Until Next Time...?

And I'm back.  Since I never wrapped up the Spain trip, I figured that if I left everyone hanging back in Groningen that you'd all come after me with pitchforks.  Sorry dudes!  Short post, but at least there is in fact a post.

So, while there were some days after my trip to the Netherlands, I didn't really have the motivation to report a lot of what happened.  You know, stuff.  I went to class.  We listened to beep-boop German music in class, I got my final scores (99 total average mwahahaha), and I accidentally ordered ice coffee.  Which, in Germany, means ice cream in coffee.  Error.  Nasty, revolting error. 

Anyway, most of the week was spent preparing for the long long journey home.  Oh, and dealing with drunks because... college students have no chill.

So our final event in the school was a boot party- sorry boat.  The Netherlands warped my spelling permanently and I'm not sure I'll ever recover.  On this boot, there was a bar with unlimited free champagne.  It also had cheap drinky drinks.  This is a bad thing. 

So, to make a long story short, I was the one that had to wait until the end to escort the drunk people home because I'm not entirely sure they could get home on their own.  There was also one other dude that decided to not drink so we... watched things get stupid for four hours.  I am not a partyer.  I doubt I ever will be.

This is from the night of the lunar eclipse.  The moon is rather on the right of the airplane.  You can barely see it.

Anyway, the next day everyone was severly hungover, which also happened to be the day we all had to travel.  I pity them.  I'm sure the journey was not pleasant.

We (one other girl and me) had a choo choo train ride to Frankfurt that was supposed to be six hours, and took us down into the Rhineland area.  The route went to many stops along the way, from Münster, to Düsseldorf, to Köln, to Bonn, and then to Koblenz before landing us in Frankfurt airport.  However, there were a few unknown hiccups that left us sitting on the tracks in between stops, and ultimately we were an hour late.  Actually, 90 minutes late.

However, since I wasn't in too much of a rush (the flight was the next day) I took the time to admire the scenery of the Rhineland.  And to wave a final bye-bye to my old stomping grounds in Köln and Bonn.  Got to see the cathedral one last time.

We FINALLY ended up in Frankfurt, ate a quick bite of food, and then collapsed in the hotel, exhausted.  The next day, I woke up, and went to the airport, where I ditched my somewhat useless traveling companion.  I followed the signs to my gate, admiring the efficiency of the German airport while also being totally confused the entire time.  The staff were very friendly, making many jokes that I found funny (again, the German sense of humor is an acquired taste), and I made it on my flight smoothly.

I had a window seat!  It was a nine hour flight, I watches some movies, listened to music, enjoyed looking at tiny cities pass underneath the plane, and ate ice cream and cookies.  Because they provided me with ice cream and cookies.   And who am I to say no to snacks?  I deserved it.  These last few days were stressful.

 So, I'll take this time to wrap up my month in a few words.  My thoughts on Germany?  Excellent.  I love the country.  Bremen is not my favorite place in Germany by a long shot, and I'm a little sorry to say that.  I love the German people, they're funny and nice enough, once you get used to them.  The food is terrible if you're a fan of spices and aren't overly wed to the idea of meat for every meal, although the coffee and desserts are good.  They drink and smoke too much.  The bikers will kill you.  The cities are pretty, a nice combination of old stuff and cool modern architecture.

And the German language is a monster.  It's so frustrating.  Why does it have to be so hard, and why do I struggle so?  Maybe I didn't learn as much German here as I'd hoped, but I think I dissected the accent a little bit so at least I can distinguish words, rather than hear just an onslaught of vaguely german sounds.  I am more comfortable with practical stuff, although I still don't know how to politely ask the person next to me on a train to move so I can go to the restroom. 

Studying abroad is awesome, especially in a country that is outside the comfort zone.  It allows you to see other people's perspectives on things you take as normal, and allows you to become more comfortable in unfamiliar and difficult situations. 

You learn a lot when you travel to another country; not necessarily what you set out to learn, but you definitely learn something.  Whether that includes navigating train routes, adapting to new eating and sleeping schedules, managing new standards of etiquette, or simple things like how to use foreign toilets or showers, you learn something.  However, the best thing you can learn from going to a different country alone, is learning not to be afraid of the unknown.  It's hard to justify being afraid of things that are new and unusual when you're surrounded by it all the time, so you have to embrace being lost and confused.  And you appreciate the people that are new and confused in your country, too. 

We're in a big world, and we don't have time to be scared.  There's just too much to be amazed by to waste time hiding from things we don't understand.

Thank you for everything!

Continue reading →

Bikes and Wooden Shoes

Good morning to everyone, today I'm chilling (literally because the temperature went down last night) after a day in Holland, which I'm gonna tell you about today.

So, in my area of Germany, the closest foreign country is easily the Netherlands.  It's a two hour bus ride to Groningen, a two hour train ride to Amsterdam or the Hague, two and a half to Rotterdam.  It's pretty close.  So, our school offered a day trip to Groningen, which I put my name down on when I signed up for Hamburg.  Before I tell you about that, mind if I talk a little bit about the Netherlands first?  You don't mind?  Awesome.  I have a couple of things that I need to get out of the way.

The Netherlands, also known as Holland, is a small country on the north-west horn of Europe.  It's an honorary Scandinavian country, meaning that the culture is very similar (particularly to Denmark) it's politics are similar (it has a similar structure and a royal family that most often associates with the three Scandinavian monarchies) and a language that is pretty close to the Nordic ones.  So, you might ask, why would someone so obsessed with Scandinavia not clamber all over Holland and go to Amsterdam rather than Berlin? 

Well, that's a tricky question.  I like Holland, but it's not at the top of my list of places to go and I don't really know why.  Partially, I think, it's because so many college students want to go to Amsterdam for all the wrong reasons.  See, Amsterdam (and the rest of Holland for that matter) is becoming very trendy right now as a result of the country's legalization of marijuana.

I put this in here for anyone that's looking to travel to the Netherlands as a bit of a warning.  Coffee shops.  Don't go inside one if you have an aversion to pot, because that is where you buy it.  It's not legal to advertise the sale of marijuana in Holland, sort of like how the US can't advertise cigarettes.  But everyone knows you can find it in coffee shops, which is why there are so many in Holland.  And that is a tragedy, since the coffee is excellent there.

Anyway, with the pot scene discussion out of the way, lets get on with it.

My roommate is spending the weekend in Berlin alone (hope she makes it back ok, she's not the sort of person that seems to be able to handle a trip like that... but maybe she'll surprise me) so she woke me up at 3:00 in the morning so she could scuttle out to catch her bus.  Hooray.  I got up three hours later, and slogged my way to the school to catch my bus.  A couple of my buddies were heading to Groningen with me, two for the pot and the rest for the sight-seeing.  Woo college students that attend a beach school.  Reinforcing that stereotype, guys.  Whatever.

Two hours later, we cross the Dutch border.  I saw the border crossing this time, unlike my trip to Portugal years ago.  It wasn't very exciting.  Literally, the sign said "Welcome to Netherlands" (in German) and all the signs that came after were suddenly spelled wrong.  Like, De Poort van Groninger.  Pooooooort.  I imagine someone pronouncing it phonetically from an English perspective, and it's hilarious.

We got to the poort city half an hour after a rest stop, where we got off the bus, nearly died to some cyclists, and met up with our tour guide.  Now I should mention the bikes.  Oooooooooh the bikes.  It's a miracle we all made it back alive, because those things are out for blood.  You know how in the US, cars are at the top of the food chain, followed by pedestrians with cyclists being guaranteed to get hit at some point in their soon-to-be-short lives?  Here, it's rather reversed.  The bikers are in charge.  They rule the roads.  They will stop for no man, car, or train, because they travel in packs and their numbers are great.  Fear the bikes, for they show no mercy.

Although on bicycles, the Dutch are vicious, as soon as they step on the ground they become the most jolly people I've ever met.  It's weird to be surrounded by such unwavering joy and friendliness.  We were with the tour guide, learning about the insane bikers and random people would walk by and say "hello!" with a smile on their face before wandering off.  Our tour guide was just as jolly.  "Oh yes, look at this building isn't it lovely?  We could go in there, oh wait!  We should!  Let's go, guys, because it's so wonderful!  Let us stop in front of this private business and stare at this wonderful wall for a while!  Oh hello, sir!  Do you mind if we stop in front of your shop?  You don't?  Excellent!  Thank you so very much!  Let us continue!  The weather is so wonderful today!"

I blame the country itself for this happy disposition that the Dutch seem to universally share.  While the landscape is flat as can be, they decided to make the most of it by planting flowers literally everywhere.  Even in a side of town that could be described is poor or dirty, every available patch of dirt had flowers.  If there is no way to plant colorful flowers in the ground, they have pots.  Every balcony we passed had flowers all over it, with happy people enjoying the weather in their comfy chairs.  And, if there aren't flowers, there are rainbows.

One bridge was painted permanently in rainbow stripes, and we walked over it as though it meant very little. "Oh, let's stop here on this lovely bridge!  If you're thirsty, there's a water fountain over there.  Oh, go fill up your bottles!  It's free!  If you can't figure it out, that nice man seems willing to show you how to use it!"  "Yes, it's a little complicated.  This button that doesn't seem like a button is actually a button!"

Later on, we were walking down this street, while talking about the architecture, the fact that the mascot of Groningen is a horse's butt, which no one seems to find the least bit unusual, when one person in the group asked about these rainbow streamers that we saw hanging over the street.

"Oh these?  I think they're for gay pride."
"Wasn't gay pride like, four weeks ago in the Netherlands?"
"Was it?  Hmm.  No matter.  Look at this clock tower!"

They paint their buildings in rainbow colors too.  The museum of Groningen is so colorful, it might well be called gay!  Not for the gay pride, for just how happy it is!  It was yellow, green, pink... so many colors.  So many flowers.  So many happy tall people and scary bikes on rainbow bike lanes.

Did I enter the twilight zone?

After the tour ended, we were let off our leashes for the next four hours.  We spent much of this time either looking at flowers or waiting for food.  Service ain't fast when your life doesn't depend on tips.  But the coffee, which came to me an hour after I ordered it, was some of the best I'd ever had, and it came with complimentary.... brownies.... um...  They probably didn't have pot in them....  gee, now that I think about it, that is a really weird coincidence. :\

It sadly started raining a bit about 1:30, which meant we couldn't really go oot and aboot as mooch as we would have liked, but we did go about sampling the various tasty things, gawked at the wooden shoes (one of my buddies purchased a pair of tiny thimble sized wooden clogs, which he deemed "the best purchase of my life"), and listened to the church bells of a church that isn't really used as a church much anymore because Netherlands play pretty music. 

We also visited the garden of Orange, which had every color flower except orange in it.  Oh, the House of Orange is the Dutch royal family, and this garden was William of Orange's summer home's garden.  It's now a very fancy hotel that the Dutch royal family stays in when they visit, and it has a space for afternoon tea.  Would have enjoyed some time in the tea-garden, except it rained during tea time.  Tragedy.

Well, other than that, we really didn't have time to do much and Groningen is a kinda small city.  "most of it was destroyed in world war one by the Germans, who we are now very very good friends with, or by the Canadians when they tried to free us from the Germans!  But they rebuilt a lot of it with new shiny architecture except that one building over there which is huge and extremely ugly and everyone hates it.  Moving on!  Look at this cafe!  It's called the golden building and it's the only one in the square that survived!"

 Then we went to the train station, our meeting point, where even the panhandlers were nice and friendly, before hopping on the bus to head back to Germany.  That was my day!

Continue reading →

The Heat is Oppressive

Hello all!  I'm here with a tiny little post today, but since I'm still recovering from the Berlin Behemoth I put up on Monday, I hope you'll find it in your hearts to forgive me.  But for now, a PSA.

Ever since Saturday, it's been stupid hot here in Germany.  Unbelievably so.  I mean, 90 isn't overly hot compared to some places, but please understand that I am on the North Sea.  Historically, this is a very cold place.  I'm not entirely sure people up here own shorts, as it's cold in the winter and 65 and rainy during the summer (you know, like it was when I first got here).  Then the temperature went up.

And it got hotter and hotter.

Bremen is not equipped for the heat.  It's well prepared for cold, with heating units in every room and large windows to let in sunlight.  What does that mean?  All the stuff meant to keep rooms warm in the winter trap heat in during the summer.  So I'm sitting in a room that's 95 degrees when it's only 92 outside.  There might be a cross-breeze that comes through those windows, but nothing near strong enough to cool the room down.

Moreover, Germans don't believe in ice.  In anything.  So you get your water luke-warm, juice luke-warm, beer luke-warm...  And all your hearty German food is served to you piping hot as you sit in your outdoor sunny cafe spot sweating buckets and trying desperately not to die.  Ughhh

So I talked a lot about how hot it was in Spain while I was there two years ago.  Don't get me wrong, it's hot in Spain.  But the buildings there are designed for the heat, and you tend to get your drinks at least a little cool.  Also, the food is lighter, so you don't feel terrible while eating it.  So what I'm saying, is in Spain, you're prepared for heat.  In northern Germany, you expect reasonable temperatures in rain.  So that when you don't get that, you have no idea what to do.

It could be worse, though.  All of Europe has it rough right now, the heat is everywhere.  It's ruining crops, and people are actually dying from wildfires.  Sweden of all places has it particularly rough, with at lease 11 massive wildfires that haven't occurred in Sweden in centuries.  Sweden! It's in the arctic circle!

 Greece, too, is having these wildfires, and it's probably worse there.  But as with Spain, Greece at least is partially equipped for intense heat.  Sweden is used to rainy summers, like the UK is famous for, or just cold.  Speaking of the UK, it's dry as a bone and hot there, too.  Welcome to the new Europe, kiddos, and we're just getting warmed up.

Why is this happening?  The jet stream.  You know how Europe, despite being at the approximate latitude as Maine, still has warm weather? The jet stream is responsible for yanking warm air and water from the mid-to-north atlantic and chucking it north-east, where it likes to land in Spain before proceeding into the mediterranean.  Typically, there is a low air pressure system north of the band and a high pressure south of it. This is why Spain is historically so hot, while the low pressure system, hovering above the UK, causes so much rain.

So what's the problem?  The jet stream is moving north, that's the problem.  The band is carrying uncharacteristically hot air up through England, Germany, peaking in Sweden before dipping back down south towards Greece.  Meanwhile, places like Spain are enjoying unusually low temperatures while the rest of Europe roasts.

I'm saying this because it's hot.  Too hot to walk around.  Too hot to sleep.  Too hot to do anything but curl up in your tile bathroom or under a cold shower.  Most of Europe cannot handle this kind of weather, and it's causing major problems.  Hannover had to shut down it's airport due to damage to the runway from heat.  Crops are dying, people have to leave work early due to the heat, the North and Baltic seas are warm enough for there to be official warnings not to go swimming if your immune system is weak, since certain bacteria are thriving.  That sucks because it's hot, so swimming is like the only thing you can do.

The beer producers in Northern Germany are having a serious boom, though, as the heat is making it way easier to produce more beer.  In fact, there's a bottle shortage.  Huzzah.  Glad at least one good thing is coming out of all this...

Anyway, I haven't done much in the last few days besides try and stay cool.  I got some ice cream yesterday despite my lactose intolerance and have been drinking water like a man lost in the desert.  Lets see... I had a fishy to eat in a little Kneipe two days ago, we had a butterbrot breakfast provided by the school this morning.... I did some laundry...

And I saw a delivery SmartCar.  So much cute.

Thats all I have to say.  Bye now.

Continue reading →

I'm a Jelly Donut!

Why hello there!  I have had an exciting weekend, lemme tell you!  This is gonna be a very VERY long post, and there are too many pictures to put here so I'm going to make a separate post just for the ones I can't fit.  Oh, and this took me five hours to write so you better like it gosh darn it.

So I went to Berlin.  Alone.  Because I am either crazy or brave.  But then again, is there really a difference?  I got up on Saturday at 6:30, dressed, showered, and scuttled to the train station where I ate a breakfast and drank a coffee, and waited for my train to come at 8:00.  I like sitting in train stations, and of all the stations I've seen this month, I will say that Bremen has the coolest.  It looks like it jumped right out of the 1800's!

So, I had a bit of trouble figuring out which car was mine, but once I did it was smooth sailing.  Bremen to Hannover was about an hour, long enough for me to listen to an entire album of snazzy rock music.  I couldn't very well look out the window, though, as these trains go upwards around 125 miles an hour.  We flyyy buddo, and that means your scenery is a lovely blur.

I hopped off the train in Hannover, at the station that magically makes every single train late by five minutes (it's weird) and stood on the platform watching pigeons for about twenty-five minutes.  Then I easily hopped onto a bigger, faster, cooler train that was on its way to Berlin, and off we went.

We pulled into the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (central station) and I got off, all bright eyed and eager.  Then I looked up.

So, Berlin is a kinda big city right?  Probably the biggest city I've ever been to.  It's huge, and also a MAJOR hub in the European rail system.  So, the station is five stories tall.  The deepest part, where I was, has east/west trains, and the top floor has north/south trains.  At least, I think that's how it worked.  It seemed logical.

I eventually found my way out of the station, crossed a river, and found myself in a very large park.  And from that park, I saw to my right the Reichstag, or parliament building.  I mention this not only because it's cool, but because the building really embodies German architecture.  Old building with modern touches.

I then walked to the Brandenburg Gate, because it was right there and I wanted to see it gosh darn it!  It was cool.  I walked through it.  I took pictures.  Obligations over.  From there, desperate to escape the hordes of people because I am an introvert traveling alone and crowds make me nervous, I turned right and headed south.  Keep in mind that pretty much from here on out I'm in the former East Berlin.

At this point, I actually had a pretty good idea of where things were, at least in the central chunk of the city.  This is because of how much I had stared at a map beforehand, and the fact that there is a main road with an enormous gate right behind it that makes it really easy to navigate.

Ok, so I somehow ended up at the memorial to the jews that died during WWII.  And it was actually really cool architecturally... or artistically... whatever the correct term is.  So, it's a bunch of concrete slabs that appear to be more or less the same height, but intentionally just fluctuate enough to make this optical illusion.  However, the ground underneath them is a pit of sorts (please keep in mind that this is built on the site where the Nazi Propaganda office used to be.....) so you walk downhill until these slabs just tower over you.  They're also arranged in rows so you can easily just get lost in there.  In the picture I took, there are a couple dozen people wandering in the maze.

As cool as that was, I decided to keep going south.  I eventually ended up at the famous Potsdam Platz, which now has a shopping mall and cinema though it most certainly didn't used to, and I went in search of something to eat.  I had a schnitzel because it's quick, reliably edible, and cheap.

Anyway, I walked around Potsdam Platz for a little bit longer before I checked the time, and realized checkin was in a bit and I needed to get to... far away... within an hour and a half.

Did I mention how big Berlin is?  It's not small.  And there are many trains that will help you get around, which is good!  However, there are 3 different train lines.  The S-Bahn, the U-Bahn, and the M-Bahn.  And these are hit or miss.  The M-Bahn is the easy one- it's the street car.  It scuttles around the roads of Berlin and is the one to take if you need to get down a crowded street quickly, but you still need a lot of stops.

As for the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn (Bahn means train by the way) there doesn't seem to be anything distinguishing the two.  Generally the U-Bahn goes underground and the S-Bahn is elevated, but on occasion the U-Bahn goes up and the S-Bahn goes down.  Sometimes they run parallel, sometimes they don't.  Sometimes they seem to consistently go north/south or in a loop... there is not really a system.  Oh, and there are about 30 of each.

So, knowing that there is only one station that has a train that crosses the river Spree, I crossed the river zu Fuß, battling the crowd and getting increasingly annoyed.  I got to the closest station after the river so I could look at a map of the rail system (because that was the one thing I had not planned prior to coming, thinking oh it will be easy I mastered the Bonn subway) and the station I had ended up at was an S-Bahn only terminal, so I had to walk to the larger station three blocks away.  There I acquired a day ticked to ride the U2 up and down, went up to the elevated station, was wrong, somehow found the subway (with help), hopped on the train, and rode it to my neighborhood, Prenzlauer Berg.

If you want a trendy place that's off the tourist track, with healthy not-schnitzel or wurst foodstuff, Prenzlauer Berg is where you need to go.  I didn't know this at the time of booking my hostel, but I'd accidentally picked the hipster neighborhood to stay in.  See, I'd based my hostel choice off of A: It's off Museum Island, B: I get my own room, C: Not atrociously expensive, D: Not scary.  I hit all these criteria, and my rooming situation was absolutely perfect.  If you're looking to spend a short amount of time in Berlin and are ok with having a hall bathroom (only complaint, but since I'd lived in a dorm my standards are low and I'm used to it) or thin walls (which also didn't really bother me too much) try "Old Town Hostel," it came out to be 35 euros for a night which is an amazing deal. The rest of my group stayed somewhere else and payed twice that much. And they didn't get their own room HA!

I was tired when I got there though, so I chatted with my mother for a good long while, and then went out to find somewhere close to eat.  I went up and down the main street of that area, seeing a lot of döner places, a ton of Indian places (also very trendy in Berlin), an Argentine restaurant, a Nepali restaurant, and some clubs.  I eventually settled on a quiet little pizza joint, where two guys were joking around, making European oval pizzas, and chatting with the lady in front of me in line.  I got a margarita pizza (which translates to cheese pizza by and large over here, they don't always put basil or anything on it) and it was the best pizza I've ever had.

When I returned, I showered, relaxed my poor tired legs and feet, and enjoyed having a room to myself.  Around 9:30 it began to get dark, and I quickly realized the one real flaw with the room.

The only lamp is rainbow.  You can pick whatever color you
want... as long as it's not white.  Cool, but your eyes do weird things after
being exposed to so much red... or blue... or whatever.

Next morning!

I woke up right at 7:00 after a restless night of dreaming about my struggles with the German language (probably due to the guilt that since coming to Berlin I haven't said more than a danke).  I got dressed, relaxed for a bit because it was Sunday so I didn't expect anything to open until around 8:30-9:00.  NOPE everything opens at 10 or 11.  Come on, it's Berlin!  I love it.  A never-sleeping city... unless it's 7:00 on a Sunday.

While I can't say that it bugs me, it meant I didn't get the breakfast I had wanted.  See, I had it all mapped out!  There was a smoothie and muffin joint on the way to the U2-Bahnhof, and it looked amazing and I haven't had a smoothie since June and I NEED MY GROUND UP KALE AND SPINACH PULP but it was closed :(  Many sadnesses.

I rode back to the platform I had gotten on yesterday, called Alexander Platz, and walked back towards Museum Island.  It was utterly silent.  So quiet.  This was around 9:00 in the morning, and it was silent.  What is this world?

I even passed the main cathedral of Berlin, which is the domed building on the left over there, and it was silent, too.  So weird.

Anyway, I was planning on spending the whole day in the German History Museum since I am quite capable of spending forever in a museum.  I usually don't, but this stuff genuinely interested me.  Not because I don't know my German history (quite the opposite), I wanted to see it from the German perspective.

It opened at 10, I walked around the block a few times, saw a cute doggo, saw the train that would, in a pinch, take me directly to the Hauptbahnhof if I was pressed for time, and a couple parks.  Then I went into the museum, and payed a whopping 4 euro for it!  Student discounts man.  I probably could have actually gotten in free, since I'm 18 and it said up to 18 free admission, but 4 euro seemed reasonable for a history museum ya know.

I'm glad I went in right at opening, because it got crowded around 11:00, and by then I was 1/3 of the way through the thing.  Anyway.  The label wasn't lying, it was a history of Germany from medieval to the departure of the allies.  Nothing on EU onward, but that's still, by school standards, "current".  It was two floors, and absolutely massive inside.  Clearly, the bulk of the attention was given to pre-Bismarck, although the entire bottom floor was 1919-1999.  Did I learn all that much?  Meh?  Not really.  But between this museum and the one in Bonn, the giant void of knowledge of WWII until now has successfully been filled with unpleasantries and The Wall.

The Wall.  I should probably mention that, since I was in Berlin, crossed the former Wall line at least four times, and it's what I'm no doubt going to be asked about.  Yes, I saw the wall.  Every museum in Germany has a piece of the wall.  You can't go a block in central Berlin without seeing a monument or a chunk of the wall.  It's big.  it has graffiti.  I'm sure it was terrifying when it was up.  Why do I sound so dismissive of it?  Its coming down was a big deal, and it is still a really recent thing!  Well, I wasn't alive during that time.  Until this month, really, I didn't even know what it was.  I thought it was a brick wall that separated Berlin from the Soviet Union!  I laugh at my ignorance.

And this is where the problem is.  It's so recent, that people and teachers don't talk about it because it's something you're just supposed to know, right?  The same thing with Franco and Spain, the Vietnam, Korean, Iraq, Afghanistan wars.  You never hear about them in class because the teachers lived through it, so they expect you to just know about it.  Thus, about 50 years of history flies away to the wind and the problems remain problems.  You hear all day about WW1 and WW2, but the effects?  What happened to the world?  What is happening now?  You're just supposed to know. How?  I don't know.  If I were to ask a friend about the Berlin Wall, not one of them knows what it is, or that it even existed.

This is why history is important.  That's why I went to the museum yesterday- to learn about the information not taught in school because it's too recent.  I didn't really, but it supplemented Bonn's museum which only addressed that stuff.  I'll get off my soap box now.  

I then went in search of lunch.  I found a nice little Spanish restaurant under one of the train stations, where I had chicken bathed in hot olive oil and garlic (the exact way they prepare snails in Spain, in other words, one of my favorite foods of all time) and I'll have to cook it for myself some time.  It was off the tapas menu, and I adore ordering tapas for lunch because it's the absolute best size...

Anyway, have you enjoyed the last few pictures?  They're of things I stumbled on in the main park right outside the Reichstag.  Pretty!  I wandered around in there for an hour and a half, because that wasn't enough time to see anything else and still have wiggle room to find my train in the Hauptbahnhof.  It's a huge park, and has a bell tower that plays twenty minutes of music on the hour (very strange, but it went from the 50 minute mark to the 10 minute mark).

I also saw this monument to... something... there were some panzers out front, but no signage or anything.  Any ideas on what it is?

No idea.  But it's cool.

After all this, I walked back to the train station, where I fiiiiiinally got my smoothie (actually it was juice, but there was spinach chunks all in it which meant it was good) and waited.  The ride to Hannover was easy, and then I jogged across the entire station to my connecting train, where I hopped on and found myself in one of those cute Harry Potter-esque train compartments.  I prefer the big rooms, more to look at.

 Overall, it was a very worthwhile trip and it sounds like it went way better for me than the group of people that hadn't planned anything.  Planning is good!  And bring a map with you if you travel!  Getting lost is not good!  Turns out all the pictures fit anyway, so the second post is not coming.  Until next time!

Continue reading →

Where... Have I Been?

Where indeed... It's been a while.  I dont have anything to say really.  But I know it's been like 3 days so... I'll say something.

I'm in very much a routine, and so I haven't done a whole lot.  There also isn't a whole lot to do here that I haven't already done.  As far as the Altstadt goes (old city), I've already walked around and shown you pictures and stuff, I haven't eaten anything terribly exotic or exciting, and I haven't learned anything new.  So, I guess I'll tell you about my mundane week in excruciating detail...?  I'll also post some pictures that I've taken over the last few weeks that just hadn't come up yet.

So, I wake up at 6:40 every morning.  For no good reason.  My roommate has really bad hearing, so her alarm is so painfully loud that I wake up thinking that I've been invaded by a discotheque every morning.  Nothing like a good heart attack to start your morning.

Then I go eat breakfast.  Yogurt and toast.  Yogurt and toast.  The nice man brings me coffee.  I drink too much.  I regret my life later.  I'll say why in a minute.

Then, to help wake myself up and to pad that half hour during which I could be sleeping but instead have to be awake for, I walk to school.  Note, it's a five minute train ride easy, but twenty minute walk.  It's not a great walk, but I get to be alone for it so that is a major plus.  I don't do so well surrounded by people 24/7, even if it's people I like.

I pass very little of consequence, but I do get to go by a nice park (not as nice as my spanish park, but it's a lot more open and useable).  It's the Leibniz park, should that name be familiar to you.  Yep, it's named after a philosopher.  I can get behind that.  They really like Leibniz up here in the north.

I get to school early anyway, so I sit around, check up on my daily stuff, wander around like a lost puppy, then I go to class.

Our class is 3.5 hours long, with a half hour break in the middle for a snack or something.  Most people use this time for breakfast, but I already had free breakfast, so I only get something if I'm starving.

After class, we eat lunch.  I have mentioned that the cafeteria is a cheap lunching option, with decently tasty and healthy food options, so I always get something.  It's almost always chicken though.  So sorry if you hate chicken!  I'm not sick of that yet, and its a welcome relief from pork and beef.  This is one of the few times when our group is all gathered together, though so I tend to find this is my social time, when you talk about your classes, discuss afternoon plans, gripe about the only trump supporter in the entire country of Germany....

It's hilarious to hear the German and Austrian talk about what they're learning though.  Since they're (obviously) in the advanced class, they already speak the language so they're going deep into hard-core stuff.  Last week, they were moping about how they were being lectured in german about various economic and political dryness by one of those crusty old professors... Ouch.  Meanwhile... we're learning how to read clocks.  Its also amusing to hear them discussing these magical grammar terms as if they've never heard them before. (There are these things called prefixes... and you can remove them to change the meanings of the words!  WHAT IS THIS MADNESS??? -It's called a separable prefix verb, you've been doing them all the time- WHAAAAT???)

The afternoons are typically free, though I've been super motivated to study these last few days as I realized that the grammar I'm learning in class is not new, so I have to study vocab on my own.  I've also been... drumroll... planning a trip to Berlin this weekend!  Yay!  I'm super nervous, as I'm doing it entirely on my own which I've never done before... eep!  Should be ok.  Should be.  The other people are going too, but a day earlier, so they'll be in Berlin should anything horrible happen to me.  But I want to do this on my own.  

 More on my trip later, I don't want to give away too much yet, but I'm planning some neat stuff!  At least I think it's neat.

I've done a couple things on my own out and about, like buy some german books (Siddhartha and MOMO, was gonna get Neverending Story but it was only in hardback, weighed a billion pounds and cost a lot).  I've also gone and gotten some chocolate, walked around Schnoor, which is the super claustrophobic fishing village, walked around the shopping area, and walked a lot.  A lot.

For dinner, I've been going out and about, trying to eat relatively healthy... It's sehr hard.  If you're going light food, you're limited to straight salad, just potatoes, or chicken.  Usually you go for foreign cuisine since german food is not light.  At. All. 

I should mention döner kebabs, maybe... I've yet to have them since they're greasy meat (usually beef or veal) wrapped in pita, but they're the fast food of germany.  It's a kind of turkish food, and they come from these tiny little shops that have a bunch of ingredients that they roast and plop on your plate.  Basically, it's like schwarma, but it took off BIG TIME in Deutschland.  Why?  Who knows?  But it's everywhere, super cheap and fast.  IE: the ideal college dining experience...  or something.

And that's all I have to say, really. I'm studying a lot, planning a lot for Berlin, and am just going on with my daily life.  

Continue reading →

Lounging in my Lounge-Trousers

Good day, all!  Hope everything is splendid.  Me?  I'm as content as a button.  It was a bit of a lounge day, since everything shuts down on Sunday here except for a select few places.

It was my roommate's turn to wake up at six, since she was going to Bremerhavn for the day.  That's nice, I can putz around the room doing researchy stuff for internships, study some german, stretch, and listen to my often-disliked metal music in peace.  And I can sleep late.  Which, after her alarm went off four times, I was able to do.  Yay!

I had breakfast around nine-thirty, and since it was later and also a sunday, meant that there was actually cherry yogurt down there!  Also meant all the coffee in the table-pots was a bit cold, but I would get more later so this didn't bother me too much.  I chatted with someone who had day tripped to Hamburg yesterday on their own, and we both discussed how weird and neat the flower power festival was.

After that, I set off on my own, opting to walk downtown rather than wait 20 minutes for a tram (they run 20 minutes apart on Sundays and I had barely missed the last one).  The weather was delightful and I felt the need to walk some, knowing full well that I had stuff lined up for the afternoon, so the walk was nice.  I peeked at the menus of some of the restaurants on the way and took a brief stroll through the little park halfway to the university before I ended up across the river in the square.  

There's usually something going on there, and today there was a dude with a giant bubble wand that was making bubbles for the little kids to chase around.  And the adults too.  They were lovely bubbles.  The guy playing the pan pipes and guitar that's usually there was there again, playing festive tunes.  I stuck around the square for a bit before veering off to see what shops are around.

I was hoping to go into the bookstore but it was closed, as was just about everything except the coffee shops.  By chance I ended up at a spanish cafe, which served tasty cortados that almost tasted like how I remember cortados tasting.  Still a bit milky, but that might be because I'm used to espresso which has no milk at all.  

I also found myself sitting at a table right next to a bunch of merry Swedes, which ordered a heaping tray of cake while I was there.  And coffee.  I spent the entire lunch trying to understand them, because Swedish sounds just enough like German to easily mistake the two, and since my German isn't very good, I just assumed that I couldn't understand them.  It wasn't until they said a few words which I know to be uniquely Scandinavian that I realized they were Swedish.  Maybe Norwegian, but I'm pretty sure Swedish.  Anyway, they were cute and I envied their cake.

I ordered some tortilla española for myself, because it was on the tapas menu, so it was cheap, and it had spinach which I crave.  I also am fully aware of how very filling tortillas are, so I gobbled down the potatoey goodness with great enthusiasm.  One of my favorite foods, hands down.

I then returned back to the room, where I did some pre-university semester paperwork, looked at potential internships and such, and spent some lovely time in my own company.  

Just a bit ago, I went out in search of dinner foods, since it was that time again and I had gotten rumbly in the tumbly.  So we live in the international district of Bremen, right?  Mostly Asians, Middle Easterners and East Mediterranean people here.  Which means there is some really good eating.  I had looked ahead of time to see what was open, and there was a highly-rated Greek restaurant not too far from here and I was ready to see what they did with lamb.  But they were closed for unknown reasons, so I had to improvise.  

I ended up at a chinese/thai restaurant, where I got some pineapple chicken with guava juice (which is a fantastic flavor combination, especially since it was a bit spicy.  Sweet and spicy things go great together).  I walked back, by chance running into some people in my group that were very disappointed that Croatia lost.  Poor Croatia.  I wish there was a Balkan restaurant around here....  I could go for that...

Tomorrow is DEFINITELY a laundry day, and I hope to find somewhere else equally tasty to eat.  Also, class again.  Huzzah!

Continue reading →

That Was Surreal

Ahoy!  We went to Hamburg today.  It was disorganized.  And very, very, very surreal.

So this trip was through the school, right?  I decided to take it because A: it was cheaper than going on my own, B: it was supposedly more structured, thus less room for me getting lost and/or eaten by moose.  Anyway.

I got up at 6 this morning, got ready, went down to get breakfast but surprise! The breakfast room only opens at 6 during weekdays, so I couldn't get in.  So I walked to the school because nowhere in Bremen is open at 6:30 on a Saturday...  This poses many issues.  Namely, I have a bit of a coffee addiction, and I was completely unable to get a single drop of coffee this morning.  Uh oh!

We loaded on the bus, only one other UNCW language student was proactive enough to obtain a ticket, so I was mostly surrounded by people I didn't know and that one really cute French dude.  I fell asleep on the bus.  Whoops.  It was a boring ride anyway.

Anyway, fun factoids about Hamburg!  It is the largest port in Germany, and the third largest port in Europe behind Rotterdam, Netherlands and Antwerp, Belgium (Bremerhavn is number 4, woot woot)  It only has like 3 buildings from before the 1850's, so it's a very new city, and it sits on the mouth of the river Elbe.

It also is host to many weird things.  This weekend, for example, was the flower-power festival on a floating biergarten, so there were hundreds of 40-50 year old germans wandering around in LOUD stereotypical '70s attire.  Bell-bottoms, orange everything, flowers, silk blouses..... It was surreal.

It was also the weekend of a MAJOR international triathlon, so we were dodging bikers, runners, and swimmers all morning.  Fortunately, it was sprint day so it was done more or less around noon, but running the gauntlet every time you want to cross the street is something that normally one doesn't do.  I'm assured most the time Hamburg isn't this weird, but today felt like someone had spiked my water with something... trippy.

So we got to Hamburg, where we split into walking tour groups with a guy that told us very little, other than the old cathedral was bombed into oblivion in WWII so it's now just a monument against war sitting in the middle of the city, with large chunks taken out of it due to shrapnel.  He also told us about the opera house.  A lot about the opera house.  What did he say?  I dunno, wasn't really important.  Oh, the windows are expensive and they're all made in duplicate.  It's also the second largest non-church in Hamburg proper.  That's right, this city is one of those "no building higher than XYZ" cities, except the cap isn't the former cathedral, it's city hall.  So there are no skyscrapers whatsoever.  Yet.  Like Sevilla, one is currently being built just outside the historic city.

The Opera House.  It's quite bigger in real life,
and the city is very proud of it.  I dunno if you can see
the little people walking around just under
the glass area or not.  For scale, Mostly.

I was also told that it's impossible to get tickets into model train museum unless they're purchased ahead of time.  This is a bummer, as that was what I had planned to do in my free time today :(  I'll probably forego a trip to Berlin or Amsterdam in favor of returning to Hamburg in order to "do it properly."

Oh, I should mention the weather.  It was cold and cloudy, about 55-65 degrees.  I'm told this is normal for mid-July.  *shivers*  Why do I want to live in northern Europe again?  Oh yeah, because it's cool! (cue boos, tomatoes, and the comedic cane yanking me off the stage)

We then parted with the guide guy, and were told to get something to eat in the half hour before the boat was to come.  Oh, by the way, you have no restaurant choices, and we have to go figure out which boat is ours.  I ended up eating a turkey-schnitzel that had the texture of cooked leather rolled in sand that gave me heartburn and a tummyache.

The boat tour was cool, though.  (I have to stop using that pun, it'll get me in trouble some day).  We saw a Ü-Boot, a cruise ship with lips, a beach with a bunch of shivering Germans, the opera house from a variety of angles, and a whole bunch of, um, docks?  Loading docks?  Is that the term?  Now, even though I live in a port- Wilmington- I've never actually seen a dock before, certainly not one in use, and certainly not one of this size.  It was freaking huge!

Well, after that, we split up.  We had two hours to kill, and although there a bunch of museums that I thought were interesting looking, two hours isn't a lot of time to walk all the way across this huge city, sit in a cue, and properly peruse a museum.  Among the ones that looked neat: the world's largest model train museum, a natural history museum, the Ü-Boot museum, a shipping museum, and art museum, the bombed out cathedral, and more!  Yes, as much as I'd like to visit Berlin, it'll have to wait for another trip maybe in the far-off future.  Berlin will wait.  Hamburg is much closer.

So we- the one buddy and I- just walked around, looking at whatever seemed interesting.  This included a German Apple Store (cool architecture), a chocolate shop, a Levi store because denim jackets are über popular here, a coffee shop to fuel my addiction, a cool park, and the only irish pub in the city where we could watch the opener of the belgium-england game.  It was not surprising that England crashed in burn.  Lastly, we walked into the really cool Rathaus (city hall) which had architecture that reminded me a little bit of Spain.

 We got on the bus and came back, after I'd clocked in  a total of 9 miles of walking.  Phew I'm tired!  Tomorrow has nothing really lined up, I'll probably do some laundry, eat some healthier food, maybe kick around a sportball with the group.  Who knows?

Continue reading →