's definitely nice! It makes me feel like I'm actually making some progress, since for a long time I was really frustrated about not getting much better. I've been complimented a few times on my German, although I can never really believe it because to me I feel like I'm so bad at it. But the thing that really made me feel better was when Tabea, one of the youth group girls, said that my German is better than either Joy's or Vivien's (two of the previous aupairs) was when they'd been here the same amount of time as I've been. Well, even if I don't feel like I'm doing well with it, at least I'm tricking everyone else!

Monday I had my second cooking class. It was kind of difficult because there were a lot of words I didn't understand, mostly the ingredients. I thought about bringing my German-English dictionary, but then decided it was a silly idea. Next time I am definitely bringing it! Anyway, we made a few different soups, and the one I made with my partner was a vegetable soup, and it ended up being really really good. That is definitely something I'll be making again.

To me, cooking class is a little bit like chemistry lab--I always mess up little things because I'm too impatient to read all of the directions or just because I'm inept at measuring. It's frustrating, but I guess that's how it goes. The soup turned out well, but I think that had more to do with my partner than with me (just like chem lab).

Yesterday...not much happened. Went to the playground with Johanna and she played on the slide for a while. She fell about 15 times but as soon as she stood up was fine; then of course when we got home, she discovered a tiny, microscopic, practically invisible dot of a cut on her wrist and started getting worked up. Of course as soon as I put a bandaid on it she was fine, but it was so cute--she kept saying, "I can't bend my wrist otherwise I'll hurt my cut." Oh, and another adorable thing she did recently: I was putting her and Domink to bed and I saw her doll sitting in the shower. I said, "Your doll is in the shower! Do you want to get her out and have her with you in bed?" And she said, "No, the doll is at her swimming class!" Johanna has been dying to go to swimming class ever since Dominik started, when he was four. She's already excited to go next year when she's four.

And a cute Dominik thing, but first a little background. OK, really the only background is that his favorite food is noodles with tomato sauce. The other day he said, "Know what would be great? If we took all of the windows out of the house, filled it up with tomato sauce, put some noodles in, and then I could swim through it! Naked!"

I think that's a good note to end this on.

2007-10-09T00:18:00.000+02:00

It has been alternately boring and interesting here, at least to read about. On Thursday, the highlight of my day was that I found the post office in Dettingen. Reason #1 I could not find it before: it is located in a basement. I'm not even trying to be funny. There's small store that's attached to someone's house, but the store is one of those ones where it's in the basement but you can enter from the street. The post office is in there, and the entrance is at the back on the house. I saw that I had the right address, and I was kind of thinking, hmmm, I think I'm in the wrong place, I'll go in this nice little parking lot and turn around. While I was turning around I saw the Deutsche Post logo. It's not even really a post office; it's more like, the lady who runs the store also sells stamps.

Friday was also slightly exciting. We collected all of the apples from the apple tree in the front yard. It was kind of fun--Stefan got up in the tree and would shake the branches in a certain part and then wait while we all ran around and collected them. It was pretty much only me and Stephanie collecting apples, while the kids "helped". There were a ton though; there is a store that takes the apples to make apple juice and gives out credits towards future purchases of juice, and Stefan said that when they took the apples there, the store said they weighed 150 kg.

Saturday=day of excitement. I went to my German class in the morning, which was fine. We did more stuff with conjunctive, which is getting a little old, but at least now I remember how to say that stuff. Last week all the stuff we did was like, "I would like to make more money." This week we progressed to, "If I made more money, I would buy a lot of gummi bears," and other such complex sentence structures.

After class on Saturday I went to Ulm, which was really nice! I'd only been there on a train stopover so I didn't see much, but it's a really beautiful city. I definitely plan on going back. I of course went shopping and bought two skirts at H&M (only 5 euros each!), then walked through the Fischerviertel (Fisher's Quarter) which was so nice! It was all cobblestone streets and cute German houses and little canals. Then I walked along the old city wall, which runs right along the Donau River (the Danube, in English--why do we always change the names of perfectly pronounceable things?). The Donau is the border between Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bayern (Bavaria--again with the name-change!), so of course I had to walk over the bridge just to say I walked to Bayern. After that I walked around a little bit more, then went into the Muenster, which has the highest church tower in the world. Unfortunately I didn't walk up because I had all my German books with me (those suckers are surprisingly heavy), but next time I'm there I'm totally doing that. The church is amazing though. Like every church in Europe, it's elaborate and ornate and all that typical stuff, but mostly it's just HUGE inside. I took a few pictures, but there's no way to get a sense of how big it is without seeing it in person. It doesn't even look that big from the outside--it mostly just looks tall.

I eventually took the train back from Ulm, got picked up by my fam, and we went home, where I had to eat dinner super fast so that I could shower before going to the youth group. I'm really glad that I decided to go again because this time ended up being a lot better. I rode with two girls who live in a nearby town, and they were really nice. At the youth group it was better too, I think partly because we watched a movie instead of talking about junk I didn't understand. Afterwards, I felt a lot more comfortable hanging out with the people there. There were more people there, which helped, and they also weren't so shy/awkward. I think my German must be getting better too, because I felt more able to participate in the conversations. Last time was tough because not only was there a language barrier, I also didn't know the people. This time I knew them a little better plus I can speak a little better.

I am not good at coming up with titles

2007-10-03T11:59:00.000+02:00

Whew, a lot of exciting stuff has happened since the last time I posted! The two big things: I had my first language class on Saturday morning, and I had my first cooking class on Monday night.

Language class: it's pretty much an integration class, so that all us newbies can integrate into the German culture. Fortunately, that means that everyone speaks fairly good German, so I think it will be right on my level. Also, I am the only American and the only native English speaker. Here are the native countries of the people in my class (excluding me): Argentina, the Ukraine, Russia (x2), Dominican Republic, Brazil, Romania, Japan. It's pretty cool though, because that means that we won't all just lapse into speaking English. And there are two other aupairs in the class! Finally! The Dominican Republican (is that right? I don't care) and the Ukrainian girls are aupairs, in Giengen and Sontheim, which are both nearby towns. They both said that they don't know any other aupairs here, but I found out later that Katja (the Ukrainian one) met a French aupair who lives in Heidenheim. Anyway, after class ended I walked around Heidenheim a little bit with Katja. We were going to ask Dianny (the Dominican one) to come with us, but she had already left. There was a market set up on the pedestrian zone so we walked around there for a while. It had mostly tacky stuff, but there was a crepes stand, so of course we ate crepes! The market was PACKED though. The stands were all set up in front of the stores so there was less room to walk than usual, but there were also a gazillion people there. And no one was polite and said "Excuse me" or anything, they all just pushed right through. Anyway, a little later Stephanie came into the city to go to the craft market which was up in the castle, so she picked us up and we went with her. That market was actually really nice. There were a lot of nice craft things, and I bought a turtle made out of bread. (That should not have been one sentence; those two things are unrelated.) I also bought some peppermint candies, which on the bag are called "peppermint pillows", hahaha.

Cooking course: Monday was the first time for that, but it starts at a really inconvenient time. As I'm sure I've said before, the buses here suck. So, one leaves at 6:15 and arrives at 6:40 for my class that starts at 6:30...which is no good. I think I'll prob have to take that from now on, but Stefan said that today I should be on time. Which meant that I took the bus that left at 4:30 and arrived at 5:00. Whatev, it was nice to walk around for a little bit before the class started, and it was a really nice day. The class ended up being good. I was hoping there would be some people my age, but they were all older. There were two old men (like, 60, hahah) and three younger women, but the youngest was prob 30. Oh well, no BFFs for me in this class. But yeah, we made salads and soups, and I made one called Karottensalat (carrot salad), which was made from 500g of carrots (aka A LOT) and one apple, with yogurt and vinegar used for the the dressing. It ended up being pretty good, definitely different than other things I've eaten. All of the salads ended up looking kind of like cole slaw in that they all had shredded ingredients with the dressing mixed in. The other salads were: Greek salad, wurst salad (which had sausage and ham and onions), and something with sauerkraut and some other junk. We also had tomato soup and carrot soup, which were pretty good. I don't think I'll be taking many of these recipes home with me, but at least after this class is over I'll know how to follow a recipe.

Hmm, I guess that's all that really happened. Today is a German holiday (reunification, I think) so of course everyone has off today, and tomorrow and Friday for good measure. It's nice because I don't have to work, but it also means that nothing is open. Oh well, I am looking forward to relaxing. And maybe tomorrow I'll go into Heidenheim and buy the books for my German class (woo woo...can't wait).

So, I was thinking about this blog and how I wanted to keep it to remember what's going on...but I realized that my messages to Jonathan probably more accurately document what's been going on in my daily life. I write a lot more stuff in those messages, plus I write them more often. As long as Facebook's server doesn't explode, I think I'll have a pretty good record of what I did here in Germany by the time I leave.

Weird

2007-09-28T20:04:00.000+02:00

I watched "The Life of David Gale" on DVD a little while back because they have a ton of DVDs, but since Stefan burned them all, he opted to burn them without English. So there's an option to watch it in English, but when I clicked on it, there was no sound at all. Oh, well. It's a good way to learn some German.

Anyway! So if you haven't seen the movie, it's about this dude (David Gale) and it's not giving away anything to say that he's in jail. Well, in German there are three forms of "you": you singular informal, you plural informal, and you formal singular or plural. You obviously use you formal as a sign of respect. Shopkeepers say it to customers, younger people say it to older people, older people use it with their peers when just meeting them. It's kind of like how people in the South always say "sir" and "ma'am".

Back to the movie. In the movie, Kate Winslet is interviewing him and David Gale stands up. The jailers tell him that he has to sit down, but! They use "you" formal to tell him! I thought that was highly unrealistic. I mean, I know it's Germany and people here are very polite and all, but come on. What jailer, in any country, would show the inmate that respect? I can't imagine an American jailer calling a death-row inmate "sir".

Also, I found out that there is apparently only one German voice for each big-name actor. Like, "Jerry McGuire" and "Eyes Wide Shut" would have the same person doing Tom Cruise's voice. That's awesome! I would love to have that job. Stefan told me that he watched "The Sixth Sense" in English and thought that Bruce Willis sounded stupid. Hahahahaha, awesome. (Although I really like Bruce Willis's voice!)

Tomorrow is my first German class! I'm excited for it, but not too thrilled about waking up at 7:15 AM on a weekend.

Crunch

2007-09-27T10:43:00.001+02:00

The one thing I really miss about the US: potato chips.

I've been here one month

2007-09-26T19:31:00.000+02:00

That's a lie. I'll admit that up front. Tomorrow I'll have been here for 4 weeks, but it's not until Sunday that I will hit one month. But no matter. I can't believe that I've been here (on Sunday) one month! On the one hand it feels like a lot less, but on the other hand it feels much longer.

Well, my German has definitely gotten better. I am still constantly frustrated, though, with my struggle to speak even regular sentences. For the most part I can communicate with store clerks and other people who I have little to no interaction with. I also find I can conduct conversations with people better if I have never met them before--I think mostly because they all ask me where I'm from, how long I've been here, do I like it, etc. I've got those answers down pat. It's just having actual conversations about actual things that gets me.

I keep comparing how comfortable I am with German now with how comfortable I was after one month in Wittenberg. Maybe I'm just looking at that time through rose-colored glasses, but I think that I was more comfortable when I left then (I was there about 4 weeks). But then again, I'm learning much more complex words now and I'm doing a lot more talking. I think I also came into this with less experience. In Wittenberg, I had just come off two semesters of German. When I came here, I hadn't had a German class since December. In fact, I hadn't spoken a word of German since then, except when I had to talk to the visa people in New York. All I remember thinking on the car ride from Munich to Heuchlingen was, "Please don't say anything else to me. I don't want to speak anymore German." How far I have come from that! This weekend in Munich with the two English-speaking aupairs I really missed speaking German. I was dying to speak it, even if it meant making things harder for myself (for example: in stores, on the train). I can at least hold a stilted conversation in German now. I still struggle, but I think most of my frustration is coming from not being instantly fluent.

So many words are coming back to me. If you had asked me just two months ago what the German word for "baptism" is, I would have had no idea. But when Stephanie told me that they had been invited to a "Taufe", somehow I knew what it was without having it described to me. All these things are coming back that I didn't even know I knew! Then again, other things I have completely forgotten (e.g. every single article for every single word). "Das" is my article of choice, and I use it liberally.

OK, non-language stuff: I feel a lot more comfortable living here now. I don't really feel like this is my house (probably because I live in the basement), but I feel like this is my room and my space. The kids are much more used to me and are starting to be glad to see me. In they beginning they were kind of blase, which I can completely understand. I was just this person who was taking care of them, and that was fine and all, but they didn't know me. It's much better now. We're used to each other and we have a little routine down.

The only thing that kinda sucks is that I haven't met many people my age. I went to that youth group and I'm going to try one more time this week, but I don't think it's for me. I'm really hoping that the language class will introduce me to a lot more people. I don't even mind if no one wants to travel with me; it would just be nice to have someone to do stuff with on the weekends. And if this cooking class actually happens, then I hope I will meet some German girls my age. I really want people to speak German to! There is actually a choir that meets on Wednesdays (although Stephanie said it's mostly older people) but a girl my age stopped by to ask me if I wanted to go. I said I probably would, but I was sick this week and I still have a cough--one of those horrible ones where nothing is even wrong, but my throat tickles and I have to cough! Grr! Anyway, not good for choir. Definitely next week though.

Now I sort of wish that I was living in a bigger city, just so that I'd be able to meet more people and have more stuff to do, but after talking to other aupairs, I am really glad that I have a family that I like and that treats me well. It sounds like I am the exception in enjoying my job and liking my family and not working 10 hrs/day 6 or 7 days/week (although honestly, those girls just need to tell the families they won't do that--it IS against the law, after all).

All in all, I am really happy. I have a good job with good hours, I'm living in a foreign country learning a new language first-hand--and I'm getting paid to do it! If any of you out there want a cheap way to travel around, being an aupair is definitely the way to go. Although after those aupairs' horror stories, I recommend finding a family yourself through a website instead of relying on an agency. If you find the fam yourself, all of you can make sure that you are a good fit before anyone commits to anything.

OK, this ended up being way longer than I thought it would be. I'll end this the usual way, by saying that I'm off to go watch TV. Some things never change, no matter which country I'm in!

Classic

2007-09-23T23:10:00.000+02:00

To set the scene: this exchange happened in the S-Bahn station around 2 AM on Friday.

Irish guy: Excuse me, do you speak English?
Me: Yes.
Irish guy: Do you know which train to take to get to the Hauptbahnhof?
Me: Well, I'm not sure if the next one does, but we're taking the S2 which I know runs right through there.
Irish guy: Thanks. Your English is really good!
Me: ....That's because I'm American.
Irish guy: Oh...I thought you had a bit of an American accent.

Oktoberfest!

2007-09-23T20:35:00.001+02:00

September 21-23

The good news: I went to Munich this weekend and it was awesome!

The bad news: I probably have lung cancer now from all the second-hand smoke I inhaled.

Munich was AWESOME. I had kind of forgotten what a real city was like, after living here for a month and having Heidenheim be "the big city", but Munich restored my faith in Germany. The city was great, the people were great, the public transportation was great (sidenote: all of the public transport was honor system. Like, "You better buy a ticket and validate otherwise there's a very small chance you'll be caught and have to pay a fine." I mean, come on.). I met up with two other aupairs, Meagan and Nadine, and we went to a pub crawl on Friday night (don't worry, I didn't drink). I was a little worried, but it ended up being a lot of fun, especially for me since I got to laugh at all the drunk people. Everyone was English-speaking (finally!!! I have missed speaking English to people who speak it back to me); actually, most of them were Australian. We went to a bunch of pubs and a few clubs, which was a great way to see Munich, actually. I even got a free Coke out of it!

Fri. night I stayed with Meagan. We got back around 3 AM and woke up around 8 AM, courtesy of her family's children. We headed into the city to see Oktoberfest. It was insanely crowded. I don't think I've ever been at anything that crowded before. It was pretty awesome though, being there on the first day, seeing all the people in their lederhosen and dirndls drinking tons of beer. The actual Oktoberfest was a letdown though--for all you USC people, picture the SC State Fair with beer tents. We stayed long enough to get separated (ha!) and for me to eat a crepe (delicious). After that we walked around Marienplatz for a little bit, saw the Old Rathaus and the New Rathaus as well as the Glockenspiel, then I climbed the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) tower. Later we went to Schloss Nymphenberg and then to the Olympic Stadium (let me reiterate the wonderfulness of the public transportation!). Then we ate dinner in the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and went home. After getting only 3-4 hours of sleep the night before, we were more than ready to crash.

This morning we got up semi early and went back downtown, this time for the Oktoberfest parade, which was so cool! We went to Karlsplatz to watch, which was of cousre packed. I was able to find a spot where there weren't too many people in front of me so I could take a ton of pictues. The whole parade was bands from cities in Germany marching, as well as horse-drawn carriages carrying kegs of beer. And of course all the participants (as well as most of the people watching) were dressed in dirndls and lederhosen.

Okay, now let's go back in time to last week. I didn't do too much, but a few interesting things happened. First off, I bought a BahnCard 50, which saves me 50% on every train ticket I buy for travel in Germany! Plus I was able to get the student rate, so I got it 50% off, saving me 106€. The bad thing was, I had to have a picture for it. There was a little photo booth in the train station so I ran over there to take a picture, which was all well and good--except it is without a doubt THE WORST picture ever taken of me (honestly, it is HORRIBLE). But that freakin' photo cost 5€, so there was no way I was retaking it. I was almost embarrassed handing it over.

The second thing that happened, on the same trip into Heidenheim: I had some time to kill since the buses come, like, every 2 hours (yeah, the pub. trans. in Hdh does not rock as hard as Munich's), so I went into Mueller, which is kind of like Target without the clothes or food. I was browsing through the music section, and then I noticed that all the rap, R&B, and hip-hop music was grouped together into one section labelled "Blackmusic." Now, not many things have made me stop and stare here, including the rattails and mullets--but this was just crazy. All I can say is, thank goodness no Americans ever go to Hdh, otherwise they'd all go home talking about how racist the Germans are.

(Sidenote #2: I have seen about 10 black people since I've been here. Where are they all hiding??)

OK, I don't want to end on a bad note about Germany, so I'll talk a little bit more about how Munich rocks! If ever there was a place in Germany that I could see myself living forever, it's Munich. There are a ton of people and they all speak German, but there's a huge English-speaking community too. If only Jonathan didn't have to live in the U.S. for his job--darn those airlines! I'll just have to try harder to convince him to work for Lufthansa!

Schade

2007-09-17T20:48:00.001+02:00

OK, before I write any more posts, I really need to address the most appalling thing I have seen so far in Germany: the unfortunate appearance of the rattail. Every time I see a rattail on another little boy, a little piece of me dies inside. Rattails aren't cool. They never were. They never will be. I feel this is a trend that we as a global society need to stamp out. Forget global warming, forget abortion, forget Iraq: we need to focus all of our resources on this, our most pressing matter. In mere days I have seen several rattails. This is disturbing for a few reasons. 1) I have had to witness said hairstyle, thus scarring me for life. 2) None of those poor boys was older than eight, meaning that their parents either allowed or forced them to have a rattail. 3) All of these boys live in Heuchlingen.

Now, Heuchlingen is not big. It has maybe 900 residents. If I have seen this many rattails in so few days, how many more are out there? If there are this many in Heuchlingen, surely this hairstyle is an epidemic. We need to join together, across racial, ethnic, and national borders to put an end to this. If there was ever a cause for us to put aside our differences, surely this is it.

I only hope we can get to these poor children before it's too late.

Week 2, Part 2: The saga continues

2007-09-17T20:41:00.000+02:00

Saturday: We went to a kite festival in Heldenfingen, another nearby village. I had seen the article about it on the fridge for the past week, but I was pretty confused. I was almost positive that "drachen" means "dragon", but I was on the fence--does it mean kite instead? For awhile I reconciled this by thinking that maybe it was a dragon-kite festival. Turns out "drachen" means both kite AND dragon. Now, I'm sure we have words like that in English too, but I can't think of any right now. That just seems impractical! Anyway, the festival was kind of neat, but not that exciting. I mean, it was just kites. And the people were a little TOO obsessed, if you know what I mean. They wore t-shirts and everything (because we all know that people who wear t-shirst are secretly PSYCHOS). But whatev, I got some ice cream out of it.

Sunday: Woke up late and did pretty much nothing. It was great. We had an excellent lunch of grilled lamb and potatoes. After that I went for a run, and then more nothing. That's my kind of day.

Monday (today): Dominik's first day of school, and my first day of having the morning free! I did some housework and then went to the Rathaus to register (at least I think that's what I did...). I'd already tried to go to the Rathaus two other times to do that, and both times it was closed. I was beginning to think it was a major hassle, and then of course today it took about 2 minutes. How come getting my visa wasn't that easy?

Then this afternoon it was soooo nice out, which was quite a change! Dominik, Johanna, and I spent the whole afternoon outside, along with three of Dominik's friends, who all had excellent German names: Alina, Nikolas, and Lukas. Later on even little Johannes joined on. It was great to enjoy the nice weather and not have to be solely responsible for entertaining the kids!

Now it is time for some more relaxing...and time to watch some TV shows courtesy of tv-link.co.uk, which is my official favorite website. TV Links, I would like to thank you for bringing me shows in English in this country where, not only are the American shows dubbed into German, the German shows are really stupid. Too often you are taken for granted, even though you provide a great service to those of us in times of need. I want you to know that I admire and respect you. I am deeply thankful for all the work that has gone into finding all of these TV shows online. TV Links, I will never forget you--and maybe, someday, I'll even make a PayPal donation to you.

Week 2, Part 1

2007-09-16T13:44:00.000+02:00

I haven't really felt like posting. I guess I'm just not really a blogger at heart. Last week was pretty good though, mostly because I didn't have to work on Tuesday or Friday! Here is a brief rundown of what has happened since I last posted:

Monday: worked until 5:30. Johanna had gymnastics at 4:30 and Dominik had swimming at 6, so it was a busy afternoon. Dominik's friend Lukas got back from vacation (in Mallorca..!! I'm only a little jealous) so he came over to play. That kid is adorable. Since I always speak to Johanna and Dominik in English, I asked Lukas if he understood English. He made a face like nothing could be worse, and said no.

Tuesday: No work! I don't usually work Tues mornings anyway, and in the afternoon Johanna went to her grandparents' house and Dominik played at Lukas' house all day. I rode with Stephanie to her practice (she's a dentist) in Heidenheim in the afternoon and walked around. All of the pictures here are from Heidenheim. There's a huge old ruin of a castle high on a cliff above Heidenheim and it looks freakin' awesome from below, so I walked up to it. Umm I had no idea it was so high up. Either that or I had no idea how out of shape I am. Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures from up there. I tried to post some on here, but it's really way more trouble than it's worth. If you want to see pics, all of them are on facebook. I also walked along the Fußgängerzone (pedestrian mall) in Heidenheim. There're a lot of stores, but it's not really that impressive. They do have an H&M though, which gives them more credibility in my eyes. I also found the train station and the post office, so now I can both travel places and mail letters. I also ran into someone I know...I hardly know anyone here, and every time I've been to Heidenheim I've seen someone I know!

Aside: I met an older couple at the farewell party for Joy, the Eders' old aupair, who have a daughter who lives in Easton, PA! Apparently she went to Rutgers and has an American husband. Small world!

Tues. continued: I also conquered the bus from Heidenheim to Heuchlingen. I even managed to put money on my bus card! It's really expensive though; Heidenheim is about a 15 min drive away, and the bus trip cost €2,25 (about $3).

Wednesday: I worked until about 2:30, then I went for a run. There are paths through all the farms here, so I've been running on those. It's really nice because the farms are so beautiful and there are no other people or cars. The only downside is that it smells like cow poo.

Thursday: I worked until about 1:30. Went running on the farm paths again, and somehow I ran all the way to Dettingen (it makes me feel really accomplished when I see a sign in Dettingen that says 1 km to Heuchlingen, even though I know it's not even close to a mile). I'll pretend it's really far away.

Friday: No work again! It was Dominik's first day of school, which really meant that there was a big party at the school with lots of different kinds of cake. Stephanie's sister and parents came for it too. The party wasn't until the afternoon, so all I had to do in the morning was fold the wash, do some ironing, and vacuum. The weird thing was, the party was proceeded by a church service that all of the students went to. I don't think it's a religious school, but when I tried to ask Stephanie's father I don't think I really conveyed what I was thinking. I think the gist of what he said though was that most schools in Germany do something like this for the beginning of school, and it often involves a church service. I'm not sure though; all I know is that would never be tolerated at a public school in the U.S. We also would never have such a first-day-of-school celebration in the U.S., so I feel that one 30-minute church service was worth it for all that cake.

OK, the posting isn't working well, so this will be continued in the above post

10 Things I Like About Germany

2007-09-10T20:58:00.000+02:00

1. The bread (is anyone surprised?)

2. The incredibly cute houses

3. The publice transportation, which I have yet to take advantage of. It's a little like how I live near Philadelphia but have seen the Liberty Bell maybe three times--I like having it there, but that doesn't mean I want to look at it every day.

4. Riding my bike everywhere!

5. Riding my bike everywhere with the anhänger!!!! (I love that thing)

6. Being jealous of little kids who can speak better German than I can

7. The fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, etc.

8. Um, I really love the bread

9. The fact that it only costs 5 cents/minute to call the US

10. THE CHOCOLATE

Seriously, what better place is there for me than Germany? Not only can I learn to speak German, but it is a bread- and chocolate-lover's paradise. OK, so I don't like sausage or cheese. I can just fill up on bread!

My favorite part of today: jumping on the trampoline. It is so much fun jumping with Dominik and Johanna because I can send them, like, 3 feet in the air.

My least favorite part: eating noodles with tomato sauce. I never thought I'd say this...but I think I'm getting sick of pasta. I've probably had it five times since I've been here, and I've been here 11 days. If it continues like this, by the time I leave I'm never going to want to eat pasta again. Sad!

Another sad thing: on Saturday I bought new socks, and when I was trying to cut them apart today, I accidentally cut one of them!! I'm not too sad though considering I got 5 pairs of socks for 7€. C&A might be my new favorite store.

Now I'm off to do some chocolate eating. The choc. here is so good that I don't even miss chips!

What's the difference between kaiserschmarn, pfannkuchen, and crepes?

2007-09-09T11:37:00.000+02:00

Friday for lunch we had "pfannkuchen" aka pancakes, so there I was, thinking, oh, finally something I recognize! Nope. I mean, it was made the same way, except somehow they are a lot thinner, more like what I think of as crepes (although apparently crepes are also something different). Stephanie made them in a different way too: she poured the batter covering the entire skillet instead of making little ones (which I find much easier). Anyway, then she put marmelade or cheese or something on them for the kids and rolled them up, kind of like crepes, and cut them into small pieces. I decided I'd have to take my pancakes into my own hands then, so I made mine the way we make them in Amerika, in small circles. Then when I was eating them I put butter on them. The kids stared in shock while I did this, and acted like it was the grossest thing they'd ever seen. Now they know how I feel all the time here!!!

Yesterday morning we went to Heidenheim for what Stefan called an "event" (complete with quotes). There were food stands set up on the pedestrian street and some kind of lame street performers who the kids of course loved. We had crepes (which I still think are the same as pfannkuchen!) and walked around a little bit. Stefan and Stephanie swore up and down that they never see anyone they know in Heidenheim, so of course we saw about 10 people they knew.

Last night I went to a youth group in Schnaitheim (near Heidenheim)--and it was incredibly boring. It was about 3 hrs of Jesus-y stuff, and then an hour of hanging out. What made it so boring was that the woman who was leading it talked for a solid hour about a small bible passage, and I have a feeling that even if I had understood it I would have been bored. Who talks for an hour in a small group without stopping??? About 10:30 all the Jesus stuff ended, and by then I was tired and ready to go home. But we stuck around for another hour and talked a little bit. It was hard for me though, because not only do I not really know the other people, I also have trouble speaking German. I did a lot of sitting around.

I'll leave you with an exchange I had with Stefan yesterday.

Stefan: That's Alex, our neighbor. All the aupairs looove him. He's married though.
Me: Well, and I have a boyfriend!
Stefan: But he's far away!

Doch

2007-09-06T20:30:00.000+02:00

My German goal: figure out what "doch" means. The Germans throw it around in all sorts of different situations, so I can't get a handle on it. I have to tell you, it's frustrating that these little kids speak much better German than I do.

My other German goal: stop mental block with "will". In German, when you say "Ich will" it means "I want (to)". And in English it means--well, I think we all know. But anyway, also in German you would say "Ich mache" to mean both "I am doing" and "I will (in the very near future) do", so I always want to say "Ich will machen" to mean "I will do", although that obviously isn't right. I have known this verb since probably 9th grade, and I still can't get past this somehow.

Another thing. In certain sentance structures, the verb goes at the end of the sentance, for example: "Ich habe nicht aufgewacht, weil ich so müde war," which means "I didn't wake up because I was so tired." The verb "war" means "was" (and "ich" means "I"), but since it comes after "weil", "war" goes at the end of the sentence. It's not so bad there, but when you have a really long sentence, 1) How can you remember if you put a verb in or not?, and 2) When listening to someone talk, how can you remember everything they said and realize that they didn't put a verb at the end? If no one here put verbs at the end of their sentences, I wouldn't notice. I guess my mind just functions differently than if I had grown up speaking German.

OK, enough with the language lesson. So, twice for dinner Stefan has made a salad, which consists of lettuce, tomatoes, and some kind of dressing that I have never had. Both times the dressing was this weird sweet/sour thing that I didn't really like (I am such an American). Anyway, today Stefan asked me what he could do to the salad so that I would like it, and I said, don't put that dressing on. Well, apparently they were two different dressings--although to my credit (as you're thinking I have a horribly unsophisticated palate) they both had the same base, but two different versions of the same thing. Stefan told me to taste each of them, saying one was sweet/sour and one was more sweet to see if there was one I liked better. He got some of the stuff on the spoon and then stuck the whole thing in my mouth--and then I burst out coughing, my eyes were watering, and my throat was burning. I downed nearly a whole glass of water while Stefan was trying to pretend he wasn't laughing and Stephanie was yelling at him for giving me so much at once. I learned my lesson after that though, and I only took a little bit of the next one. (By the way, they still tasted exactly the same.) (By the way again, my throat still hurts.)

I think they're both convinced I am a super picky eater. I'm not though; I mean, I don't like cheese and sausage, but other than that I like a lot of stuff. And the food here is really different, so I don't think they can hold it against me that I think all of it is so weird. Plus, I really don't mind eating bread with meat on it every night for dinner. And hey, the carrots and sugar thing was good, and so is most of the meat and all of the bread.

Oh, and let me just say, I love the anhänger for the bike. It's not even that I'm too lazy to walk the 5 minutes to kindergarten to pick up Johanna; I just love riding the bike with the anhänger on it. I feel like such a mom, standing there waiting for Johanna with my bike and the anhänger on the back, and Dominik there with me riding his little bike. I'll have to take a picture of it to show how cute it is.

2007-09-05T20:14:00.000+02:00

OK, I finally have a little bit of time. Monday was my first day working, and it was a pretty long day. I worked from 7:30 AM to 5 PM. I think that will probably be the longest day of the week. I had Dominik in the morning and both in the afternoon. We picked Johanna up from kindergarten at 12 and she was a little bit shy with me, which is funny because she talks so much and is so loud! It's a little bit weird to speak English to the kids when they speak German back to me. I feel like I'm not getting enough practice speaking German, but it's definitely improving my comprehension skills. I can almost always understand both of them now. But the thing is, they yell a lot. I never realized this before, but it's a lot harder to understand what someone is saying in an echo-y place. The house is very open so they'll yell from upstairs, and I honestly cannot understand one single thing they say when they do that. It's good though; that way I can say, "I can't understand when you yell!" and it's not a lie!

The only thing was bad about Monday was that it rained the whole afternoon and was really cold in the morning. Johanna and Dominik have so much energy that it's good for them to go outside to burn it off, but we couldn't. Johanna threw a few temper tantrums, but I think that's pretty much a daily thing. She gets set off by the littlest things. I made noodles with meat sauce for lunch and she was really excited--until she decided, right as I was about to dish it out, that she wanted egg noodles. Dominik was really provoking her and she was about to launch into a full-on fit, so I just said, "Johanna! These are egg noodles!" And she said, "Really??" So crisis averted!

Yesterday (Tuesday) it didn't rain the whole afternoon, but it rained probably every half hour. It was almost worse though, because we were going to go to the playground and we got all prepared, and then as soon as we walked outside--it started to rain. So we went inside and played a little bit and then we saw the sun was out. So we got ready to go again, and then--it started to rain the moment we got outside.

Then after Stefan got home, the old aupair, Joy, came. She had been travelling around Europe for the past few weeks. She came back for one last day to say goodbye to the family. She also had a farewell party last night, so I went with her and she introduced me to a few of her friends. She met most of them through a youth group, which I'm going to this Saturday. I'm not too crazy about all the singing and praying and stuff, but it's a good way to meet people my age who don't party all the time. Today was Joy's last day, so she spent the day with the kids for the last time. It actually was nice--I was able to vacuum and hang up the laundry without Dominik getting antsy. She also showed me where a lot of stuff goes, so that was really helpful.

Aaaand of course it rained all afternoon again. It was raining when I went to pick up Johanna from kindergarten, so I rode my bike to be faster and took the anhänger (I don't know the word in English; it's this thing that attaches to the back of the bike that a kid can sit in while the person on the bike pulls them behind). It poured the whole way there and back, and then, just as we got back to the house--it stopped! We have had such bad luck with the rain! It stopped a little while after Stephanie got home, and then after that I rode my bike to Dettingen, mostly just to find my way and see how long it took. It's really nice riding through the farms. There are hardly any other people back there, so I don't have to worry about going around people or cars coming at me. The only downside: it stinks. I don't know whether it's a good or bad thing that I'm starting to get used to the manure smell.

I posted some pictures on facebook of my room, the kids, and the area, so if you're friends with me, you can see them.

Tired

2007-09-04T22:20:00.000+02:00

My first day of work was yesterday. There's a lot to write about, but I'm too tired to make a real post.

I'll leave you with this fun fact: Germans drink carbonated water. I made the mistake of trying it and I swear, it burned my throat. Man, that stuff is strong! It has more carbonation than soda, bleeehhh. So if you are an American and you visit Germany, warning: ask for "Wasse ohne Gas".

Oh oh, and today I was offered something called a "Käsfuss" ("cheese foot"). Apparently when your foot and sock are all sweaty in your sneaker after being outside or running, people here call that "Käsfuss". (The Käsfuss I was offered was a cookie with cheese on it, not an actual sweaty foot.)

OK, maybe a post tomorrow?

Fahrradtour und schwimmen

2007-09-02T19:17:00.000+02:00

The big event today was when we went on a bike ride (fahrradtour). Heuchlingen and the nearby villages sit basically in farmland. There are farms completely surrounding us. Running through these are routes that I'm assuming were built so that the farmers can drive to the correct field and do all their farming stuff. The roads are public, so people can walk and run and bike on them also. We rode around those for a while and also stopped by the woods to walk a little bit. It's really beautiful here! The only downside is since they're farms, they STINK. There is manure everywhere. Actually, the whole town kind of smells; fortunately not where the house is, but on the outskirts it does (Heuchlingen is so small that from the middle to the edge is maybe a two- or three-block walk).

They also showed me the path through the farms to take to get to Dettingen, which is the next town over. It's huge compared to Heuchlingen, at least twice as big. I was going to go today, but by the time we were done with the "fahrradtour", it was a little bit too late to go. Maybe some day this week after work.

After bike riding, Stefan and Stephanie made applesauce. There are a ton of apples here. Practically everyone has an apple tree somewhere on their property in Heuchlingen. Stefan said that there are very distinct rules here: when something hangs over the fence, whether it's just a regular plant or if it's plums or apples, etc, anyone can eat it. If it's off that person's land, they have no control over it. While we were out they ate some tiny plums (I think that's what they were...even fruit is different here!) and Johanna had an apple. Another weird thing: they only wash their fruit if it comes from the grocery store (because of the chemicals). If they got it from a garden, even if it was sitting on the ground, they don't wash it.

After that, I went swimming with Dominik and Johanna! They have an indoor swimming pool. It was nice after a long day to relax in a heated pool.

And, tomorrow is work! I think it will be good. They are generally well-behaved and active kids, and now they're a little bit used to me and I to them. Ahh, it's so weird to have a full-time job!

I watched a really weird movie last night

2007-09-01T19:05:00.001+02:00

Here is a description of the movie I watched. It was a British movie dubbed into German, called "Die Baby-Krise". OK, here's the gist: Rosie and Vincent have been married for 5 years. They want to have a baby. They try for a year, but Rosie doesn't get pregnant (insert montage of sex scenes). They go to the doc, and she says, something is wrong with V's sperm, they're weak or something, and maybe they should consider a sperm donor. V is p.o.'ed. Later, R's former pen pal Benoit (who she has never met) shows up and is all, "hey, what's up?" R invites him to stay at their house and he does. V gets more and more ticked off b/c B is clearly in love with R and she doesn't see it. Meanwhile, V is off humping another woman who he and R once had a threesome with.......(I know). So, eventually B tries to kiss R, she's all "no this isn't right" then she finds out about V and Threesome Lady and she decides she wants to leave with B. V is even angrier, and hunts them down and tries to shoot B. During the shooting scene, V tells R that the doc called and she's pregnant, and then all is forgiven. The end.

Yeah. It was weird. But back to real life. Today I played with the kids a little bit. I think it helped them get a little bit used to me. It also helped me get used to speaking English with them while they speak German back at me (the parents want me to speak only English with the kids all the time). It's a little bit annoying since, you know, I want to learn to speak German. But I think it will be helpful in some ways because they both speak pretty slowly (since they're kids) and don't use very big words, so they're right on my level. And Dominik understands almost everything I say, so when I don't know a word in German, I can ask him in English.

And for lunch we had carrots and rice cooked with sugar over them. It sounds weird, but it was actually pretty good. Then for dinner we had chili, thank goodness for American food! A bunch of Stefan's old friends from college came over so he made a big pot of it. I don't usually like chili, but this was really good. It's hard to believe that it was the first time any of them had had chili, Stefan and Stephanie included.

Side note: the kids eat pretty much noodles with tomato sauce. Johanna sometimes eats rice and a little bit of other stuff, but noodles with tomato sauce is the extent of Dominik's diet. He refuses to eat anything else. So when I say "we ate this", I mean me, Stephanie, and Stefan.

The weather here is definitely a change from home. It was 85 or 90 at home when I left, and here it hasn't been over 65. They said that summer is over and now it's fall. It's pretty disappointing. I was hoping to not have to wear sweatshirts until maybe the middle of September.

I was going to bike into Dettingen today (the next village over), but it was windy so I didn't feel like it. I probably will tomorrow, as long as it's not too cold out. Dettingen has a supermarket! We don't have that here in Heuchlingen. We also don't have a bank or a post office. We have: a butcher. But one thing we have that probably no town of 900 in the U.S. can boast: two bus stops! So at least I can take the bus into Heidenheim and the train from there to anywhere.

Oh yeah, and I tried to load photos onto the computer, except somehow when I tried to move them from my memory card to the drive, they disappeared! And I can't find them! Luckily they were just pictures of my room and stuff so I'll take some more, but I hope that doesn't happen again! Check out facebook to see them, which is where I'll put them when I upload them.

Second day

2007-08-31T19:28:00.000+02:00

So, I'm completely over my jet lag! It's amazing what no sleep one night plus 14 hrs the next night can do. It was really nice to sleep in, especially since it will be my last time on a weekday for a while. I start every day at 7:30 AM. Good thing I can get ready fast--I'll definitely be getting up at 7:15 every day. Good thing my commute is short!

OK. Today I went with Stephanie to pick up Johanna from kindergarten (I think kindergarten here is pretty much like daycare in the US?). It's really close, which is nice. But, even so, I still have no idea how to get there. Fortunately Dominick does and he doesn't have school next week so he'll be able to show me how to get there.

After that we had lunch, which was "zwiebelkuchen", directly translated "garlic cake". It's a little bit hard to describe. I guess the closest thing would be a pot pie. It had egg and garlic in it. It was actually pretty good. But later, Stefan asked me if I had felt what the garlic does to the stomach, and I said no....then he said it makes "Luft" (air)...!!!! I guess here it's not taboo to ask someone if they have gas!!

After lunch I walked around Heuchlingen a little bit, just to see what it's like. It is REALLY small, but very cute. Imagine a German village. It's exactly like what you're picturing. The only weird thing was there was no one else walking around. The people that I saw when I was out all stopped and stared at me, it was a little unnerving.

Then when I got back, we all went into Heidenheim, where Stephanie's dental practice is. Her office is really nice. Everything looked so new. And then we walked around the pedestrian mall for a little bit and ate some (extremely cheap) ice cream. I love that ice cream is so cheap here and so much better than at home! And Stefan gave me my first months' pay, so now I have some money. Apparently very few places in Germany take credit cards, so it looks like I'll have to use cash for pretty much everything.

After we got back we had dinner, then I watched Stefan put the kids to bed (since I'll have to do that every Thursday) and now I am done. I might even attempt to watch some German TV later!

Made it in one piece

2007-08-30T16:39:00.000+02:00

So, I made it! I'm in Germany! And fortunately, Stefan showed me how to change the keyboard from German to English, so I don't have to type Zs where my Ys would be. (Especially annoying: where is the @ sign on a German keyboard?)

Fortunately none of my flights were delayed. I left JFK at 5:40 (after sitting in the airport for about 4 hours) and got into Dublin at 5:10 AM. Left for Munich at 7:10 AM and arrived at 10:45 (yet another time change). Stefan and Dominick were waiting at the airport for me, but for some reason the baggage claim was inside the security area instead of outside. It was like that in Dublin, too. I guess it's some European thing? Also, security in Ireland is not the strict. I only had to show them my boarding pass to get through the security check point.

Anyway, I'm here. My room is in the basement, but it is FREEZING down here! It's actually not bad outside, maybe 75 or 80 degrees, but I'm wearing pants and a sweatshirt down here and still cold! I'm too tired to actually take pictures and post them, so I'll do that later. It's nice though--I have my own TV and computer and my own bathroom. And other aupairs have left stuff through the years, like books and maps and ski pants. It's so weird that this is going to be my room for 11 months.

Well, one good thing is I can tell that my German is really going to improve. I was doing pretty well earlier, but I've gotten really tired over the past few hours and I'm having trouble concentrating when they talk, which I have to do constantly to be able to understand what they're saying. Esp. the little kids. Dominick isn't too bad (he's 6), but Johanna (she's 3) I can only understand when she speaks very slowly and says only a few words at a time. Hopefully tomorrow will be better when I'm more awake.

Oh yeah: I asked if there are any other aupairs in the town, but there aren't. Which kinda sucks. But Stefan said there's other girls my age and if I go to the aerobics classes I'll prob meet some of them.

Leaving Tomorrow

2007-08-29T02:59:00.000+02:00

So, I'm leaving tomorrow. Flying from JFK to Munich! Not direct, thank goodness. Not sure how I feel about it....I'm pretty nervous, but mostly I'm dreading the really long flight, plus still slightly in denial that I'm leaving so soon. The only thing that I am actually nervous about is meeting people my age to be friends with. Since I'm not doing this through an aupair agency, I don't have a built-in way to meet other aupairs. Hopefully the family knows some that I can be introduced to.

My suitcases are huge. I thought my black one was big, but then Julie lent me hers--that thing could eat my suitcase for breakfast. And I keep walking around my room trying to see if I'm forgetting something, and I'll see my Chapstick and think, "What if they don't have Chapstick in Germany??? I better bring these extra ones just to be safe." Or I think, "I HAVE to bring this shirt with me. I haven't worn it once in the past three years, but what if I want to wear it in Germany?? Better pack it."

OK, I plan on taking pics once I get there, so maybe I'll even be not lazy and post them.

European geography is not my forte

2007-07-14T04:25:00.000+02:00

I feel a little pretentious making a public list of places I want to visit. Oh well, I'm over it. Plus, you secretly want to know:

• Germany: Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Wittenberg
• Austria: Salzburg, Vienna
• Switzerland: Zurich
• France: Paris, other places too?
• England: London, Stonehenge
• Ireland: I really only know Dublin
• Scotland
• Norway, Sweden, and Denmark
• Amsterdam (I know it's a city, not a country)
• Spain: Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao (just to see the awesome Guggenheim building there!)
• Italy: Rome, Venice, Milan
• Greece
• Prague
• I would also love to go to Poland, Hungary, Bulagaria, Croatia, and Egypt, but I don't know how realistic that is, considering I'm a white American female who will either be travelling alone or with other white females

Let's see if I actually get to all these places. I plan to spend all of my money and weekends on travelling. I ain't goin to Europe for a year to build my savings.

Can you guess where I'm going?

2007-07-11T20:25:00.000+02:00

Yep. Germany. I'm making a blog just like every other person going to Europe for a year. I'll write about the things I do and pretend that I'm unique!

Well, I'm at least a little bit unique--how many people do you know who will be working as an au pair for a year to put off the real world? I mean, plenty of people are putting off the real world like me, but I like to think I'm doing it in a fairly new way.

OK. I'll be working in Germany (doy), in a town near Heidenheim. I'll be living with a family, they have two kids, I get my own room, etc. I have done virtually no planning. The farthest I've gotten so far is wondering if they have contact lens solution in Germany, and if so, will it deteriorate my retinas? This is, I know, just about the dumbest question ever. I'm moving from one first-world country to another. It's not like I'll have to write home for a toothbrush.

Here is one thing I have thought of that I really do not know the answer to: do German computers have USB ports? From the knowledge that Europe has different outlets, I have extrapolated that every possible opening I could plug something into must be different. I'm not even wondering about this for a good reason. I just want to know if I'll be able to plug my iPod in.

I sound ridiculous. I do not sound like a college graduate. To redeem myself, I will have the sense to stop writing now. I mean, now. Right NOW.