So my birthday in Amsterdam was pretty incredible. The city lived up to my expectations and I had a blast hanging out with all my new friends for the last time.
I left for Amsterdam at 6am and got there at 3pm to hang out with Judy. We found each other at the train station without having to use our cell phones - always a good thing over hear because it costs so much just to say "Hey, meet me by the sign that says *sounds really long German word out extremely slowly*".
We checked into our hostel, which was quite an experience. The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel advertises itself with the slogan "It can't get any worse than this". Always promising. The entire place smelled of pot and Judy found some lovely tiny hairs covering her mattress, haha. Good times. We had until 8.30pm to wander the city until we needed to meet up with people. We walked to Vondel Park - the park that they want to legalize public sex in - and then went up and down the streets doing some shopping in cool stores. Amsterdam is a big shopping place, apparently. I love their clothes because all of the pants are long enough for me! Dutch people, I believe, are the tallest people (or one of the tallest) by nationality. Perfect! I bought a sweet pair of pants that were size medium - I can never buy pants without a designated length in the states so I figured I definitely had to purchase these. Good call.
Friday night, after meeting up with our group, we headed off to check out the infamous Amsterdam coffee shops. I wish I could say more, but you know the saying: "What happens in Amsterdam, stays in Amsterdam."
Saturday morning we got up and checked out the Anne Frank Museum. I was really excited about going here and it was just as interesting as I thought it would be. The museum is put together very nicely - you walk through the building that housed the secret annex (Anne's father's business's building) and then you actually get to go behind the bookshelf and up into the secret annex itself! So cool! I learned a lot and the whole thing was really moving. There are quotes from her diary all over the walls - very powerful stuff. Perhaps I'll find some time to read her diary sometime.
Sadly, after the museum, I went to take a picture of the building and I dropped my camera. I only dropped it about a foot above the ground, but I guess that was enough to mess it up. Everything works just fine, except the camera doesn't pick up light, so it only takes black photos. Because that's the only thing wrong with it (sounds pretty minor to me) I figure I can get it fixed when I get back home. I went and picked up a disposable camera at a tourist shop that had 27 pictures on it. Sweet. I haven't used a disposable in ages, hah. The running joke was that I only have 27 picture opportunities, so whenever I went to take a picture everyone wanted to know what it would be of because that meant it was one of the top 27 things in Amsterdam. I'm really excited to see the pictures I took - I miss the excitement of going to Walgreens and picking up a roll of developed photos. I didn't use all 27 pictures in Amsterdam, so I will use the rest in Berlin along with another disposable camera. It should be interesting being limited with pictures, but I like the surprise behind it - I'm excited.
We also hit up the Van Gogh Museum, which was pretty cool. The place was WAY to crowded for my liking, but it was raining outside so everyone had the same idea as we did to get out of the rain. The pictures were cool, but I don't know much about art, so I just look at them and move on. Still really neat to learn about his life and see some of his works that I haven't seen before. Good choice to go there.
Saturday night was my birthday, so Laura, Ryan, Dana, and I went out dancing at the clubs. I had a great time and it was really nice to get to spend my birthday with friends. I was worried earlier this summer that I wouldn't have anything to do for my birthday, but luckily everything worked itself out.
Saturday we accidentally slept in and woke up realizing we had to check out 20 minutes ago. We rushed to get all of our stuff together and then were interrupted by some large black man that yelled at us to get out of our room because we were late. Oh, Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, you never cease to disappoint. We eventually got the hell out of there and then made our way to our free tour. New Europe tours are great - they're done off of a tip basis so you only pay what you think the guy deserves. Our guy was really cool and I learned a lot about Amsterdam:
So, turns out that smoking, selling, growing, etc. pot in Amsterdam is actually completely illegal. They have just "decriminalized" the act, so nobody really gets in trouble for it. Like jaywalking. Apparently, in the Netherlands, if the economy can make money off of something that doesn't really "harm" anyone, then it's allowed. Yes, it is also true that they recently passed a law that bans the smoking of cigarettes inside buildings, but you are still allowed to smoke pot in coffee shops and anywhere inside. Apparently the political party in power right now is very conservative so they want to reduce the number of coffee shops by not allowing one to be open that is within 500m of a school or church - that will reduce the +250 coffee shops currently open, to only 8. It should be interesting to see how that goes down... Also, prostitution is completely legal there. We walked through the heart of the red light district and it was pretty insane. Little glass windows filled with women wearing just about nothing lined the streets. All lit up with red lights, of course. It was pretty interesting trying to see them get guys' attentions and stuff, hah. Even the red light district in Paris lacked the glass windows with women in them - so this was very impressive.
Laura and I left about 2/3 of the way through the tour because we had to catch our train back home. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone, but I hope to see most of them again. Canada and New York aren't that far away? Right?
The train ride was a long one, but I got back at about midnight. I always see the craziest wildlife when I walk home from the station! 2 trips ago I saw a wild ferret! Yeah! It scurried across the street - I followed it for a bit because I have never seen a wild one before, but then I lost it in the shadows. Then, coming home this time I saw something walking through the grass - I got close and saw that it was a hedgehog! Yes! A wild hedgehog! I saw me, then turned around and scurried back across the grass, hah. Pretty cool.
My last day of work was today. Not so bad. I finished my experiment and then Annika, my boss, made me clean about +250 test tubes for some other person before I could go. Very frustrating, seeing how it was my last day. Oh well. I thought perhaps she was making me doing this so she could throw together a surprise party for after I finished (why else would she make me do this on my LAST day?), but luckily that wasn't the case. I'm not friends with any of the people I work with, so it's good there was no celebration - I see that being a pretty awkward time. But yeah, working there was pretty cool. I got to see how a real research lab is run and I got to do field work, which I enjoy. Although soil isn't my topic of choice, I think it was a good start and something that I can definitely put down on my resume. Plus I got to explore Europe the whole summer and got paid to do it - what more can I ask for?
I've cleaned most of my apartment now and I'm going to wake up early to finish the last part before I leave. Since cleaning I've killed about 20 little black beatle things. Seriously. Apparently I disturbed their home while cleaning and now they are out and about, scurrying all over my stuff. Disgusting. See, people, this is exactly why I don't clean on a regular basis. It leads to trouble.
I check out of my apartment at 9.30am tomorrow morning then I'm off on a train to Berlin at 11am. Yay! I couldn't be more excited. There were a few things happening at home that I was concerned about the last few days, but the excitement of going to Berlin and then flying home has erased any worries that I had. This weekend will be an awesome way to end this trip and I can't wait. I also can't wait to see everyone and hang out with people for a week before I have to go to work at Tech.
Well, I have to wake up in 5.5 hours, so I should probably work on getting to bed. I don't know how I'll get to sleep between the herd of bugs and all my excitement, but I guess I should try.
Next time I talk I'll be at home! Eeek!
See you all soon.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Munich
So, like any other blog I've tried to keep, this one too becomes more and more difficult to update as time goes by. It seems like the past few weekends have been so crazy that they just keep me exhausted for the entire rest of the week. That's both good and bad, but I don't mind too much.
Munich was pretty awesome. Although the 12 hour travel time was not so hot. I left Cottbus at 11pm, arrived in Berlin at 1am, and then chilled for 3 1/2 hours at the train station trying my best to stay awake. I brought cards so I played quite a few games of solitaire. After I hopped on my next train I took it to Leipzig and then to Munich. My first of those two trains was running late to I had to transfer at some stop along the way, but things turned out okay. I got there at 11am - only an hour late.
I met up with Galina and we grabbed lunch at some outdoor Cafe. Galina is awesome and she lives in Sandy Springs so we plan on hanging out when we both get back to Atlanta. We went to the modern art museum which was pretty cool. I mean, I like looking at cool pieces of art, but Galina is familiar with all the artists so that was pretty cool seeing it with her. I was absolutely exhausted from only getting probably 3 hours of sleep on the train, so after the museum I was about to die. She also took a night train so she felt the same. We wandered around the city and ended up at the English Gardens - really just a giant park. There was a point on the map called the "Nudist Meadow" so we thought we'd check it out, ha. Turns out yes, it's just the place where all the nudists go to hang out. There's a river that separates the park, so one side is naked people and the other is the hangout for young kids. Young kids with clothes. So we hung out there and laid down in the grass for a bit. It looked like it was going to rain so we decided to try and check into the hostel (even though we didn't make the reservations and nobody from our group was there yet) - luckily they let us so we grabbed our room and I passed out for an hour and took a nap. I woke up with Dana and Judy in the room so we hung out for a bit then went to meet others at the train station. Everyone was hungry at that point so we grabbed some food and then went back to the hostel and passed out. Everyone was just too tired from traveling to do anything, hah. Good thing Galina and I got there early to check things out. It was really sunny and hot - even though we're both from Atlanta we were dying. But it rained the rest of the weekend so I guess we were the only ones who go to see sunny Munich. Sweet.
Saturday we went on a free tour of the city that proved to be really cool. Good thing we found this free tour group. The whole thing is done based on tips so you give them what you feel they deserve. It's mostly students that move to Munich from Australia or the US. Our guide was pretty awesome and I learned a lot about Munich that I didn't know before I went on the tour. Turns out Munich was the original headquarters of the Nazi party before they went to Berlin and took over. Munich has lots of little memorials around the city that represent all the people that stood up to the Nazis while they were in power. But, because it has a pretty dark past, the memorials are very tiny and nobody would even notice them if they weren't pointed out - good thing we had our guide.
That night we went to the Hofbräuhaus - the world's most famous beer hall. Munich is a huuuge beer city, so we had to check it out. It's pretty funny - all the other Germans I talk to make fun of Munich and the Bavarians (southern Germans). It's a lot like the south in the States - the southern people are thought of as stupid hicks. They are the "traditional" Germans, or more like the stereotypical Germans that you would see in movies (wearing Lederhosen and alpine hats and drinking huge steins of beer, etc.) So yeah, the beer hall was really cool. All 10 of us ordered a liter of beer each in these HUGE mugs. It was awesome. The waiter brought all 10 liters out at once (5 in each hand) - very impressive. All the waitresses there were dressed in traditional German Dirndls (like all the beer serving women in movies, naturally). It was a lot of fun and good times.
Later that night we hopped on a club bus (a regular city bus with a bar inside and lights and a DJ and everything) and they drove us to the clubs. It was a lot of fun and we all had a great time. They played crazy 80's music - we danced to songs from Grease (the musical), we did the Twist, etc. Awesome. I love European club music. Of course they threw in the new hits from the States every now and then, but mostly it was awesome old music. Good times.
The next morning we woke up early to check out train times and get read to go on a tour of Dachau, the Nazis first and longest running concentration camp. It was the same group that gave the free tours but this time we had to pay a bit because Dachau is a suburb of Munich and we had to take a train to get there. It was pretty intense. It rained the whole day and was pretty chilly so there was an errie feeling while touring the camp. Our guide was amazing and she knew so much about everything. I find German history extremely interesting. The Holocaust is just insane - I guess I find it so interesting because I can't believe that stuff like that actually happened. I guess you can call it morbid finding that kind of stuff interesting, but oh well. I love the museums, the books, the movies, it's all just so interesting. I wish there was a better word for "interesting", but that's all I can really say about it, hah. Oh well. Dachau was really cool and I wish I could have stayed longer. Galina, Judy, and I had to leave the tour early to catch our trains, but if I could have stayed I would. I'm really glad I got to go on the tour - I really really wanted to go to a concentration camp while I was here but didn't think it would happen because they were all so far away. Auschwitz - the death camp - I've heard is a crazy experience to go to, but it's far away in SE poland. We learned that all the death camps aren't in Germany because Hitler wanted to hide the Holocaust from everyone - wanted people to think that the concentration camps were for bad people and they were just like normal prisons. Crazy. I learned so much I just want to type all about it - but I won't. Hah.
So yeah, Munich was awesome. I don't feel I really got to explore the entire city, but on the tour there wasn't all that much to see - it was mostly just a few churches, some smaller buildings, and a LOT of history (but the interesting kind so it was good). Overall I was really pleased and I had a great time with everyone.
Now I'm packing and getting ready to go to Amsterdam tomorrow - eeek! I'm so excited! My train leaves at 6am - getting there early again because I figure I took Friday off from work so I might as well use it all. I've been researching stuff to do there and it's going to be awesome - I'm so excited. So much more than just legal pot and a crazy red light district, hah. I can't wait. My 20th birthday in Amsterdam - SWEEET!
Ah, I made plans to check out of my apartment next Friday. Yay! I'm coming home so soon! Eeek! Here's the plan: since my flight on Sunday is really just too early to leave from Cottbus that morning, I'm leaving Cottbus Friday morning and spending the weekend in Berlin. I've been to Berlin probably 5+ times due to train transfers, but all I've seen is what is out of my window and the giant train station (biggest in Europe, so that's pretty cool at least). I'll have Friday afternoon to tour the city and all day Saturday as well. It will be nice having time to myself and doing whatever I want to do. It's always hard to decide what to do when you have a large group (like Munich - I think most of the time was used to decide what everyone wanted to do). I booked my hostel and it looks REALLLY nice from online. Only 20€ a night, so that's really awesome. Won best hostel of the world in 2004 - sweet. I had a lot of hostel choices and it was hard to decide what I actually wanted out of hostel when I'm traveling by myself - do I want one away from the city in the woods? A small family owned one? One for rugged backpackers? A large one in the city center? Tough decisions. Traveling with a group I just want a place that I can pass out in at night and store my stuff during the day - but when I'm by myself it's different. I finally decided on one I think I'll be happy with - it had the best reviews so I think I'm safe.
Okay, well it's midnight and I still have to make some phone calls, finishing packing, and then I'm getting up at 4.30am. Ugh.
See you guys soon! (For real this time! Ahhh! 10 Days! Ahhhh!)
***Also, check out Munich pictures on the right hand side link!
Munich was pretty awesome. Although the 12 hour travel time was not so hot. I left Cottbus at 11pm, arrived in Berlin at 1am, and then chilled for 3 1/2 hours at the train station trying my best to stay awake. I brought cards so I played quite a few games of solitaire. After I hopped on my next train I took it to Leipzig and then to Munich. My first of those two trains was running late to I had to transfer at some stop along the way, but things turned out okay. I got there at 11am - only an hour late.
I met up with Galina and we grabbed lunch at some outdoor Cafe. Galina is awesome and she lives in Sandy Springs so we plan on hanging out when we both get back to Atlanta. We went to the modern art museum which was pretty cool. I mean, I like looking at cool pieces of art, but Galina is familiar with all the artists so that was pretty cool seeing it with her. I was absolutely exhausted from only getting probably 3 hours of sleep on the train, so after the museum I was about to die. She also took a night train so she felt the same. We wandered around the city and ended up at the English Gardens - really just a giant park. There was a point on the map called the "Nudist Meadow" so we thought we'd check it out, ha. Turns out yes, it's just the place where all the nudists go to hang out. There's a river that separates the park, so one side is naked people and the other is the hangout for young kids. Young kids with clothes. So we hung out there and laid down in the grass for a bit. It looked like it was going to rain so we decided to try and check into the hostel (even though we didn't make the reservations and nobody from our group was there yet) - luckily they let us so we grabbed our room and I passed out for an hour and took a nap. I woke up with Dana and Judy in the room so we hung out for a bit then went to meet others at the train station. Everyone was hungry at that point so we grabbed some food and then went back to the hostel and passed out. Everyone was just too tired from traveling to do anything, hah. Good thing Galina and I got there early to check things out. It was really sunny and hot - even though we're both from Atlanta we were dying. But it rained the rest of the weekend so I guess we were the only ones who go to see sunny Munich. Sweet.
Saturday we went on a free tour of the city that proved to be really cool. Good thing we found this free tour group. The whole thing is done based on tips so you give them what you feel they deserve. It's mostly students that move to Munich from Australia or the US. Our guide was pretty awesome and I learned a lot about Munich that I didn't know before I went on the tour. Turns out Munich was the original headquarters of the Nazi party before they went to Berlin and took over. Munich has lots of little memorials around the city that represent all the people that stood up to the Nazis while they were in power. But, because it has a pretty dark past, the memorials are very tiny and nobody would even notice them if they weren't pointed out - good thing we had our guide.
That night we went to the Hofbräuhaus - the world's most famous beer hall. Munich is a huuuge beer city, so we had to check it out. It's pretty funny - all the other Germans I talk to make fun of Munich and the Bavarians (southern Germans). It's a lot like the south in the States - the southern people are thought of as stupid hicks. They are the "traditional" Germans, or more like the stereotypical Germans that you would see in movies (wearing Lederhosen and alpine hats and drinking huge steins of beer, etc.) So yeah, the beer hall was really cool. All 10 of us ordered a liter of beer each in these HUGE mugs. It was awesome. The waiter brought all 10 liters out at once (5 in each hand) - very impressive. All the waitresses there were dressed in traditional German Dirndls (like all the beer serving women in movies, naturally). It was a lot of fun and good times.
Later that night we hopped on a club bus (a regular city bus with a bar inside and lights and a DJ and everything) and they drove us to the clubs. It was a lot of fun and we all had a great time. They played crazy 80's music - we danced to songs from Grease (the musical), we did the Twist, etc. Awesome. I love European club music. Of course they threw in the new hits from the States every now and then, but mostly it was awesome old music. Good times.
The next morning we woke up early to check out train times and get read to go on a tour of Dachau, the Nazis first and longest running concentration camp. It was the same group that gave the free tours but this time we had to pay a bit because Dachau is a suburb of Munich and we had to take a train to get there. It was pretty intense. It rained the whole day and was pretty chilly so there was an errie feeling while touring the camp. Our guide was amazing and she knew so much about everything. I find German history extremely interesting. The Holocaust is just insane - I guess I find it so interesting because I can't believe that stuff like that actually happened. I guess you can call it morbid finding that kind of stuff interesting, but oh well. I love the museums, the books, the movies, it's all just so interesting. I wish there was a better word for "interesting", but that's all I can really say about it, hah. Oh well. Dachau was really cool and I wish I could have stayed longer. Galina, Judy, and I had to leave the tour early to catch our trains, but if I could have stayed I would. I'm really glad I got to go on the tour - I really really wanted to go to a concentration camp while I was here but didn't think it would happen because they were all so far away. Auschwitz - the death camp - I've heard is a crazy experience to go to, but it's far away in SE poland. We learned that all the death camps aren't in Germany because Hitler wanted to hide the Holocaust from everyone - wanted people to think that the concentration camps were for bad people and they were just like normal prisons. Crazy. I learned so much I just want to type all about it - but I won't. Hah.
So yeah, Munich was awesome. I don't feel I really got to explore the entire city, but on the tour there wasn't all that much to see - it was mostly just a few churches, some smaller buildings, and a LOT of history (but the interesting kind so it was good). Overall I was really pleased and I had a great time with everyone.
Now I'm packing and getting ready to go to Amsterdam tomorrow - eeek! I'm so excited! My train leaves at 6am - getting there early again because I figure I took Friday off from work so I might as well use it all. I've been researching stuff to do there and it's going to be awesome - I'm so excited. So much more than just legal pot and a crazy red light district, hah. I can't wait. My 20th birthday in Amsterdam - SWEEET!
Ah, I made plans to check out of my apartment next Friday. Yay! I'm coming home so soon! Eeek! Here's the plan: since my flight on Sunday is really just too early to leave from Cottbus that morning, I'm leaving Cottbus Friday morning and spending the weekend in Berlin. I've been to Berlin probably 5+ times due to train transfers, but all I've seen is what is out of my window and the giant train station (biggest in Europe, so that's pretty cool at least). I'll have Friday afternoon to tour the city and all day Saturday as well. It will be nice having time to myself and doing whatever I want to do. It's always hard to decide what to do when you have a large group (like Munich - I think most of the time was used to decide what everyone wanted to do). I booked my hostel and it looks REALLLY nice from online. Only 20€ a night, so that's really awesome. Won best hostel of the world in 2004 - sweet. I had a lot of hostel choices and it was hard to decide what I actually wanted out of hostel when I'm traveling by myself - do I want one away from the city in the woods? A small family owned one? One for rugged backpackers? A large one in the city center? Tough decisions. Traveling with a group I just want a place that I can pass out in at night and store my stuff during the day - but when I'm by myself it's different. I finally decided on one I think I'll be happy with - it had the best reviews so I think I'm safe.
Okay, well it's midnight and I still have to make some phone calls, finishing packing, and then I'm getting up at 4.30am. Ugh.
See you guys soon! (For real this time! Ahhh! 10 Days! Ahhhh!)
***Also, check out Munich pictures on the right hand side link!
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Heidelberg. Genau!
Well, this past weekend in Heidelberg was absolutely amazing. I had the best time - it definitely competes with some of my other favorite weekends in Germany.
After the 7 hour train ride that included 3 different transfers, I finally made it to Heidelberg. I met some cool people on the last train into the city and I ended hanging out with them the entire weekend. We followed the giant crowd of American students from the train station to the bus and finally arrived at the hostel. We checked in and found out that the people I met were directly across the hall from me - awesome! They fed us some coffee, tea, and cake while we waited for others to arrive and then bussed us off to the university to listen to people from the research internship abroad program talk. It was really boring and lasted far too long. Oh well, we all felt we had to listen because we're getting paid to be here all summer. If that's the worst thing that happens while I'm here then I guess it's a fair trade off...
After the really lame speech they shipped us back to the hostel for dinner. I skipped out on that and went out to dinner with Uncle Mac and Aunt Melody who just happened to be in Heidelberg during their European tour (what are the odds?). I had a great time with them, naturally, and we ate some delicious food at a restaurant right down the road from the hostel. Good times.
That night we got a group together and wandered the streets of Heidelberg, beer in hand. It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with other students that speak English. I hung out with 5 other people most of the weekend, and as it turns out, out of the 6 of us 3 were American and 3 Canadian. There are definitely more people in the program that are from America, but we just got lucky enough to hang out with Canadians the whole time. We ended up getting back to the hostel at midnight because we all had to wake up early for company visits the next day.
The program split us all up into groups by what we are studying and then each group visited a company that pertained to their area of expertise. The environmental group by far got the best deal. We were the last group to leave (we left at 9am while others had to leave at 6am) and our first stop was a fossil site and our second stop was an organic wine vineyard. Dinosaurs and wine - what could be better?! Turns out there weren't dinosaur fossils at the first site, but there was plenty of wine at the second to make up for it : ) The wine vineyard was amazing - we were led around by this über hippie old woman (she didn't shave her legs, had short grey hair that she dyed green and blue, and talked about how the power of the earth was sucked up by the grapes and is put into the wine). I fell in love with her, really. She cooked us a completely organic (and delicious!) lunch and then let us try all the different types of her wines. We thought we would just be swishing the wine in our mouths and spitting it out - no - she poured us glass after glass of tasty wine that they made right at her house. During lunch the tables were lined with bottles of wine and she asked us to help ourselves, haha. We all think that she just wanted us drunk so we would purchase wine from her at the end. Anyways, it was amazing and I got some beautiful pictures of the vineyard - check them out by clicking on the link to the right!
After the vineyard we were taken to the Heidelberg Cultural Brewery where we were fed a traditional German meal and got to drink home-brewed beer. Damn - the environmental kids started drinking at 2pm and didn't stop until 8pm or so. Go us. The food was delicious and the beer even better. Laura (my new Canadian best friend) and I ordered some Weißbier with banana juice - my favorite. She really liked it too. Everyone thought I was crazy, but once they tried it they realized how amazing it is. Yum.
After the brewery we headed out to the bars and had a lot of fun. It was the 4th of July so everyone was celebrating the best they could. Canada celebrated Canada Day on July 1st so they decided to celebrate again with us that night. Good times followed.
The next day we woke up early, again, and were sent on a guided tour of Heidelberg. As a poor college student, I never take guided tours of any of the cities I visit, so I considered this a real treat. We were led around by an old English woman by the name of Valarie. She married a German when she was in college and so she learned to speak German when she moved here a long time ago. She was so cute and I loved her. One day I hope I love a city that I live in enough to become a tour guide. She was great and took us all around town and to the Heidelberg Castle. It was really neat-o.
After the tour the 6 of us (Canadians: Ryan, Laura, and Judy. Americans: Galina, Dana, and myself.) grabbed some quick food and then set off to hike a nearby mountain that overlooked the city. We took a trail called the "Philosopher's Path" that let us to the top. The path was SO steep! It was insane, but lot of fun. It was literally almost a 45 degree climb for half the way, then it leveled out to become a normal hiking trail. Very cool. At the top we saw a beautiful view of Heidelberg along with ruins of an old church, monastery, and Nazi amphitheater. The amphitheater was built for the Nazis to have meetings and such, but it was never used because the war started. Super huge and super cool.
After ours of hiking we headed back to the hostel to shower, drink, and hit the clubs.
One part of the night included Galina and I trying to see if we could name off all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 Canadian territories to our new Canadian friends. Needless to say, we couldn't. We tried I don't know how many times and could never get all 13 in one sitting. Laura, on the other hand, showed off and named all 50 states in about 30 seconds. Ugh. Even I can't name all 50 states in 10 minutes! Want to try? Click here! Oh well, pretty funny.
Sunday morning we just hung out, checked out of the hostel at 10am, and then went to the city and explored some more. Did a bit of souvenir shopping and ice cream eating. The usual. We all went our own ways around 4pm. Luckily I got to ride halfway back with Dana and Judy. I ended up missing my train in Leipzig because they switched tracks on me and I didn't know - ugh. That delayed me quite a bit and I got home to Cottbus at 3am. 11 hours of traveling to get home. Lame. Oh well, such is life by train.
Overall, this weekend was amazing. I made some awesome friends - some which live close by (Galina is from Sandy Springs) so I'm sure I'll see them again.
I changed my travel plans for the next two weeks to travel with the group from Heidelberg instead of the people I originally had planned to travel with. It works out better this way because my plans to go to Hamburg fell through and I really wanted to go to Munich, so now I'm going to Munich next weekend and Amsterdam for my birthday. Woohoo! It's going to be a blast and I cannot wait.
Good thing is these weekends are going to be so much fun that time is literally going to fly by and I will be home soon in no time. The whole time I've been here I've been counting down the days to go home and see everyone again, but in Heidelberg I had the first sensation of wanting to stay in Germany some more. Most of these people are staying here until the end of August. I'm staying as late as I possibly can because of working for housing and having to go to training, but if I had to choice I would probably stay another week or two just so I could travel with these awesome people. Yeah, they're that cool.
After talking to all the kids I met it turns out that my work schedule is actually very very easy. Haha, sweet. I guess that's what I get for being alone in this boring city - I don't have to work a lot. Lots of other people have 2 or even 7 other North American research interns in their city - jealous! Oh well. Tomorrow, though, I have to wake up at 5.15am to go and pick weeds in our field site all day long. Ugh. Not cool. Perhaps it will be a sunny nice day instead of the spontaneous rain showers that we've gotten the past 3 days. I'll cross my fingers.
Well, I think that's about it at the moment. Check out my pictures by clicking on the link to the right. : )
After the 7 hour train ride that included 3 different transfers, I finally made it to Heidelberg. I met some cool people on the last train into the city and I ended hanging out with them the entire weekend. We followed the giant crowd of American students from the train station to the bus and finally arrived at the hostel. We checked in and found out that the people I met were directly across the hall from me - awesome! They fed us some coffee, tea, and cake while we waited for others to arrive and then bussed us off to the university to listen to people from the research internship abroad program talk. It was really boring and lasted far too long. Oh well, we all felt we had to listen because we're getting paid to be here all summer. If that's the worst thing that happens while I'm here then I guess it's a fair trade off...
After the really lame speech they shipped us back to the hostel for dinner. I skipped out on that and went out to dinner with Uncle Mac and Aunt Melody who just happened to be in Heidelberg during their European tour (what are the odds?). I had a great time with them, naturally, and we ate some delicious food at a restaurant right down the road from the hostel. Good times.
That night we got a group together and wandered the streets of Heidelberg, beer in hand. It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with other students that speak English. I hung out with 5 other people most of the weekend, and as it turns out, out of the 6 of us 3 were American and 3 Canadian. There are definitely more people in the program that are from America, but we just got lucky enough to hang out with Canadians the whole time. We ended up getting back to the hostel at midnight because we all had to wake up early for company visits the next day.
The program split us all up into groups by what we are studying and then each group visited a company that pertained to their area of expertise. The environmental group by far got the best deal. We were the last group to leave (we left at 9am while others had to leave at 6am) and our first stop was a fossil site and our second stop was an organic wine vineyard. Dinosaurs and wine - what could be better?! Turns out there weren't dinosaur fossils at the first site, but there was plenty of wine at the second to make up for it : ) The wine vineyard was amazing - we were led around by this über hippie old woman (she didn't shave her legs, had short grey hair that she dyed green and blue, and talked about how the power of the earth was sucked up by the grapes and is put into the wine). I fell in love with her, really. She cooked us a completely organic (and delicious!) lunch and then let us try all the different types of her wines. We thought we would just be swishing the wine in our mouths and spitting it out - no - she poured us glass after glass of tasty wine that they made right at her house. During lunch the tables were lined with bottles of wine and she asked us to help ourselves, haha. We all think that she just wanted us drunk so we would purchase wine from her at the end. Anyways, it was amazing and I got some beautiful pictures of the vineyard - check them out by clicking on the link to the right!
After the vineyard we were taken to the Heidelberg Cultural Brewery where we were fed a traditional German meal and got to drink home-brewed beer. Damn - the environmental kids started drinking at 2pm and didn't stop until 8pm or so. Go us. The food was delicious and the beer even better. Laura (my new Canadian best friend) and I ordered some Weißbier with banana juice - my favorite. She really liked it too. Everyone thought I was crazy, but once they tried it they realized how amazing it is. Yum.
After the brewery we headed out to the bars and had a lot of fun. It was the 4th of July so everyone was celebrating the best they could. Canada celebrated Canada Day on July 1st so they decided to celebrate again with us that night. Good times followed.
The next day we woke up early, again, and were sent on a guided tour of Heidelberg. As a poor college student, I never take guided tours of any of the cities I visit, so I considered this a real treat. We were led around by an old English woman by the name of Valarie. She married a German when she was in college and so she learned to speak German when she moved here a long time ago. She was so cute and I loved her. One day I hope I love a city that I live in enough to become a tour guide. She was great and took us all around town and to the Heidelberg Castle. It was really neat-o.
After the tour the 6 of us (Canadians: Ryan, Laura, and Judy. Americans: Galina, Dana, and myself.) grabbed some quick food and then set off to hike a nearby mountain that overlooked the city. We took a trail called the "Philosopher's Path" that let us to the top. The path was SO steep! It was insane, but lot of fun. It was literally almost a 45 degree climb for half the way, then it leveled out to become a normal hiking trail. Very cool. At the top we saw a beautiful view of Heidelberg along with ruins of an old church, monastery, and Nazi amphitheater. The amphitheater was built for the Nazis to have meetings and such, but it was never used because the war started. Super huge and super cool.
After ours of hiking we headed back to the hostel to shower, drink, and hit the clubs.
One part of the night included Galina and I trying to see if we could name off all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 Canadian territories to our new Canadian friends. Needless to say, we couldn't. We tried I don't know how many times and could never get all 13 in one sitting. Laura, on the other hand, showed off and named all 50 states in about 30 seconds. Ugh. Even I can't name all 50 states in 10 minutes! Want to try? Click here! Oh well, pretty funny.
Sunday morning we just hung out, checked out of the hostel at 10am, and then went to the city and explored some more. Did a bit of souvenir shopping and ice cream eating. The usual. We all went our own ways around 4pm. Luckily I got to ride halfway back with Dana and Judy. I ended up missing my train in Leipzig because they switched tracks on me and I didn't know - ugh. That delayed me quite a bit and I got home to Cottbus at 3am. 11 hours of traveling to get home. Lame. Oh well, such is life by train.
Overall, this weekend was amazing. I made some awesome friends - some which live close by (Galina is from Sandy Springs) so I'm sure I'll see them again.
I changed my travel plans for the next two weeks to travel with the group from Heidelberg instead of the people I originally had planned to travel with. It works out better this way because my plans to go to Hamburg fell through and I really wanted to go to Munich, so now I'm going to Munich next weekend and Amsterdam for my birthday. Woohoo! It's going to be a blast and I cannot wait.
Good thing is these weekends are going to be so much fun that time is literally going to fly by and I will be home soon in no time. The whole time I've been here I've been counting down the days to go home and see everyone again, but in Heidelberg I had the first sensation of wanting to stay in Germany some more. Most of these people are staying here until the end of August. I'm staying as late as I possibly can because of working for housing and having to go to training, but if I had to choice I would probably stay another week or two just so I could travel with these awesome people. Yeah, they're that cool.
After talking to all the kids I met it turns out that my work schedule is actually very very easy. Haha, sweet. I guess that's what I get for being alone in this boring city - I don't have to work a lot. Lots of other people have 2 or even 7 other North American research interns in their city - jealous! Oh well. Tomorrow, though, I have to wake up at 5.15am to go and pick weeds in our field site all day long. Ugh. Not cool. Perhaps it will be a sunny nice day instead of the spontaneous rain showers that we've gotten the past 3 days. I'll cross my fingers.
Well, I think that's about it at the moment. Check out my pictures by clicking on the link to the right. : )
Monday, June 30, 2008
July ist hier!
I have to admit that I had quite an excellent Monday this week. Very surprising, seeing as how Mondays suck in general.
My boss was out of town so I only had 3 hours of work to do. It did, however, involve putting soil into little bottles, which is not fun, but I got done at 1pm so I'm not complaining.
I've been recycling clothes since I'm out of laundry coins, so after getting out of work early I headed to go buy some more from the Hausmeister. He was busy so I waited outside. A guy and a girl came looking for him and it turns out they were speaking Spanish. I got excited and tried to tell them that the Hausmeister was "there" in another room, but I'm pretty sure I got my prepositions confused and said "here" instead. I was thinking in Spanish, and then it came to me how to say it in German, but that's not what I wanted so I thought really quickly in Spanish and just spit something out. My brain cannot handle switching between languages that fast. They knew what I meant and smiled really politely. The Hausmeister came out and saw me waiting and told me "one minute" in German, but then chuckled and said it in English. So he does speak some English! Ha! This made me happy because up until this point I thought he loathed me. After I purchased my laundry coins I decided to redeem myself with the Spanish speaking people, so I knocked on their apartment door, and in Español perfecto, I told them that the Hausmeister wasn't busy anymore. The guy smiled and thanked me. I was happy.
So my German isn't that great, but I can certainly get by over here. My Spanish is definitely lacking in comparison with my German, but I am impressed that I remember all that I do, having not had any classes for 4 years. Language is still the one thing that I'm the most impressed about over here. I've watched people laugh and joke about a song the like in Polish, and then continue their conversation in German, and then turn to me and tell me what happened in English. I love it! Like I've said before, I really want to continue German classes when I get back to school, but I know that at this rate I will never graduate with all the extra classes I'm taking. We'll see.
Does anyone know if you capitalize the names of languages? Huh.
I found a little coffee shop in the Altstadt that I've been going to every now and then. It's good coffee. The prices are a little expensive, but now that I'm not eating out anymore I can afford good coffee. The same girl always takes me order. The first time apparently she told me "wait over there by the counter" but I had no idea what she said, so I had to give in and admit that my German isn't too hot. I hate when that happens - I do well and then I have to admit defeat in the end.
One thing that I will miss once I get home is all the bakeries around town. I had never gone into them until recently, but now I'm hooked. Ah, there's so many tasty things and just about anything you buy goes excellent with a little Nutella. Yum. I will definitely miss the smell of fresh break where ever I walk and all the yummy pastries that I've discovered in the last few days.
So they have this one liquor (mostly beer, though) store here that has a van called the "Getränke Taxi" (Drink Taxi). It's exactly what it sounds like. If you are too lazy (or too drunk, for that matter) to get in a car or walk down to the store to buy some more beer while you're watching your soccer game, you can just call the Getränke Taxi and they will deliver a case or two to your front door. I've seen it pulled up in front of my apartment building a few times - I find it pretty comical. I'm sure it costs a bit, but when you're running out of your favorite beer you have to get it somehow...
Apparently Germans don't like stick deodorant. Figured that out today when I went shopping for some because I ran out. They like body spray - a lot - and the little roll-on kind. I've always kind of detested body spray. I think it's the memories of the middle school boy's locker room where you could hardly breathe because everyone wanted to smell like a man and sprayed their can of Axe far too much. Yup. That's definitely where it comes from. Well, I sucked it up and smelled up about every bottle on the shelf (most smelled strongly of rubbing alcohol - gross) until I found one that was decent.
It's hot today and I have no AC. Ugh. It would be nice to get back to the apartment and relax in the cool, but no. But I guess we're saving energy over here so it's okay.
Well, I leave for Heidelburg tomorrow morning at 7am and get to enjoy a 7 hour train ride there. But I'm really excited because I will get to meet a lot of people, hang out with the girls I met back in Berlin, and I'll get to see my Uncle Mac and Aunt Melody. Eeek! They're hilarious - definitely the cool relatives. Can't wait. And I got an email saying that on Friday for the "company visits" the environmental students get to go to some really cool site (sorry, but I have no idea what it is - I tried to look it up and don't remember what I found) and then we get to go WINE TASTING! Yeees. I'm pumped. This will be an excellent weekend.
Plus I bought my ticket to Amsterdam for next weekend. Sweet.
Okay - tons of stuff to do to get ready for tomorrow morning.
Happy 4th of July!
My boss was out of town so I only had 3 hours of work to do. It did, however, involve putting soil into little bottles, which is not fun, but I got done at 1pm so I'm not complaining.
I've been recycling clothes since I'm out of laundry coins, so after getting out of work early I headed to go buy some more from the Hausmeister. He was busy so I waited outside. A guy and a girl came looking for him and it turns out they were speaking Spanish. I got excited and tried to tell them that the Hausmeister was "there" in another room, but I'm pretty sure I got my prepositions confused and said "here" instead. I was thinking in Spanish, and then it came to me how to say it in German, but that's not what I wanted so I thought really quickly in Spanish and just spit something out. My brain cannot handle switching between languages that fast. They knew what I meant and smiled really politely. The Hausmeister came out and saw me waiting and told me "one minute" in German, but then chuckled and said it in English. So he does speak some English! Ha! This made me happy because up until this point I thought he loathed me. After I purchased my laundry coins I decided to redeem myself with the Spanish speaking people, so I knocked on their apartment door, and in Español perfecto, I told them that the Hausmeister wasn't busy anymore. The guy smiled and thanked me. I was happy.
So my German isn't that great, but I can certainly get by over here. My Spanish is definitely lacking in comparison with my German, but I am impressed that I remember all that I do, having not had any classes for 4 years. Language is still the one thing that I'm the most impressed about over here. I've watched people laugh and joke about a song the like in Polish, and then continue their conversation in German, and then turn to me and tell me what happened in English. I love it! Like I've said before, I really want to continue German classes when I get back to school, but I know that at this rate I will never graduate with all the extra classes I'm taking. We'll see.
Does anyone know if you capitalize the names of languages? Huh.
I found a little coffee shop in the Altstadt that I've been going to every now and then. It's good coffee. The prices are a little expensive, but now that I'm not eating out anymore I can afford good coffee. The same girl always takes me order. The first time apparently she told me "wait over there by the counter" but I had no idea what she said, so I had to give in and admit that my German isn't too hot. I hate when that happens - I do well and then I have to admit defeat in the end.
One thing that I will miss once I get home is all the bakeries around town. I had never gone into them until recently, but now I'm hooked. Ah, there's so many tasty things and just about anything you buy goes excellent with a little Nutella. Yum. I will definitely miss the smell of fresh break where ever I walk and all the yummy pastries that I've discovered in the last few days.
So they have this one liquor (mostly beer, though) store here that has a van called the "Getränke Taxi" (Drink Taxi). It's exactly what it sounds like. If you are too lazy (or too drunk, for that matter) to get in a car or walk down to the store to buy some more beer while you're watching your soccer game, you can just call the Getränke Taxi and they will deliver a case or two to your front door. I've seen it pulled up in front of my apartment building a few times - I find it pretty comical. I'm sure it costs a bit, but when you're running out of your favorite beer you have to get it somehow...
Apparently Germans don't like stick deodorant. Figured that out today when I went shopping for some because I ran out. They like body spray - a lot - and the little roll-on kind. I've always kind of detested body spray. I think it's the memories of the middle school boy's locker room where you could hardly breathe because everyone wanted to smell like a man and sprayed their can of Axe far too much. Yup. That's definitely where it comes from. Well, I sucked it up and smelled up about every bottle on the shelf (most smelled strongly of rubbing alcohol - gross) until I found one that was decent.
It's hot today and I have no AC. Ugh. It would be nice to get back to the apartment and relax in the cool, but no. But I guess we're saving energy over here so it's okay.
Well, I leave for Heidelburg tomorrow morning at 7am and get to enjoy a 7 hour train ride there. But I'm really excited because I will get to meet a lot of people, hang out with the girls I met back in Berlin, and I'll get to see my Uncle Mac and Aunt Melody. Eeek! They're hilarious - definitely the cool relatives. Can't wait. And I got an email saying that on Friday for the "company visits" the environmental students get to go to some really cool site (sorry, but I have no idea what it is - I tried to look it up and don't remember what I found) and then we get to go WINE TASTING! Yeees. I'm pumped. This will be an excellent weekend.
Plus I bought my ticket to Amsterdam for next weekend. Sweet.
Okay - tons of stuff to do to get ready for tomorrow morning.
Happy 4th of July!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
A quiet, but relaxing, weekend in Cottbus
Well, this weekend turned out to be nothing like I expected, but at the same time it wasn't disappointing either.
A few days ago Paul called and told me that he caught a really bad cold and he probably wouldn't be able to make it to Berlin with me for Christopher Street Day. I got updates from him everyday hoping to hear that he got better, but he never did. I think he works too much on his thesis, but that's just me : P I now know that I never want to write one of those... Saturday evening he called again (after calling once that morning to say that he wasn't going to be able to go) saying that he was feeling better and he could go. The plan was to jump on a train at 8pm, arrive in Berlin at 10pm, party until we caught a train home at 5am, and arrive back in Cottbus at 7am. The plan was completely crazy (although really spontaneous and awesome sounding at the same time) but I wasn't wanting to go partying that bad to give in. We both agreed that it would be too much trouble to go (also because Paul's first train back to Hannover wasn't until 7.30am) so I spend this weekend in Cottbus.
I got to sleep in, which was really nice. During the week I never get to and with all the traveling I've done on the weekends, sleeping in doesn't happen much.
I finished "Twilight", the book I was reading. It's amazing. At the end I found out that there are 2 more books in the series so I set off to find them at the bookstore that I've been frequenting. Turns out they have the 3rd book and not the 1st or 2nd one. Weird. But, for only having a bookshelf the size of one you might have at home full of English books, I was impressed. I know that it is completely wrong, unethical, and despicable in the world of literature to skip ahead in a series, but I consider this a drastic situation. I ended up buying the 3rd book. I figure I'll read the 2nd one eventually, perhaps when I get home. I know I ruined a lot of surprises and I'm lacking a lot of information, but the plot and story line is still there so it's fine. I know I'll read quite a few books before even starting the 2nd book, so I know I'll forget most of the spoilers anyways. All is well.
It rained a bit on Saturday. It poured actually right when I was on my way to the grocery store. Luckily I packed an umbrella but it didn't help much. I ended up getting soaked, but I didn't really mind. It was quite refreshing. I miss not having anyone to play in the rain with.
Saturday was a big day for me, as I reached my running goal for the summer! My goal for the summer was to be able to run 5 miles continuously. I did that Saturday night! I'm very proud of myself. At the beginning of summer I didn't really see it happening, but I worked my way up and finally did it. Unfortunately, now that I know I can do it, I will be forced to do it over and over again. Running, despite the fact that it has become an almost daily routine, is definitely not my favorite thing to do. It is, however, something I feel I need to do. Most of the time the two do not coincide, but what can you do?
Saturday night I fixed myself a very German dinner: potatoes, bratwurst, and beer. It was pretty tasty. Nothing special, but it was better than the turkey sandwiches I typically eat.
Sunday I slept in a good deal. Didn't even set my alarm - that was nice. The weather was really nice outside so I decided to pack my bag and head out for the day. I found this great little green space behind the town theatre that has a giant fountain in the middle. I brought a blanket and my book and read for a while under the sun. It was nice. Then I explored more of Cottbus that I haven't been to yet. I found this nice trail to walk down that led me between all of these houses and gardens. It's a residential area, I guess, but there's no access by car. The path was for biking and walking, and it let through this residential part where every inch of space is covered with small huts/houses, greenhouses, or gardens. It was really cute. I didn't reach the end of the trail so I'll have to go back one day and see where it takes me. It was such a beautiful day outside today that walking along it was very relaxing and I enjoyed myself.
Upon returning to my apartment I realized that I left my key in my room. Ugh. I attach my key to my water bottle when I go running. Last night after running I got online to talk to some people and after that I took a shower and immediately went to bed. I didn't clean up after dinner and didn't reattach my key to my keychain. This morning it didn't cross my mind to make sure my key was on my keychain, so I ended up leaving it behind. I found a girl and asked her if there was a number I could call to get my door opened. We called the number and the line was disconnected. Great. Then I saw a boy entering my building so I followed him in and asked if he knew how I could open my door. He showed me where the "Hausmeister" has a bulletin board with all of the maintenance numbers that I could call. I found a number that had the German word for key ("Schlüssel" - a favorite Germany word of mine) in it (Germans like to make up words by squishing 3 or 4 words together that all describe one specific thing) so I called it. The guy didn't speak English, but I managed to get him to my door to open it for me. Having my door opened cost me 30€! $45! Outrageous. Especially since all he did was pick the lock. I figured I could find a neighbor with a wire coat hanger and manage to open the door myself (plus I would also probably make a friend by asking for the hanger) but I was too lazy. Whatever. I'm impressed that I lasted so long without locking myself out. I always think to myself "Damn, I haven't locked myself out yet - go me!" but it had to happen sometime. Now I will be more careful.
The European Cup final was tonight between Germany and Spain. Spain ended up winning (damnit). I wasn't really in the mood to go watch the game so I chilled at home. No biggie. Soccer isn't really my thing and I didn't have anyone to watch it with so I chose not to be the awkward kid in the corner all night long.
I leave Thursday morning for Heidelberg! I'm really excited. The program I am in is having a conference there for all of the participants. I'm excited to celebrate the 4th of July with the rest of the Americans - Germany won't know what hit them... I've heard that Heidelberg is a really beautiful city filled with tons of culture, art, etc. I'm excited to check it out. Plus the program is sending us on a tour of the city, so that will be cool actually getting to learn about it. Plus I'm planning on visiting my Uncle Mac and Aunt Melody while they are in town. Hopefully I will have a few hours to eat dinner and hang out with them.
That about wraps it up. I'll update the Cottbus photo album with the pictures that I took today. Check it out.
28 more days.
A few days ago Paul called and told me that he caught a really bad cold and he probably wouldn't be able to make it to Berlin with me for Christopher Street Day. I got updates from him everyday hoping to hear that he got better, but he never did. I think he works too much on his thesis, but that's just me : P I now know that I never want to write one of those... Saturday evening he called again (after calling once that morning to say that he wasn't going to be able to go) saying that he was feeling better and he could go. The plan was to jump on a train at 8pm, arrive in Berlin at 10pm, party until we caught a train home at 5am, and arrive back in Cottbus at 7am. The plan was completely crazy (although really spontaneous and awesome sounding at the same time) but I wasn't wanting to go partying that bad to give in. We both agreed that it would be too much trouble to go (also because Paul's first train back to Hannover wasn't until 7.30am) so I spend this weekend in Cottbus.
I got to sleep in, which was really nice. During the week I never get to and with all the traveling I've done on the weekends, sleeping in doesn't happen much.
I finished "Twilight", the book I was reading. It's amazing. At the end I found out that there are 2 more books in the series so I set off to find them at the bookstore that I've been frequenting. Turns out they have the 3rd book and not the 1st or 2nd one. Weird. But, for only having a bookshelf the size of one you might have at home full of English books, I was impressed. I know that it is completely wrong, unethical, and despicable in the world of literature to skip ahead in a series, but I consider this a drastic situation. I ended up buying the 3rd book. I figure I'll read the 2nd one eventually, perhaps when I get home. I know I ruined a lot of surprises and I'm lacking a lot of information, but the plot and story line is still there so it's fine. I know I'll read quite a few books before even starting the 2nd book, so I know I'll forget most of the spoilers anyways. All is well.
It rained a bit on Saturday. It poured actually right when I was on my way to the grocery store. Luckily I packed an umbrella but it didn't help much. I ended up getting soaked, but I didn't really mind. It was quite refreshing. I miss not having anyone to play in the rain with.
Saturday was a big day for me, as I reached my running goal for the summer! My goal for the summer was to be able to run 5 miles continuously. I did that Saturday night! I'm very proud of myself. At the beginning of summer I didn't really see it happening, but I worked my way up and finally did it. Unfortunately, now that I know I can do it, I will be forced to do it over and over again. Running, despite the fact that it has become an almost daily routine, is definitely not my favorite thing to do. It is, however, something I feel I need to do. Most of the time the two do not coincide, but what can you do?
Saturday night I fixed myself a very German dinner: potatoes, bratwurst, and beer. It was pretty tasty. Nothing special, but it was better than the turkey sandwiches I typically eat.
Sunday I slept in a good deal. Didn't even set my alarm - that was nice. The weather was really nice outside so I decided to pack my bag and head out for the day. I found this great little green space behind the town theatre that has a giant fountain in the middle. I brought a blanket and my book and read for a while under the sun. It was nice. Then I explored more of Cottbus that I haven't been to yet. I found this nice trail to walk down that led me between all of these houses and gardens. It's a residential area, I guess, but there's no access by car. The path was for biking and walking, and it let through this residential part where every inch of space is covered with small huts/houses, greenhouses, or gardens. It was really cute. I didn't reach the end of the trail so I'll have to go back one day and see where it takes me. It was such a beautiful day outside today that walking along it was very relaxing and I enjoyed myself.
Upon returning to my apartment I realized that I left my key in my room. Ugh. I attach my key to my water bottle when I go running. Last night after running I got online to talk to some people and after that I took a shower and immediately went to bed. I didn't clean up after dinner and didn't reattach my key to my keychain. This morning it didn't cross my mind to make sure my key was on my keychain, so I ended up leaving it behind. I found a girl and asked her if there was a number I could call to get my door opened. We called the number and the line was disconnected. Great. Then I saw a boy entering my building so I followed him in and asked if he knew how I could open my door. He showed me where the "Hausmeister" has a bulletin board with all of the maintenance numbers that I could call. I found a number that had the German word for key ("Schlüssel" - a favorite Germany word of mine) in it (Germans like to make up words by squishing 3 or 4 words together that all describe one specific thing) so I called it. The guy didn't speak English, but I managed to get him to my door to open it for me. Having my door opened cost me 30€! $45! Outrageous. Especially since all he did was pick the lock. I figured I could find a neighbor with a wire coat hanger and manage to open the door myself (plus I would also probably make a friend by asking for the hanger) but I was too lazy. Whatever. I'm impressed that I lasted so long without locking myself out. I always think to myself "Damn, I haven't locked myself out yet - go me!" but it had to happen sometime. Now I will be more careful.
The European Cup final was tonight between Germany and Spain. Spain ended up winning (damnit). I wasn't really in the mood to go watch the game so I chilled at home. No biggie. Soccer isn't really my thing and I didn't have anyone to watch it with so I chose not to be the awkward kid in the corner all night long.
I leave Thursday morning for Heidelberg! I'm really excited. The program I am in is having a conference there for all of the participants. I'm excited to celebrate the 4th of July with the rest of the Americans - Germany won't know what hit them... I've heard that Heidelberg is a really beautiful city filled with tons of culture, art, etc. I'm excited to check it out. Plus the program is sending us on a tour of the city, so that will be cool actually getting to learn about it. Plus I'm planning on visiting my Uncle Mac and Aunt Melody while they are in town. Hopefully I will have a few hours to eat dinner and hang out with them.
That about wraps it up. I'll update the Cottbus photo album with the pictures that I took today. Check it out.
28 more days.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
London Pictures Are Up!
So, I finished uploading pictures from London and you can see them by clicking on the link on the right hand side. Enjoy!
Now it's time to go to bed - probably shouldn't have taken that nap at 8pm. If only it didn't get dark until 10pm, then I wouldn't be taking naps so late.
Off to Berlin tomorrow to check out Christopher Street Day festivities. Should be quite interesting.
Less than a month until I'm home : )
See you guys soon.
Now it's time to go to bed - probably shouldn't have taken that nap at 8pm. If only it didn't get dark until 10pm, then I wouldn't be taking naps so late.
Off to Berlin tomorrow to check out Christopher Street Day festivities. Should be quite interesting.
Less than a month until I'm home : )
See you guys soon.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Dresden and London
So, it has been a while. But no worries, I'll update you.
Last week we go to go to the field twice for work. Tuesday we went and helped this other PhD student, Ute, fill in 5 of her soil pits. She finished all of her research so we filled in the pits in order to try and leave nature the way we found it. It was hot and that was a lot of work. The pits are 2 meters deep and probably 1 meter across both ways. Oh, and Annika and I took about 6 soil samples - woot. Thursday we went out again to a different mining site than what I've been to previously. It was cool. New pictures from the site are in the Cottbus album. The site is completely artificial but it's cool because they can monitor just about everything because they know all the initial conditions. We also drove to a look out point so I could see the brown coal mine. It was huuuge. They explained how they mine for the brown coal and it was pretty interesting. I had planned on workin' on my hot tan during this trip, but it was cold overcast and windy and I decided to wear shorts. Poor decision, but next time I"ll know better...
Lately I've been running 4 miles each time I run. I'm very impressed with myself. My goal for this summer is to be able to run 5 miles without any problems. First I thought it wasn't going to happen, but now I think I'll get there in the next 2 weeks. Schweet.
Oh, I fell the other day while running. Damn piece of crap eastern European sidewalks. Infrastructure infrastructure INFRASTRUCTURE! Oh, well, I'll give them a break because they are still recovering from that war. What was it called? Oh yes, WWII.
...
Okay, so I just got back from London at 3am this morning. I know it has been a while since my last post, but I've been "busy" and it takes so much time to type all this stuff up. Really, I just have too many stories that go untold so in the end it's my fault. Oh well.
Dresden was awesome. I was there 2 weekends ago. It was my first Couchsurfing experience and I'm happy to report that everything went very well. I found a host, Susanne, on the Couchsurfing website and she was awesome. She picked me up at the train station, introduced me to friends, and most importantly let me sleep on her couch for two nights. Luckily for me there was an annual music festival going on in Dresden that weekend so we went to that every day. It was pretty awesome. She also took me around the touristy part of Dresden and I was very impressed with all the stuff she knew. My own personal tour guide. Overall I had a great time. You can check out the pictures by clicking on the link to the right. I think they basically sum up my weekend.
I only worked 3 days last week, which was really nice. I've been having to measure out hundreds of 10.0000g samples of soil with an error of only .0002g. It sucks. I can do about 30 samples in an hour, but doing that for 3 consecutive hours is not fun in the slightest. I really want to listen to my iPod while doing it, but I still haven't decided if that's appropriate or not.
I flew out of Berlin Schönefeld airport Wednesday night and landed in London around 10.40pm. The flight was only an hour and 40 minutes. I flew Ryan Air, which was interesting. They are the low fare airline - and it shows. The whole inside of the plane is covered in advertisements and every now and then a radio ad comes on over the speakers. Lovely. No free drinks or anything - it all costs a ton of money. Whatever, it was a cheap flight. I got to walk on the tarmac when boarding the airplane, which was cool - I've never done that before. They lead from the front and back of the plane and there are no assigned seats - it's a free for all. Pretty crazy, but I guess it doesn't work too bad. Certainly no Delta.
When I got to London I was thoroughly questioned by customs and was finally allowed to enter the UK. Woohoo! Traveling was a lot easier because I could speak their language fluently, hah. I was so excited to be able to express myself freely in English without having to slow down or choose smaller words. I felt smart and capable - a weird feeling to have when speaking your own language. On the train to the Tube station I sat in a cab with Austrian people who were part of a private english class. They were taking a field trip to London to practice their english. The average age for the group was about 45 or so - it was interesting. They were taking pictures and I asked, in German, if they wanted me to take their picture then they got excited that I could speak German so we talked the whole ride. They were very nice and oh so excited to speak English with me. It made me happy. I ended up running through the Tube station with the rest of the people to catch the last train to the stop I needed. Lucky for me since cabs there are so expensive. That night I met up with KATIE and me, her, and Mario went out to the Mango Lounge and enjoyed some really really expensive cocktails. Curse the continuously lowering power of the US dollar! Everything in London looks reasonably priced, but then you remember that you need to multiply it by two in order to figure out how much it is in US dollars. Then your jaw drops and you kick a rock.
Thursday night we saw Alanis Morrisette in concert! Ahhh! She is absolutely amazing. She played all of her famous songs and it felt like they just kept coming and coming - you forget she has so many hits until the next song starts and it's your "favorite Alanis song". Then she plays another and the same feeling comes over you that it's your "favorite". A lot of fun. We are all pretty sure she was on some sort of drugs the whole concert. She would spin around the stage and jump everywhere - exactly like in Little Miss Sunshine at the beauty pageant. It was funny, but also freaky. Oh well, if she needs some jagged little pills to write such great songs then so be it.
We did so much, all the days seem to run together. I know I'll leave a lot of stuff out, but I'll try my best.
Katie's Mom and brother arrived in London the same time I did. Friday (I think?) we met up with them for lunch and then I hung out with Mrs. Craft while Katie was at rehearsal. Her and Mrs. Barnes are my favorite foster mothers ever. So easy to talk to and lots of fun. I can't quite remember what we ended up doing that night. Mostly it was hanging around the flat that they live in. All the people that are on the study abroad trip with Kate are really cool and I had a fun time with them all.
One night we went to a VIP party that the study abroad professor got everyone into. I pretended to be a kid named Jake Cooper - he was in Paris at the time so I took his spot. The club was okay, but it was more of just a bar with bands playing. We watched one rapper and that was that. We left to go to another club but Katie and I headed off to go gambling instead. Hehe. You only have to be 18 to play at the casinos in London - sweet. The people Katie ordered the Alanis tickets from accidently sent us 2 sets of 3 tickets. We scalped the 2nd set of tickets at the door for 55£. $110. Awesome. We decided because that was free money, we would gamble it all. Seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. We went around and played slots at all the casinos. Went into a few cheap ones, went into a few really nice ones. I had to register a few of them so I got a membership card and my picture was taken. At one place we decided to use up 10£ each. The slots were 50p or 1£. I used up all my pounds so Katie gave me one of hers. I really wanted to play this shark/fish slot machine so I went over and put my coin in. Within 5 minutes I turned that 1£ into 77£! Ballah! I won 20 free spins, and with those spins I won 20 more free spins. I think that happened a few more times until I got 80 spins total. It was awesome. We had a crowd around us and all the old women were in shock, haha. After the big win we left because we figured our luck at that place had run out. We went to Katie's favorite casino, got a few cocktails, and used up the rest of the original 55£ there. It was funny to think that us drinking cocktails and playing at slot machines is illegal in America. We laughed at the fact that nobody died that night, we ended up doubling our money, and we both got home safe and sound. No harm done, right? Silly America.
Saturday I was adopted into the Craft family and Mama Craft took all of us on a bus tour of London. You hop on the bus, it makes stops around London and you can choose to either stay on and ride, or hop off and stay at the site for a while. Once you're done at one place you just go back to the bus stop and wait for the next bus to come, pick you up, and take you to the next place. It was really awesome. We saw Big Ben, the Parliment, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Tate Modern Art Museum, the Tower Bridge, the London Bridge, and probably one or two things I'm forgetting. It was really cool. I should have pictures up by the end of the week so check them out : )
On Sunday, my last day in London, Katie and I hit the shops to spend our gambling money. We spend it on a few things throughout the week, but we both got 35£ to play with as we wished. We checked out H&M, Top Shop (for Katie), and finally headed to Urban Outfitters. Don't know why we thought it would be less expensive that it is in America, but we figured we had money to blow so why not. I ended up getting a cool tweed messenger bag/murse/what have you. Katie didn't find anything desirable so we took the money and decided to save it for later. With only a few hours to go, we rushed to a pub so I could try Pims - a traditional British drink. It was pretty good. Then we stopped at this awesome frozen yogurt place I found, called Snogger. It was delicious. We then took the tube to King's Cross train station and visited the infamous platform 9 3/4. They already had a cart there that was halfway into the wall so we both took pictures pushing it. Hehe.
Overall, my time in London was amazing. I got to see my best friend in the entire world and have her take me around a city that she has been exploring for 6 weeks. I couldn't have asked for a better hostess. I love you, Katie!
My flight home was just fine. I got back later than I originally thought, but it wasn't too bad. At the airport waiting for a train to the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin, I met these two girls that are also doing the same research internship program that I'm doing. They are really cool and I hung out with them all the way until my train to Cottbus left. I ended up decided to skip the first one because I only had 5 minutes to get to it and I wanted to chat more with them and grab a bite for dinner. We hung out for a few hours and talked about our experiences in Germany. I had a lot of fun. They invited me on their trip to Amsterdam in a few weeks which I will probably go on. We will also see each other in Heidelburg in two weeks for our programs conference. I'm excited that I will already know people when I get there.
I ended up getting back to my apartment at 3am. Ugh. I slept for a few hours, went to work, and filled more bottles with 10.0000g of soil. I'm getting sick of soil, but hey, it's paying for me to be here so I guess I shouldn't complain.
I think that roughly covers everything at the moment. I'll work on getting London pictures up in the next few days. Until then check out the Dresden pictures.
I'm home in 34 days. It's going by faster, which is nice. Can't wait to see you all soon.
Until next time.
Last week we go to go to the field twice for work. Tuesday we went and helped this other PhD student, Ute, fill in 5 of her soil pits. She finished all of her research so we filled in the pits in order to try and leave nature the way we found it. It was hot and that was a lot of work. The pits are 2 meters deep and probably 1 meter across both ways. Oh, and Annika and I took about 6 soil samples - woot. Thursday we went out again to a different mining site than what I've been to previously. It was cool. New pictures from the site are in the Cottbus album. The site is completely artificial but it's cool because they can monitor just about everything because they know all the initial conditions. We also drove to a look out point so I could see the brown coal mine. It was huuuge. They explained how they mine for the brown coal and it was pretty interesting. I had planned on workin' on my hot tan during this trip, but it was cold overcast and windy and I decided to wear shorts. Poor decision, but next time I"ll know better...
Lately I've been running 4 miles each time I run. I'm very impressed with myself. My goal for this summer is to be able to run 5 miles without any problems. First I thought it wasn't going to happen, but now I think I'll get there in the next 2 weeks. Schweet.
Oh, I fell the other day while running. Damn piece of crap eastern European sidewalks. Infrastructure infrastructure INFRASTRUCTURE! Oh, well, I'll give them a break because they are still recovering from that war. What was it called? Oh yes, WWII.
...
Okay, so I just got back from London at 3am this morning. I know it has been a while since my last post, but I've been "busy" and it takes so much time to type all this stuff up. Really, I just have too many stories that go untold so in the end it's my fault. Oh well.
Dresden was awesome. I was there 2 weekends ago. It was my first Couchsurfing experience and I'm happy to report that everything went very well. I found a host, Susanne, on the Couchsurfing website and she was awesome. She picked me up at the train station, introduced me to friends, and most importantly let me sleep on her couch for two nights. Luckily for me there was an annual music festival going on in Dresden that weekend so we went to that every day. It was pretty awesome. She also took me around the touristy part of Dresden and I was very impressed with all the stuff she knew. My own personal tour guide. Overall I had a great time. You can check out the pictures by clicking on the link to the right. I think they basically sum up my weekend.
I only worked 3 days last week, which was really nice. I've been having to measure out hundreds of 10.0000g samples of soil with an error of only .0002g. It sucks. I can do about 30 samples in an hour, but doing that for 3 consecutive hours is not fun in the slightest. I really want to listen to my iPod while doing it, but I still haven't decided if that's appropriate or not.
I flew out of Berlin Schönefeld airport Wednesday night and landed in London around 10.40pm. The flight was only an hour and 40 minutes. I flew Ryan Air, which was interesting. They are the low fare airline - and it shows. The whole inside of the plane is covered in advertisements and every now and then a radio ad comes on over the speakers. Lovely. No free drinks or anything - it all costs a ton of money. Whatever, it was a cheap flight. I got to walk on the tarmac when boarding the airplane, which was cool - I've never done that before. They lead from the front and back of the plane and there are no assigned seats - it's a free for all. Pretty crazy, but I guess it doesn't work too bad. Certainly no Delta.
When I got to London I was thoroughly questioned by customs and was finally allowed to enter the UK. Woohoo! Traveling was a lot easier because I could speak their language fluently, hah. I was so excited to be able to express myself freely in English without having to slow down or choose smaller words. I felt smart and capable - a weird feeling to have when speaking your own language. On the train to the Tube station I sat in a cab with Austrian people who were part of a private english class. They were taking a field trip to London to practice their english. The average age for the group was about 45 or so - it was interesting. They were taking pictures and I asked, in German, if they wanted me to take their picture then they got excited that I could speak German so we talked the whole ride. They were very nice and oh so excited to speak English with me. It made me happy. I ended up running through the Tube station with the rest of the people to catch the last train to the stop I needed. Lucky for me since cabs there are so expensive. That night I met up with KATIE and me, her, and Mario went out to the Mango Lounge and enjoyed some really really expensive cocktails. Curse the continuously lowering power of the US dollar! Everything in London looks reasonably priced, but then you remember that you need to multiply it by two in order to figure out how much it is in US dollars. Then your jaw drops and you kick a rock.
Thursday night we saw Alanis Morrisette in concert! Ahhh! She is absolutely amazing. She played all of her famous songs and it felt like they just kept coming and coming - you forget she has so many hits until the next song starts and it's your "favorite Alanis song". Then she plays another and the same feeling comes over you that it's your "favorite". A lot of fun. We are all pretty sure she was on some sort of drugs the whole concert. She would spin around the stage and jump everywhere - exactly like in Little Miss Sunshine at the beauty pageant. It was funny, but also freaky. Oh well, if she needs some jagged little pills to write such great songs then so be it.
We did so much, all the days seem to run together. I know I'll leave a lot of stuff out, but I'll try my best.
Katie's Mom and brother arrived in London the same time I did. Friday (I think?) we met up with them for lunch and then I hung out with Mrs. Craft while Katie was at rehearsal. Her and Mrs. Barnes are my favorite foster mothers ever. So easy to talk to and lots of fun. I can't quite remember what we ended up doing that night. Mostly it was hanging around the flat that they live in. All the people that are on the study abroad trip with Kate are really cool and I had a fun time with them all.
One night we went to a VIP party that the study abroad professor got everyone into. I pretended to be a kid named Jake Cooper - he was in Paris at the time so I took his spot. The club was okay, but it was more of just a bar with bands playing. We watched one rapper and that was that. We left to go to another club but Katie and I headed off to go gambling instead. Hehe. You only have to be 18 to play at the casinos in London - sweet. The people Katie ordered the Alanis tickets from accidently sent us 2 sets of 3 tickets. We scalped the 2nd set of tickets at the door for 55£. $110. Awesome. We decided because that was free money, we would gamble it all. Seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. We went around and played slots at all the casinos. Went into a few cheap ones, went into a few really nice ones. I had to register a few of them so I got a membership card and my picture was taken. At one place we decided to use up 10£ each. The slots were 50p or 1£. I used up all my pounds so Katie gave me one of hers. I really wanted to play this shark/fish slot machine so I went over and put my coin in. Within 5 minutes I turned that 1£ into 77£! Ballah! I won 20 free spins, and with those spins I won 20 more free spins. I think that happened a few more times until I got 80 spins total. It was awesome. We had a crowd around us and all the old women were in shock, haha. After the big win we left because we figured our luck at that place had run out. We went to Katie's favorite casino, got a few cocktails, and used up the rest of the original 55£ there. It was funny to think that us drinking cocktails and playing at slot machines is illegal in America. We laughed at the fact that nobody died that night, we ended up doubling our money, and we both got home safe and sound. No harm done, right? Silly America.
Saturday I was adopted into the Craft family and Mama Craft took all of us on a bus tour of London. You hop on the bus, it makes stops around London and you can choose to either stay on and ride, or hop off and stay at the site for a while. Once you're done at one place you just go back to the bus stop and wait for the next bus to come, pick you up, and take you to the next place. It was really awesome. We saw Big Ben, the Parliment, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Tate Modern Art Museum, the Tower Bridge, the London Bridge, and probably one or two things I'm forgetting. It was really cool. I should have pictures up by the end of the week so check them out : )
On Sunday, my last day in London, Katie and I hit the shops to spend our gambling money. We spend it on a few things throughout the week, but we both got 35£ to play with as we wished. We checked out H&M, Top Shop (for Katie), and finally headed to Urban Outfitters. Don't know why we thought it would be less expensive that it is in America, but we figured we had money to blow so why not. I ended up getting a cool tweed messenger bag/murse/what have you. Katie didn't find anything desirable so we took the money and decided to save it for later. With only a few hours to go, we rushed to a pub so I could try Pims - a traditional British drink. It was pretty good. Then we stopped at this awesome frozen yogurt place I found, called Snogger. It was delicious. We then took the tube to King's Cross train station and visited the infamous platform 9 3/4. They already had a cart there that was halfway into the wall so we both took pictures pushing it. Hehe.
Overall, my time in London was amazing. I got to see my best friend in the entire world and have her take me around a city that she has been exploring for 6 weeks. I couldn't have asked for a better hostess. I love you, Katie!
My flight home was just fine. I got back later than I originally thought, but it wasn't too bad. At the airport waiting for a train to the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin, I met these two girls that are also doing the same research internship program that I'm doing. They are really cool and I hung out with them all the way until my train to Cottbus left. I ended up decided to skip the first one because I only had 5 minutes to get to it and I wanted to chat more with them and grab a bite for dinner. We hung out for a few hours and talked about our experiences in Germany. I had a lot of fun. They invited me on their trip to Amsterdam in a few weeks which I will probably go on. We will also see each other in Heidelburg in two weeks for our programs conference. I'm excited that I will already know people when I get there.
I ended up getting back to my apartment at 3am. Ugh. I slept for a few hours, went to work, and filled more bottles with 10.0000g of soil. I'm getting sick of soil, but hey, it's paying for me to be here so I guess I shouldn't complain.
I think that roughly covers everything at the moment. I'll work on getting London pictures up in the next few days. Until then check out the Dresden pictures.
I'm home in 34 days. It's going by faster, which is nice. Can't wait to see you all soon.
Until next time.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Hannover
My weekend in Hannover was by far the most amazing time that I have had in Germany so far. Probably because it was the most social I have been so far, hah.
I left for Hannover Friday after work and arrived at the Hannover Hauptbahnhof at 11pm. Paul picked me up from the train station and we both went back to his apartment and talked for a really long time. Having never met Paul, I was nervous that the whole weekend might be awkward or we wouldn't have that much in common, etc., but it was exactly the opposite of my fears the whole time. Turns out we have a lot more in common that we both would have ever thought and he's a really cool guy.
Friday I woke up and met Tobi, Paul's roommate and best friend of 16 years. Tobi is just as awesome as Paul is and we got along great (which is good because we spent the whole day together). Paul let me borrow his bike so Tobi took me on a biking tour of the city of Hannover. We went to the Rathaus (city hall) where you can go on the roof and see the whole city - that was really cool. For lunch we met up with Paul and some of his graduate school friends that he is writing his thesis with. We ate at the Mensa (student cafeteria) and, like all other student cafeterias, the food wasn't the best. After eating Tobi and I headed off to the Herrenhausen Gardens - these huge gardens that the city owns. We walk around them for an hour or so - they were so beautiful. Hannover is a really green city, which is nice. After the gardens we stopped at a small restaurant and grabbed a Döner. Döners are these amazing thing they have in Germany. It reminded me of a falafel, but with more meat and no cabbage. Very delicious - it definitely made up for the not so appetizing lunch. After eating again we decided to take the scenic route back home, where Tobi ended up getting a flat tire. We still took the long way home and everything went well.
I can't really recall the last time I rode a bike. It must be in late elementary school or early middle school. I don't know. Either way, my biking skills were definitely lacking, hah. I only almost hit a few people. A few different times. Whatever. It was a lot of fun though. After the first day riding my bike with Tobi my ass was so sore. Ridiculously sore. Saturday sucked riding the bike, but I managed somehow.
Friday night Paul took me to a Biergarten. It was really cool. It was a giant outdoor place packed with people chilling at tables and a small "hut" where you go up and order your drink. Paul introduced me to Weißbier - it was definitely the best stuff I've had thus far. It's a Bavarian (southern Germany) thing, but hopefully I'll come across it again. The beer naturally has hints of banana in it due to the ethers that are produced when they brew it, but they also add some banana juice in it which makes it taste even better. I hope I can find some in Cottbus. Else I will just have to suck it up and take the 8 hour train ride to Münich in July and visit the friends I have that are studying there for the summer : P It would be worth it to drink some Weißbier once again.
After the Biergarten we stopped a café that is famous for its cake. Paul was right - it was delicious. We also stopped by his mom's apartment so we could pick up a map for me so I could find my way around the city on Saturday. His mom was oh so nice. She used to be an English teacher so we could both talk to each other. She was also recently diagnosed with type II diabetes, which is really sad. After we were introduced and we talked about how much I liked Hannover and much I disliked Cottbus, she immediately asked me if I like Barack Obama. I told her I was a Hillary fan, but now that she lost I'll be supporting Obama. She told me to "Please help end the war. It's so bad." I wanted to hug her.
Saturday I ate lunch with Paul and his friends at the university then set off by myself to do a little exploring. I found a few great places to read my book (A Thousand Splendid Suns) which was nice. I also took some more time to walk around downtown and stuff. Tobi and I walked around really quick so I took it slower and went in a few book stores and found some traditional dancers and bands performing.
Once Paul go done working on his thesis, Paul, Tobi, and I headed off to the river. Both Paul and Tobi are in a rowing club and they are both really active. We got out a three person boat and they taught me to row. We went up and down the river that goes through the city. At first it was really difficult to get the hang of it - it's definitely not as easy as it looks, hah - but after a few beers I found that it got better (surprisingly). By the end I was a rowing beast ; )
We had steak and potatoes at the house that night. Paul is a great cook so we all ate well anytime we stayed in for food. Friday's dinner was three different chinese dishes. Amazing! Paul lived in China for 6 months and can speak cantonese fluently (very impressive). He also learned to cook over there, which is a blessing to anyone who stays over for dinner.
While Paul got a nap in (he was tired from being in the library all day) Tobi and I hung out and talked for an hour or so. He's a great guy and we both learned a lot about each other. We promised each other that he would come to Atlanta and I will host him, so I can't wait until that day comes. After that we all headed off to check out some clubs downtown. I had a great time. Most of the places played music from the 90's or earlier, hah - it was awesome! I love that music and I'm glad that Europe still does too. We got back at around 3.30am and Paul and I stayed up and talked til 5.30am or so.
Sunday morning came and Paul, Tobi, Tobi's brother Andy, and I went out to a delicious brunch buffet. We all ate a ton. Very good food. After brunch Paul and I were too tired to do anything so we both took naps before Paul took me to the train station at 4pm. My train came at 5pm and I got back to Cottbus at 9pm.
This weekend was absolutely amazing. I'll be seeing Paul in Berlin later this month and he has many friends in other cities that have offered to let me stay with them while I'm about traveling. I'm really excited. I'll see Tobi again, too, when he comes to Atlanta in a few year. I'm glad we'll all cross paths again.
Thanks Kathy for getting in touch with Paul for me! Without your help I wouldn't have had such an amazing weekend!
Next weekend I'm off to Dresden, which I'm excited about. I need to find a person to stay with - I begin looking for a Couchsurfer tonight. Every weekend from now until the end is planned out so I think that my time here in Germany will definitely be more enjoyable. I'm excited.
Random side note: I really want my boss to shave her armpits. They gross me out. Really. That is all.
I posted the pictures from this weekend on the link to the right - check them out! I also updated the Cottbus album as well with pictures from researching in the field.
Until next time.
I left for Hannover Friday after work and arrived at the Hannover Hauptbahnhof at 11pm. Paul picked me up from the train station and we both went back to his apartment and talked for a really long time. Having never met Paul, I was nervous that the whole weekend might be awkward or we wouldn't have that much in common, etc., but it was exactly the opposite of my fears the whole time. Turns out we have a lot more in common that we both would have ever thought and he's a really cool guy.
Friday I woke up and met Tobi, Paul's roommate and best friend of 16 years. Tobi is just as awesome as Paul is and we got along great (which is good because we spent the whole day together). Paul let me borrow his bike so Tobi took me on a biking tour of the city of Hannover. We went to the Rathaus (city hall) where you can go on the roof and see the whole city - that was really cool. For lunch we met up with Paul and some of his graduate school friends that he is writing his thesis with. We ate at the Mensa (student cafeteria) and, like all other student cafeterias, the food wasn't the best. After eating Tobi and I headed off to the Herrenhausen Gardens - these huge gardens that the city owns. We walk around them for an hour or so - they were so beautiful. Hannover is a really green city, which is nice. After the gardens we stopped at a small restaurant and grabbed a Döner. Döners are these amazing thing they have in Germany. It reminded me of a falafel, but with more meat and no cabbage. Very delicious - it definitely made up for the not so appetizing lunch. After eating again we decided to take the scenic route back home, where Tobi ended up getting a flat tire. We still took the long way home and everything went well.
I can't really recall the last time I rode a bike. It must be in late elementary school or early middle school. I don't know. Either way, my biking skills were definitely lacking, hah. I only almost hit a few people. A few different times. Whatever. It was a lot of fun though. After the first day riding my bike with Tobi my ass was so sore. Ridiculously sore. Saturday sucked riding the bike, but I managed somehow.
Friday night Paul took me to a Biergarten. It was really cool. It was a giant outdoor place packed with people chilling at tables and a small "hut" where you go up and order your drink. Paul introduced me to Weißbier - it was definitely the best stuff I've had thus far. It's a Bavarian (southern Germany) thing, but hopefully I'll come across it again. The beer naturally has hints of banana in it due to the ethers that are produced when they brew it, but they also add some banana juice in it which makes it taste even better. I hope I can find some in Cottbus. Else I will just have to suck it up and take the 8 hour train ride to Münich in July and visit the friends I have that are studying there for the summer : P It would be worth it to drink some Weißbier once again.
After the Biergarten we stopped a café that is famous for its cake. Paul was right - it was delicious. We also stopped by his mom's apartment so we could pick up a map for me so I could find my way around the city on Saturday. His mom was oh so nice. She used to be an English teacher so we could both talk to each other. She was also recently diagnosed with type II diabetes, which is really sad. After we were introduced and we talked about how much I liked Hannover and much I disliked Cottbus, she immediately asked me if I like Barack Obama. I told her I was a Hillary fan, but now that she lost I'll be supporting Obama. She told me to "Please help end the war. It's so bad." I wanted to hug her.
Saturday I ate lunch with Paul and his friends at the university then set off by myself to do a little exploring. I found a few great places to read my book (A Thousand Splendid Suns) which was nice. I also took some more time to walk around downtown and stuff. Tobi and I walked around really quick so I took it slower and went in a few book stores and found some traditional dancers and bands performing.
Once Paul go done working on his thesis, Paul, Tobi, and I headed off to the river. Both Paul and Tobi are in a rowing club and they are both really active. We got out a three person boat and they taught me to row. We went up and down the river that goes through the city. At first it was really difficult to get the hang of it - it's definitely not as easy as it looks, hah - but after a few beers I found that it got better (surprisingly). By the end I was a rowing beast ; )
We had steak and potatoes at the house that night. Paul is a great cook so we all ate well anytime we stayed in for food. Friday's dinner was three different chinese dishes. Amazing! Paul lived in China for 6 months and can speak cantonese fluently (very impressive). He also learned to cook over there, which is a blessing to anyone who stays over for dinner.
While Paul got a nap in (he was tired from being in the library all day) Tobi and I hung out and talked for an hour or so. He's a great guy and we both learned a lot about each other. We promised each other that he would come to Atlanta and I will host him, so I can't wait until that day comes. After that we all headed off to check out some clubs downtown. I had a great time. Most of the places played music from the 90's or earlier, hah - it was awesome! I love that music and I'm glad that Europe still does too. We got back at around 3.30am and Paul and I stayed up and talked til 5.30am or so.
Sunday morning came and Paul, Tobi, Tobi's brother Andy, and I went out to a delicious brunch buffet. We all ate a ton. Very good food. After brunch Paul and I were too tired to do anything so we both took naps before Paul took me to the train station at 4pm. My train came at 5pm and I got back to Cottbus at 9pm.
This weekend was absolutely amazing. I'll be seeing Paul in Berlin later this month and he has many friends in other cities that have offered to let me stay with them while I'm about traveling. I'm really excited. I'll see Tobi again, too, when he comes to Atlanta in a few year. I'm glad we'll all cross paths again.
Thanks Kathy for getting in touch with Paul for me! Without your help I wouldn't have had such an amazing weekend!
Next weekend I'm off to Dresden, which I'm excited about. I need to find a person to stay with - I begin looking for a Couchsurfer tonight. Every weekend from now until the end is planned out so I think that my time here in Germany will definitely be more enjoyable. I'm excited.
Random side note: I really want my boss to shave her armpits. They gross me out. Really. That is all.
I posted the pictures from this weekend on the link to the right - check them out! I also updated the Cottbus album as well with pictures from researching in the field.
Until next time.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Week of the Burn
So, another week has passed. It has been rather quiet without my roommate here, although I never saw him much to begin with. It’s just different being guaranteed that when I leave in the morning, when I come back for lunch, when I come home from work, when I come home from running, etc. the apartment will be empty. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Coming home from Paris on Monday gave me a short week this week, so that was nice. I don’t mind work, but hey – who wants to go all five days a week? Psh.
Tuesday afternoon Annika, my boss, took me to one of her research sites to show me how to take soil samples. Four other people came alone with us – two other PhD students, one other undergraduate assistant, and one of the PhD student’s sisters. The site is about 25 minutes away driving. After driving some way on the highway (a small one, not the autobahn) we traveled about 5 more minutes on a dirt road that led to the fenced in area where all of the research sites are. It is a rather large plot and hold maybe 5 different sites. The plot is on a piece of land that has already been mined for brown coal. All of the studies done there are to look at what effects mining has on the soil and the development of a new ecosystem after the mining takes place. After the brown coal is mined, the mining company fills in the mine with a mixed up form of all the dirt that the dug out to create the mine. All of the soil in the area is man made so that is what makes it so different.
Annika and I specifically study how the soil will continue to develop and also how new plants will grow in the weird soil. While we were there we took some soil samples from a soil pit that was dug up earlier. Taking samples involves me hammering a 3 inch tall metal cylinder into the ground and then carefully removing it from the soil and leveling off the top and the bottom of the cylinder while trying to keep the soil within undisturbed. Not too difficult, but when there are large pieces of clay in the soil it’s hard to level them off without ripping a large chunk out – that means I have to start all over.
Another PhD student that uses the site is studying root formation of plants in the man-made soil. To do this she dug a huge hole in the ground and built a shed inside of the hole. The roof lies even with the top of the soil and you can enter by lifting up a flap in the roof. Along the walls of the underground shed there are 180 clear plexiglass pipes (about 2.5 inches in diameter) that go through the walls and into the surrounding soil. She then takes a very tiny camera and slides the camera along the pipes, taking a 180º picture every 5 cm or so. Around the shed she has planted a few different types of plants that are native to the area. She hopes to be able to see the roots growing around the pipes and learn how they form in the soil and how fast they form. So cool! She took me down into the underground shed to check it out. Very interesting.
The weather here in Cottbus is perfect for working in the field. The highs earlier this week were in the low 70’s and the site always has a nice breeze going on.
We went back to the site on Thursday to finish soil sampling. We only stayed for 3 hours the first day, but this time we were going for the whole day (8 hours). Not thinking, I didn’t wear or bring any sunscreen with me that day. Half of me thought it wasn’t that hot outside and I had a nice tan going so I didn’t really need it, while the other half of me decided to bring it in the end but forgot about it. Halfway through the day I could tell that I had made a bad decision. By the end of the day I was fried crispy. I rolled up my sleeves in hopes of decreasing the size of my amazing farmer’s tan, but that just hurt worse in the end. Where I had already got sun I became very dark and sunburned, but where I was originally white on my upper arms, I am now scarlet. Crap. I have a nice 2nd degree burn going on (blisters and all) which makes sleeping in any position but on my back very difficult. It’s getting better, but too slow for my taste. Next time I’ll wear sunscreen…
I went to the Apotheke (pharmacy) to ask if they had anything for sunburns. The pharmacies here you just go in, tell the doctor what is wrong with you, and then they give you something for it. Very different from the states. She ended up selling me this spray to put on my sunburn. It was next to a giant advertisement in front of the store and cost me 10€. Pretty sure she was paid by a company to promote it, but she said it worked the best. It works okay, but I keep thinking that Aloe Vera would feel even better. They didn’t have that at the pharmacy, so oh well. Next time I will just be certain to bring suncreen.
Note: I’ve fixed the picture link and updated the Cottbus photo album with pictures from the field. Paris pictures are still in the works. Should be up sometime this week.
Sometime this week I messaged a Couchsurfer that lives in Cottbus asking if she wanted to grab coffee or something sometime. She had posted on her profile that she was available for coffee and stuff so I figured why not. Knowing someone in this city would make things a lot easier. Not having anyone to hangout with has put a damper on things. She said that she would call sometime this weekend but I got an email earlier today saying that she had to cancel because she has to meet up with her parents. No worries – she said that we could meet up sometime next week instead. She invited me to an electronic music party on Thursday, but I figured I should meet her first and not just go crash a party where I knew absolutely nobody, hah. Maybe next time.
Anne, an undergrad student that also works for Annika, asked me on Friday if I was doing anything for the weekend. I told her no so she gave me her phone number and email address so I could call Saturday and we could hang out. I was really excited about this because she’s really nice and I figured we would have fun. I called Saturday afternoon and she invited me to make dinner with her and a friend of hers, Regina, that night. I went over around 7pm to her flat down the road and we made chicken fajitas. Well, I sat and watched while they made chicken fajitas. Her roommate joined us as well – he was nice. Most everything they said was in German, but her male roommate (Gah, I forget his name) made it a point to translate every now and then and talk to me a bit. Mostly we talked about how Germany and the US differ in a lot of ways and how he wants to visit the US because he loves basketball so much.
After dinner another one of Anna’s friends, Inga, came over. We hung out for a while and drank wine. There was a festival down in a park south of the city and they were shooting off fireworks at about 10.30pm so we climbed up to the top of the roof with a bottle of wine and enjoyed them from a distance. It was nice. It was one of those things where I was glad to be doing it but wished I were in the presence of other people.
Just about the whole time I was there everyone spoke German. Now, I speak very little German and understand much less, so it made understanding what was going on difficult. All of them were fluent in English (which I still find more impressive than anything else here) but only said something to me every now and then. At one time they asked me if I understood anything they were saying and I explained that I could pick up some stuff if it was slow, but for the most part, no. Regina proposed that perhaps they could just switch to English, but it sounded reluctant so I said it was fine. I ended up leaving early, about midnight, because I was kind of tired of just sitting around not understanding anything. I admit it was nice to hang out with people (this being the first time in 3 weeks since I’ve done so), but it was slightly disappointing at the same time. Baby steps, I guess.
On a brighter note, I just talked to Paul, my mom’s roommate’s old foreign exchange student, who will be hosting me in Hannover this weekend. I’m so excited to go! At first I thought it might be strange asking him to let me stay with him, but now I’ve found that he’s just as excited as me. I was originally going to take a train over on Friday and leave Sunday, but I think he convinced me to head over Thursday night instead (hopefully Annika won’t mind) because he said I shouldn’t be stuck any longer in Cottbus doing nothing. So true. He told me how he has friends that can show me the city on Friday, and then they can take me out partying on Saturday night and also how he rows and wants to show me the river and take me rowing sometime as well! I couldn’t be more excited! He also mentioned that his friend in Hamburg is very excited to host me at her apartment one weekend. I thought that I might not travel to Hamburg because it’s rather far, but now I figured I really should because it sounds like a lot of fun. I can’t wait!
The way it seems now, next weekend should out-do this weekend by far. Good.
I still haven’t had much luck with good food here. Everything I seem to buy at the store seems to suck. Perhaps it’s because I’m shopping at the equivalent to an Aldi and everything is off brand, but perhaps not. I would be able to cook more dinners if I had a freezer to store meat and stuff, but I just eat out for dinner every night. I’m most disappointed with the bread here. German Brot just isn’t that great. It seems when I buy a loaf at the store I buy it already stale. I thought that was just the white bread, so I bought another type and it turned out to be rubbery and nasty. Annika suggested I buy it at the bakery outside the store. I bought a load of white bread but the crust is so thick and hard and every time I cut a slice the end just gets hard because I have no way to store it. Oh well. I plan on going to the other grocery store tomorrow and trying my luck.
Funny thing: on weekends most of the street lights are out so cars and people just have to cross at their own risk. A way to conserve energy? Perhaps.
I’ve finished the His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass books). Loved them. But now I don’t have anything to read. Not cool. I’ll have to find a place that sells books in English or wait until London to get some new ones. We’ll see.
I think that’s all for now.
Until next time.
Coming home from Paris on Monday gave me a short week this week, so that was nice. I don’t mind work, but hey – who wants to go all five days a week? Psh.
Tuesday afternoon Annika, my boss, took me to one of her research sites to show me how to take soil samples. Four other people came alone with us – two other PhD students, one other undergraduate assistant, and one of the PhD student’s sisters. The site is about 25 minutes away driving. After driving some way on the highway (a small one, not the autobahn) we traveled about 5 more minutes on a dirt road that led to the fenced in area where all of the research sites are. It is a rather large plot and hold maybe 5 different sites. The plot is on a piece of land that has already been mined for brown coal. All of the studies done there are to look at what effects mining has on the soil and the development of a new ecosystem after the mining takes place. After the brown coal is mined, the mining company fills in the mine with a mixed up form of all the dirt that the dug out to create the mine. All of the soil in the area is man made so that is what makes it so different.
Annika and I specifically study how the soil will continue to develop and also how new plants will grow in the weird soil. While we were there we took some soil samples from a soil pit that was dug up earlier. Taking samples involves me hammering a 3 inch tall metal cylinder into the ground and then carefully removing it from the soil and leveling off the top and the bottom of the cylinder while trying to keep the soil within undisturbed. Not too difficult, but when there are large pieces of clay in the soil it’s hard to level them off without ripping a large chunk out – that means I have to start all over.
Another PhD student that uses the site is studying root formation of plants in the man-made soil. To do this she dug a huge hole in the ground and built a shed inside of the hole. The roof lies even with the top of the soil and you can enter by lifting up a flap in the roof. Along the walls of the underground shed there are 180 clear plexiglass pipes (about 2.5 inches in diameter) that go through the walls and into the surrounding soil. She then takes a very tiny camera and slides the camera along the pipes, taking a 180º picture every 5 cm or so. Around the shed she has planted a few different types of plants that are native to the area. She hopes to be able to see the roots growing around the pipes and learn how they form in the soil and how fast they form. So cool! She took me down into the underground shed to check it out. Very interesting.
The weather here in Cottbus is perfect for working in the field. The highs earlier this week were in the low 70’s and the site always has a nice breeze going on.
We went back to the site on Thursday to finish soil sampling. We only stayed for 3 hours the first day, but this time we were going for the whole day (8 hours). Not thinking, I didn’t wear or bring any sunscreen with me that day. Half of me thought it wasn’t that hot outside and I had a nice tan going so I didn’t really need it, while the other half of me decided to bring it in the end but forgot about it. Halfway through the day I could tell that I had made a bad decision. By the end of the day I was fried crispy. I rolled up my sleeves in hopes of decreasing the size of my amazing farmer’s tan, but that just hurt worse in the end. Where I had already got sun I became very dark and sunburned, but where I was originally white on my upper arms, I am now scarlet. Crap. I have a nice 2nd degree burn going on (blisters and all) which makes sleeping in any position but on my back very difficult. It’s getting better, but too slow for my taste. Next time I’ll wear sunscreen…
I went to the Apotheke (pharmacy) to ask if they had anything for sunburns. The pharmacies here you just go in, tell the doctor what is wrong with you, and then they give you something for it. Very different from the states. She ended up selling me this spray to put on my sunburn. It was next to a giant advertisement in front of the store and cost me 10€. Pretty sure she was paid by a company to promote it, but she said it worked the best. It works okay, but I keep thinking that Aloe Vera would feel even better. They didn’t have that at the pharmacy, so oh well. Next time I will just be certain to bring suncreen.
Note: I’ve fixed the picture link and updated the Cottbus photo album with pictures from the field. Paris pictures are still in the works. Should be up sometime this week.
Sometime this week I messaged a Couchsurfer that lives in Cottbus asking if she wanted to grab coffee or something sometime. She had posted on her profile that she was available for coffee and stuff so I figured why not. Knowing someone in this city would make things a lot easier. Not having anyone to hangout with has put a damper on things. She said that she would call sometime this weekend but I got an email earlier today saying that she had to cancel because she has to meet up with her parents. No worries – she said that we could meet up sometime next week instead. She invited me to an electronic music party on Thursday, but I figured I should meet her first and not just go crash a party where I knew absolutely nobody, hah. Maybe next time.
Anne, an undergrad student that also works for Annika, asked me on Friday if I was doing anything for the weekend. I told her no so she gave me her phone number and email address so I could call Saturday and we could hang out. I was really excited about this because she’s really nice and I figured we would have fun. I called Saturday afternoon and she invited me to make dinner with her and a friend of hers, Regina, that night. I went over around 7pm to her flat down the road and we made chicken fajitas. Well, I sat and watched while they made chicken fajitas. Her roommate joined us as well – he was nice. Most everything they said was in German, but her male roommate (Gah, I forget his name) made it a point to translate every now and then and talk to me a bit. Mostly we talked about how Germany and the US differ in a lot of ways and how he wants to visit the US because he loves basketball so much.
After dinner another one of Anna’s friends, Inga, came over. We hung out for a while and drank wine. There was a festival down in a park south of the city and they were shooting off fireworks at about 10.30pm so we climbed up to the top of the roof with a bottle of wine and enjoyed them from a distance. It was nice. It was one of those things where I was glad to be doing it but wished I were in the presence of other people.
Just about the whole time I was there everyone spoke German. Now, I speak very little German and understand much less, so it made understanding what was going on difficult. All of them were fluent in English (which I still find more impressive than anything else here) but only said something to me every now and then. At one time they asked me if I understood anything they were saying and I explained that I could pick up some stuff if it was slow, but for the most part, no. Regina proposed that perhaps they could just switch to English, but it sounded reluctant so I said it was fine. I ended up leaving early, about midnight, because I was kind of tired of just sitting around not understanding anything. I admit it was nice to hang out with people (this being the first time in 3 weeks since I’ve done so), but it was slightly disappointing at the same time. Baby steps, I guess.
On a brighter note, I just talked to Paul, my mom’s roommate’s old foreign exchange student, who will be hosting me in Hannover this weekend. I’m so excited to go! At first I thought it might be strange asking him to let me stay with him, but now I’ve found that he’s just as excited as me. I was originally going to take a train over on Friday and leave Sunday, but I think he convinced me to head over Thursday night instead (hopefully Annika won’t mind) because he said I shouldn’t be stuck any longer in Cottbus doing nothing. So true. He told me how he has friends that can show me the city on Friday, and then they can take me out partying on Saturday night and also how he rows and wants to show me the river and take me rowing sometime as well! I couldn’t be more excited! He also mentioned that his friend in Hamburg is very excited to host me at her apartment one weekend. I thought that I might not travel to Hamburg because it’s rather far, but now I figured I really should because it sounds like a lot of fun. I can’t wait!
The way it seems now, next weekend should out-do this weekend by far. Good.
I still haven’t had much luck with good food here. Everything I seem to buy at the store seems to suck. Perhaps it’s because I’m shopping at the equivalent to an Aldi and everything is off brand, but perhaps not. I would be able to cook more dinners if I had a freezer to store meat and stuff, but I just eat out for dinner every night. I’m most disappointed with the bread here. German Brot just isn’t that great. It seems when I buy a loaf at the store I buy it already stale. I thought that was just the white bread, so I bought another type and it turned out to be rubbery and nasty. Annika suggested I buy it at the bakery outside the store. I bought a load of white bread but the crust is so thick and hard and every time I cut a slice the end just gets hard because I have no way to store it. Oh well. I plan on going to the other grocery store tomorrow and trying my luck.
Funny thing: on weekends most of the street lights are out so cars and people just have to cross at their own risk. A way to conserve energy? Perhaps.
I’ve finished the His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass books). Loved them. But now I don’t have anything to read. Not cool. I’ll have to find a place that sells books in English or wait until London to get some new ones. We’ll see.
I think that’s all for now.
Until next time.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Paris!
I have been procrastinating in writing this post because I know there is so much to say and it will take forever. So, I will try to be as thorough and brief as I can be. Here it goes...
AHHH! Paris was awesome!
Friday I woke up at 5.30am to finish my laundry, pack my bag, and head to the Cottbus train station. I took a train to Berlin (2 hours) and then a bus to the Tegel airport where I caught a flight to Amsterdam (1 hour). Then I had a 1 and a half hour layover in Amsterdam after which I caught another flight to Paris (slightly over an hour). From the Paris airport I caught a train to the central station (45 minutes) where I met up with Katie and George. Finally. It was a crazy adventure just to get there, and once I arrived I was pooped.
Right after I got there we ate dinner because we were all starving. After that we headed to the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and headed out to explore the city. George went to a church service while Katie and I walked around and visited the Sacre Coeur basilica. It is a huge, gorgeous marble building that sits up on this huge hill overlooking all of Paris. On the way we were attacked by Africans who proceeded to tie friendship bracelets on our wrists and demand we pay them 15€ for them. We each paid 5€ and moved on. On the steps of the giant hill they had an open mic where everyone went to play. Most people sang (and butchered) many famous American songs, but it was very enjoyable. We eventually met up with George and wandered the city until 2am and caught a taxi ride home.
Saturday we ended up sleeping in, but made up for it by running around the city visiting all of the well known sites. Our second night was to be stayed in a different hotel, so we set off to find it right away and drop our bags off. Turns out our new home was right dab in the middle of the red light district of Paris. Haha. Sex shops and peep shows lined the streets. We shared a street with a little place entitled "Dirty Dicks" and a few others whose names I forgot. We were also about 2 blocks away from the infamous Moulin Rouge. I could have never imagined so many sex shops all in one place. Each peep show had porn plastered around it's doors encouraging those looking for a good time to go on in. The weird thing was the area was full of people, many of which brought their kids with them. The red light district was not a shady part of town, it just housed shady businesses. Interesting.
After dropping our bags off we hit up the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, the Louvre pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and other things which are famous but I do not remember their significance or their names.
The Arc de Triomphe was huge! I had no idea. It stood in the middle of this giant star-shaped intersection - all roads near by lead to it. It was very cool with it's intricate sculptures and such. On the floor around it all of the French victories were written down. Very interesting.
The Champs-Élysées is the main road that runs through Paris and leads to the Arc de Triomphe. It has all of the really expensive stores of the famous French designers. We checked out the Virgin megastore and also grabbed some very expensive cappuccino. Very tasty, though.
We followed the Champs-Élysées down to the Louvre. We wandered through the gardens and up to the giant glass pyramids. We entered the lobby and looked around the gift store but decided not to actually enter the museum because we did not know enough about art to make the hours we would have spent inside worth it. Still, the glass pyramids were amazing and very cool to see in person.
Next we headed off to the Eiffel Tower. We could see it poking up above the skyline for most of the day, but it was totally different to see it up close and in person. It's so tall! I had no idea. Not the prettiest thing in the daylight (it's painted brown), but it was still very impressive. The lines were too long to go up to the top, but I felt that just seeing it was enough justification to come to Paris for a weekend.
Saturday night we met up with some friends of a friend of Katie's. They picked us up at the Moulin Rouge (classy, I know) and took us out to a nice lounge/bar. In front of the Moulin Rouge there is this large, circular, raised vent that shoots up air - probably from the metro or something. Katie had a dress on so we snapped some shots of her pretending to be Marylin Monroe. Absolutely hilarious. Everyone else was getting their picture taken with their hair blown around by the vent, but I would have to say that our picture was the best. While I took the picture George acted as "dress patrol" to make sure the back of Katie's dress didn't flash the onlooking tourists.
Finally our host arrived and picked us up in his car. He brought another car full of friends so there ended up being about 10 people in total. We drank and mingled and had a great time. A few hours later they took us to a small pub where we hung out some more and exchanged dance moves with the ever-so-stylish Europeans. It was a great time and we had a lot of fun meeting the Parisians.
Sunday morning we moved back to our other hotel and then split up: Katie and I went to explore some more of the city while George went to hang out with the people he met at the church service on Friday. Katie and I headed off to the Jewish district of Paris (a place Meredith had suggested we check out). It was very cool. Jewish shops everywhere and we had the pleasure of knowing that anything we decided to eat while we were there would be kosher. We grabbed a falafel (another one of Meredith's suggestions) and explored some more. The falafel was delicious although we had no idea what we were eating, haha. In one store we looked in we found the most amazing yarmulkes ever! We found a Harry Potter one, a Spiderman one, a Pokémon one, and many more. We were impressed that the Jews decided to embrace Harry Potter, much unlike the Catholics who decided to exile him.
The Jewish district soon led us to the Gay district of town where we stopped in a bookstore and looked around at the stylish European clothing stores. The bookstore was quite scandalous, but after living in the red light district we were used to it by that point. From there we stumbled across this amazing little café where we feasted on cappuccinos and a large selection of bread with even a larger selection of spreads and toppings. Sprawled across our table we found the most delicious toppings: Nutella, white chocolate spread, chocolate/carmel spread, the most flavorful jams I have ever tasted (apricot and "5 red berries"), pralines, and so many more. It was absolutely the greated café experience of my life. The best thing I ate in Paris the whole weekend (and believe me, that's saying a lot - all the food was delicious!).
After the café we went to explore the Notre Dame cathedral. Because it was Sunday they were holding mass and we got to walk in while it was going on. It was cool getting to see the priest speak in French and hear people singing the hymns. The place was, like everything else in Paris, huge! It had beautiful stained glass and lots of displayed. There were many places where you could buy a prayer candle to light and display. The whole place smelled like incense - it was just awesome. The outside was just as amazing as the inside. I got to see the many flying buttresses that I have been hearing about for all these years! I'm no architect, but I still found them really cool looking. Plus all of the gargoyle statues that line the roof tops. Very cool.
After that we met up with George. We grabbed some dinner and then headed back to the Eiffel Tower so Katie could take pictures while it was lit up. It was really beautiful to see despite the rain and the cold. Every hour once it is lit up at night hundred of white lights placed on the tower sparkle and shimmer! We had no idea it did that! So cool. It looked like a giant space ship or something. Very cool.
After visiting the Eiffel Tower for the second time we headed back to the hotel, dried off, and then headed out to chill at one last café before we left the next day. We found a cute square up by the Sacre Coeur and sat down for crepes and wine. Yum.
The next morning we woke up for our last breakfast and then I headed off to the train station at noon to head back to the airport for my flight to Amsterdam and then Berlin. I eventually got back to my apartment at around 11.30pm that night. I think I caught the train a little too early and ended up taking the long way home, hah. Oh well, it all worked out in the end.
Overall my trip to Paris was amazing. I was slightly skeptical and wondered if I would like it that much, but I had the greatest time ever. The food was absolutely incredible - I don't think I've ever had food that tasty. I had salmon lasagna one night and even tried escargot! Yes, I Keaton Belli ate a cooked snail. George ordered them and he dug them out of their little shells and fed them to Katie and me. The waiters laughed at us as we freaked out. It ended up tasting pretty good - chewy like calamari, but even more so. Not sure if I'll ever order it in the future, but at least I can say I ate it.
Also, the wine in Paris is incredible! I made it a point to order it at just about every meal. Not the cheapest stuff ever, but definitely worth it. Meredith was right (again). I mostly stuck to chardonnay because I prefer white wines and it was the cheapest, but I think I also ordered some sauvignon one meal. Very delicious. So sweet and never tart. Yum. I will indeed miss it.
That pretty much sums things up. I'm sure I left out things here and there, but chances are you will hear me talk about it one day and it will be even better than having to read it on here. Also, I have about 200 pictures on my computer that I will get uploaded at some point. Look for the picture link on the right so you can check them out. They will probably be up sometime this weekend.
Until next time...
AHHH! Paris was awesome!
Friday I woke up at 5.30am to finish my laundry, pack my bag, and head to the Cottbus train station. I took a train to Berlin (2 hours) and then a bus to the Tegel airport where I caught a flight to Amsterdam (1 hour). Then I had a 1 and a half hour layover in Amsterdam after which I caught another flight to Paris (slightly over an hour). From the Paris airport I caught a train to the central station (45 minutes) where I met up with Katie and George. Finally. It was a crazy adventure just to get there, and once I arrived I was pooped.
Right after I got there we ate dinner because we were all starving. After that we headed to the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and headed out to explore the city. George went to a church service while Katie and I walked around and visited the Sacre Coeur basilica. It is a huge, gorgeous marble building that sits up on this huge hill overlooking all of Paris. On the way we were attacked by Africans who proceeded to tie friendship bracelets on our wrists and demand we pay them 15€ for them. We each paid 5€ and moved on. On the steps of the giant hill they had an open mic where everyone went to play. Most people sang (and butchered) many famous American songs, but it was very enjoyable. We eventually met up with George and wandered the city until 2am and caught a taxi ride home.
Saturday we ended up sleeping in, but made up for it by running around the city visiting all of the well known sites. Our second night was to be stayed in a different hotel, so we set off to find it right away and drop our bags off. Turns out our new home was right dab in the middle of the red light district of Paris. Haha. Sex shops and peep shows lined the streets. We shared a street with a little place entitled "Dirty Dicks" and a few others whose names I forgot. We were also about 2 blocks away from the infamous Moulin Rouge. I could have never imagined so many sex shops all in one place. Each peep show had porn plastered around it's doors encouraging those looking for a good time to go on in. The weird thing was the area was full of people, many of which brought their kids with them. The red light district was not a shady part of town, it just housed shady businesses. Interesting.
After dropping our bags off we hit up the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, the Louvre pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and other things which are famous but I do not remember their significance or their names.
The Arc de Triomphe was huge! I had no idea. It stood in the middle of this giant star-shaped intersection - all roads near by lead to it. It was very cool with it's intricate sculptures and such. On the floor around it all of the French victories were written down. Very interesting.
The Champs-Élysées is the main road that runs through Paris and leads to the Arc de Triomphe. It has all of the really expensive stores of the famous French designers. We checked out the Virgin megastore and also grabbed some very expensive cappuccino. Very tasty, though.
We followed the Champs-Élysées down to the Louvre. We wandered through the gardens and up to the giant glass pyramids. We entered the lobby and looked around the gift store but decided not to actually enter the museum because we did not know enough about art to make the hours we would have spent inside worth it. Still, the glass pyramids were amazing and very cool to see in person.
Next we headed off to the Eiffel Tower. We could see it poking up above the skyline for most of the day, but it was totally different to see it up close and in person. It's so tall! I had no idea. Not the prettiest thing in the daylight (it's painted brown), but it was still very impressive. The lines were too long to go up to the top, but I felt that just seeing it was enough justification to come to Paris for a weekend.
Saturday night we met up with some friends of a friend of Katie's. They picked us up at the Moulin Rouge (classy, I know) and took us out to a nice lounge/bar. In front of the Moulin Rouge there is this large, circular, raised vent that shoots up air - probably from the metro or something. Katie had a dress on so we snapped some shots of her pretending to be Marylin Monroe. Absolutely hilarious. Everyone else was getting their picture taken with their hair blown around by the vent, but I would have to say that our picture was the best. While I took the picture George acted as "dress patrol" to make sure the back of Katie's dress didn't flash the onlooking tourists.
Finally our host arrived and picked us up in his car. He brought another car full of friends so there ended up being about 10 people in total. We drank and mingled and had a great time. A few hours later they took us to a small pub where we hung out some more and exchanged dance moves with the ever-so-stylish Europeans. It was a great time and we had a lot of fun meeting the Parisians.
Sunday morning we moved back to our other hotel and then split up: Katie and I went to explore some more of the city while George went to hang out with the people he met at the church service on Friday. Katie and I headed off to the Jewish district of Paris (a place Meredith had suggested we check out). It was very cool. Jewish shops everywhere and we had the pleasure of knowing that anything we decided to eat while we were there would be kosher. We grabbed a falafel (another one of Meredith's suggestions) and explored some more. The falafel was delicious although we had no idea what we were eating, haha. In one store we looked in we found the most amazing yarmulkes ever! We found a Harry Potter one, a Spiderman one, a Pokémon one, and many more. We were impressed that the Jews decided to embrace Harry Potter, much unlike the Catholics who decided to exile him.
The Jewish district soon led us to the Gay district of town where we stopped in a bookstore and looked around at the stylish European clothing stores. The bookstore was quite scandalous, but after living in the red light district we were used to it by that point. From there we stumbled across this amazing little café where we feasted on cappuccinos and a large selection of bread with even a larger selection of spreads and toppings. Sprawled across our table we found the most delicious toppings: Nutella, white chocolate spread, chocolate/carmel spread, the most flavorful jams I have ever tasted (apricot and "5 red berries"), pralines, and so many more. It was absolutely the greated café experience of my life. The best thing I ate in Paris the whole weekend (and believe me, that's saying a lot - all the food was delicious!).
After the café we went to explore the Notre Dame cathedral. Because it was Sunday they were holding mass and we got to walk in while it was going on. It was cool getting to see the priest speak in French and hear people singing the hymns. The place was, like everything else in Paris, huge! It had beautiful stained glass and lots of displayed. There were many places where you could buy a prayer candle to light and display. The whole place smelled like incense - it was just awesome. The outside was just as amazing as the inside. I got to see the many flying buttresses that I have been hearing about for all these years! I'm no architect, but I still found them really cool looking. Plus all of the gargoyle statues that line the roof tops. Very cool.
After that we met up with George. We grabbed some dinner and then headed back to the Eiffel Tower so Katie could take pictures while it was lit up. It was really beautiful to see despite the rain and the cold. Every hour once it is lit up at night hundred of white lights placed on the tower sparkle and shimmer! We had no idea it did that! So cool. It looked like a giant space ship or something. Very cool.
After visiting the Eiffel Tower for the second time we headed back to the hotel, dried off, and then headed out to chill at one last café before we left the next day. We found a cute square up by the Sacre Coeur and sat down for crepes and wine. Yum.
The next morning we woke up for our last breakfast and then I headed off to the train station at noon to head back to the airport for my flight to Amsterdam and then Berlin. I eventually got back to my apartment at around 11.30pm that night. I think I caught the train a little too early and ended up taking the long way home, hah. Oh well, it all worked out in the end.
Overall my trip to Paris was amazing. I was slightly skeptical and wondered if I would like it that much, but I had the greatest time ever. The food was absolutely incredible - I don't think I've ever had food that tasty. I had salmon lasagna one night and even tried escargot! Yes, I Keaton Belli ate a cooked snail. George ordered them and he dug them out of their little shells and fed them to Katie and me. The waiters laughed at us as we freaked out. It ended up tasting pretty good - chewy like calamari, but even more so. Not sure if I'll ever order it in the future, but at least I can say I ate it.
Also, the wine in Paris is incredible! I made it a point to order it at just about every meal. Not the cheapest stuff ever, but definitely worth it. Meredith was right (again). I mostly stuck to chardonnay because I prefer white wines and it was the cheapest, but I think I also ordered some sauvignon one meal. Very delicious. So sweet and never tart. Yum. I will indeed miss it.
That pretty much sums things up. I'm sure I left out things here and there, but chances are you will hear me talk about it one day and it will be even better than having to read it on here. Also, I have about 200 pictures on my computer that I will get uploaded at some point. Look for the picture link on the right so you can check them out. They will probably be up sometime this weekend.
Until next time...
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Yay for short weeks!
It's Thursday night and I just completed my first week of work. A short week, mind you, but it still counts in my book. Things are getting better here, but perhaps that is because I know that I won't be here for the next 4 days. That cheers me up a bit. Paris here I come!
Work isn't that bad. Tuesday and Thursday I brought my old German flashcards with me so I could brush up a little. I relearned all the verbs that I had to learn over the last year. I figure this will cut down on all of the hand gestures. The nouns on the other hand, who really knows... I can deal with the pointing, but trying to get someone to understand "open", "send", "find", "want", etc. That's another story.
Today I got to watch water drip with Anna. She is an undergrad student here that works for Annika as well. She is very nice and I think we got along pretty well. She's studying environmental engineering and is in her third year. Once she found out I could speak a little German she encouraged me - it was fun to practice today. I showed her my German book and she got a kick out of it. We laughed about all the phrases that are way out dated or they are only used in Bayern - southern Germany where they are thought to walk around in lederhosen all day.
We talked about lots of stuff - mostly the differences between here and the States. I found out that going to college in the state of Brandenburg is FREE! For all schools! Crazy. She laughed when I told her that we pay tens of thousands of dollars just for a year of school. All to obtain the same degree. Ridiculous. She knew english pretty well - enough for us to have a good conversation. She said she started learning it in school when she was 11, but nowadays they teach it when kids are 6 years old. I find it rather lame that we are not required to learn a second language in school. We are required to take two semesters to graduate high school and maybe three semesters in college but that is it. Definitely not enough.
Annika told her that I was going to Paris this weekend and we talked about traveling in Europe for a bit. I originally thought that trains would be a lot cheaper than flying, but as it turns out it is the other way around. Apparently trains are thought to be more comfortable - more leg room and such - so they cost more. Some of them go pretty fast so it's not that slow to travel in either. I mentioned how from London to Berlin is just like going from Atlanta to Dallas, TX and that it isn't that far away at all. In Europe, however, that is a great distance away so most people have never traveled that far. She showed me the different countries where she has been. I asked if she used English to communicate in all the different countries (clearly not everyone knows German) and she said yes. I guess it's cool to be brought up in a country that's national language is really the international language. I'm fortunate to have the ability to travel around to all these places with ease and not have to worry too much about language barriers, but at the same time I see why the United States get the reputation of laziness and superiority - we've never had to change our ways to fit in with others, we make others comply to our standard. Huh.
Walking to the post office today I saw this old man walking with his old wife. He had on leather pants. Not lederhosen, just plain black leather pants. He had to be about 70 years old. Clearly he must have been a rockstar when he was younger and decided to pull his old pants out from the back of his closet. Crazy.
I need to do laundry so I asked Toni, my roommate, where I could do it at. He told me that I had to ask the Hausmeister (the head custodial person for the building) for some coins and that the laundry machines are in the basement. I went to talk to the Hausmeister to get some coins. He speaks no english and I don't know the German word for "coin" and have nothing to point at. I tried to say something along the lines of "I need to buy a coin to wash my clothes". I'm not sure what it came out as but he just looked at me weird. He eventually got what I was saying and then asked me "How many?" in a way that implied I was stupid for not telling him already. This was our second time meeting and I get the sense that he does not like me. Whatever. I paid 5€ for 5 coins. Why I can't just put a Euro coin into the machine and get ride of the middle-man, I don't know. Oh well. I'm sure he will see more of me in the future. I know I'm excited.
I discovered the cellar the other day. I was looking for the place where I could do my laundry. The cellar is probably one of the top 10 scariest places I have ever been. It is a long dark hallway that runs underneath the building and is lit by a minimal number of lights. Pipes cover the ceiling and are about 3 inches too low for me to walk under without having to duck. Also, the hallway is separated into chambers that can be closed off by these large metal doors. In order to cross between chambers you have to step over a barrier and duck under another barrier. All along the hallway are rooms that can be used for various things. I heard people playing guitar in one the other day. There are 2 different laundry rooms that have 2 washers and 2 dryers in each. Connected to these rooms are a series of rooms that have rope hanging across them so you can air dry your clothes. There is only 1 light in each laundry room so it's very creepy and shadowy with all of the clothes hanging up. Very freaky. Although it's morbid, I'd have to say that if you ever needed to mug, rob, jump, or attack someone, the cellar of my apartment building would be the best place to do it.
I leave for Paris tomorrow! My flight from Berlin takes off at 12.25pm and heads to Amsterdam where I have an hour and 30 minute layover before I head to Paris. This means I need to catch an 8.15am train from Cottbus to Berlin. Awesome. I'll arrive in Paris Friday late afternoon and leave on Monday afternoon. Katie and her friend George are going to be there as well! I'm so excited! This will be the last time I get to see Katie before she leaves for California, so what better place to say goodbye than the City of Love? I can't wait!
I still need to do laundry and pack before leaving tomorrow morning. 4 washers for the whole 5 story apartment building makes it difficult to find one available. Packing shouldn't be an issue though because I'm only going to bring my backpack. Katie has sworn herself to only bringing a backpack so we all don't have to relive Italy and her enormous suitcase. So, if she's only bringing a backpack, then I most certainly can only fit my stuff in only a backpack... I think.
Until next time.
-Keaton
Work isn't that bad. Tuesday and Thursday I brought my old German flashcards with me so I could brush up a little. I relearned all the verbs that I had to learn over the last year. I figure this will cut down on all of the hand gestures. The nouns on the other hand, who really knows... I can deal with the pointing, but trying to get someone to understand "open", "send", "find", "want", etc. That's another story.
Today I got to watch water drip with Anna. She is an undergrad student here that works for Annika as well. She is very nice and I think we got along pretty well. She's studying environmental engineering and is in her third year. Once she found out I could speak a little German she encouraged me - it was fun to practice today. I showed her my German book and she got a kick out of it. We laughed about all the phrases that are way out dated or they are only used in Bayern - southern Germany where they are thought to walk around in lederhosen all day.
We talked about lots of stuff - mostly the differences between here and the States. I found out that going to college in the state of Brandenburg is FREE! For all schools! Crazy. She laughed when I told her that we pay tens of thousands of dollars just for a year of school. All to obtain the same degree. Ridiculous. She knew english pretty well - enough for us to have a good conversation. She said she started learning it in school when she was 11, but nowadays they teach it when kids are 6 years old. I find it rather lame that we are not required to learn a second language in school. We are required to take two semesters to graduate high school and maybe three semesters in college but that is it. Definitely not enough.
Annika told her that I was going to Paris this weekend and we talked about traveling in Europe for a bit. I originally thought that trains would be a lot cheaper than flying, but as it turns out it is the other way around. Apparently trains are thought to be more comfortable - more leg room and such - so they cost more. Some of them go pretty fast so it's not that slow to travel in either. I mentioned how from London to Berlin is just like going from Atlanta to Dallas, TX and that it isn't that far away at all. In Europe, however, that is a great distance away so most people have never traveled that far. She showed me the different countries where she has been. I asked if she used English to communicate in all the different countries (clearly not everyone knows German) and she said yes. I guess it's cool to be brought up in a country that's national language is really the international language. I'm fortunate to have the ability to travel around to all these places with ease and not have to worry too much about language barriers, but at the same time I see why the United States get the reputation of laziness and superiority - we've never had to change our ways to fit in with others, we make others comply to our standard. Huh.
Walking to the post office today I saw this old man walking with his old wife. He had on leather pants. Not lederhosen, just plain black leather pants. He had to be about 70 years old. Clearly he must have been a rockstar when he was younger and decided to pull his old pants out from the back of his closet. Crazy.
I need to do laundry so I asked Toni, my roommate, where I could do it at. He told me that I had to ask the Hausmeister (the head custodial person for the building) for some coins and that the laundry machines are in the basement. I went to talk to the Hausmeister to get some coins. He speaks no english and I don't know the German word for "coin" and have nothing to point at. I tried to say something along the lines of "I need to buy a coin to wash my clothes". I'm not sure what it came out as but he just looked at me weird. He eventually got what I was saying and then asked me "How many?" in a way that implied I was stupid for not telling him already. This was our second time meeting and I get the sense that he does not like me. Whatever. I paid 5€ for 5 coins. Why I can't just put a Euro coin into the machine and get ride of the middle-man, I don't know. Oh well. I'm sure he will see more of me in the future. I know I'm excited.
I discovered the cellar the other day. I was looking for the place where I could do my laundry. The cellar is probably one of the top 10 scariest places I have ever been. It is a long dark hallway that runs underneath the building and is lit by a minimal number of lights. Pipes cover the ceiling and are about 3 inches too low for me to walk under without having to duck. Also, the hallway is separated into chambers that can be closed off by these large metal doors. In order to cross between chambers you have to step over a barrier and duck under another barrier. All along the hallway are rooms that can be used for various things. I heard people playing guitar in one the other day. There are 2 different laundry rooms that have 2 washers and 2 dryers in each. Connected to these rooms are a series of rooms that have rope hanging across them so you can air dry your clothes. There is only 1 light in each laundry room so it's very creepy and shadowy with all of the clothes hanging up. Very freaky. Although it's morbid, I'd have to say that if you ever needed to mug, rob, jump, or attack someone, the cellar of my apartment building would be the best place to do it.
I leave for Paris tomorrow! My flight from Berlin takes off at 12.25pm and heads to Amsterdam where I have an hour and 30 minute layover before I head to Paris. This means I need to catch an 8.15am train from Cottbus to Berlin. Awesome. I'll arrive in Paris Friday late afternoon and leave on Monday afternoon. Katie and her friend George are going to be there as well! I'm so excited! This will be the last time I get to see Katie before she leaves for California, so what better place to say goodbye than the City of Love? I can't wait!
I still need to do laundry and pack before leaving tomorrow morning. 4 washers for the whole 5 story apartment building makes it difficult to find one available. Packing shouldn't be an issue though because I'm only going to bring my backpack. Katie has sworn herself to only bringing a backpack so we all don't have to relive Italy and her enormous suitcase. So, if she's only bringing a backpack, then I most certainly can only fit my stuff in only a backpack... I think.
Until next time.
-Keaton
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
American Diner
Sunday I hunted down an internet café so I could talk with Joe online and look up details for next weekend with Kate. On Friday at dinner I asked my waitress if she knew of an internet café in the city and she point me towards one that was close by my apartment. I found it later that night and the sign said that it closes at 8pm on Sundays. It wasn’t a café, but rather just a store where you could make phone calls, fax, and surf the internet. Today around 6pm I headed off with the intent of talking online, sending a few emails, and researching travel costs for next weekend. Unfortunately I got to the place and it was closed. Apparently I didn’t see the part of the sign that said that it was opening up again on June 1st. Oh well. I had seen a similar place by my apartment the first day that I got here. I wanted to find another place because the one that I initially saw looked pretty sketchy. With my first choice gone, I headed off for the one right next to my apartment to check it out. All of the sign on the outside say that it has pool tables, darts, video games, chatting, etc. Apparently it is just a house that they have turned into this technology hub. It was pretty cool when I went in. The woman just told me to find computer 5 upstairs and I was good to go. The price was 1€ per hour. A lot cheaper than what I was expecting. And, turns out that their system went down half way through my stay there so I only paid 1€ instead of the 3€ that I really owed. Cool!
I left the internet place around 8pm. I hadn’t expected to stay there that long but I had nothing else to do besides eat dinner so it really didn’t matter. I have discovered that most everything in the city closes by 8pm so I really didn’t expect to find a place to eat at that night. But, with the thought of eating a 2nd turkey sandwich for the day, I headed off to the Aldstadt to check and see if anything was open. Luckily the American food restaurant was still open – their sign said that they close at midnight. Although this meal wasn’t very cultural or eye opening, I did need food so I figured I would grab a burger. I ordered a patty melt and a large glass of Lübzer Pils. Probably the best beer I had yet. Very tasty. I wish I could say the same thing for the patty melt. The place was almost exactly like Steak ‘N Shake. The interior was very similar except that this one had a large bar in it. I guess I expected a delicious patty melt much likes the ones I get at home. I read on the menu that they put onions on it – I didn’t mind at all because I love onions – but much to my surprise they put onions that were cooked in some type of brown gravy and then put the brown gravy all over the burger inside the two pieces of toast. Bleh. Not the best thing in the world. I felt like I was eating meatloaf in a sandwich. Gross. The fries were okay and the beer was good so I guess I can’t complain.
I found the whole concept of the restaurant pretty amusing. It said in large letters “American Restaurant” on the outside so I assumed that this is what the German people thought of America. I got to eat with an American flag napkin that also had Lady Liberty on the front. Up on the walls they had all the typical Steak ‘N Shake style décor. The thing I liked most was the large Smirnoff advertisement that had an airbrushed picture of Janise Dickinson on it dressed as a scandalous Lady Liberty. Yes, the one and only, Janise Dickinson: the first ever super model and of course one of America’s Next Top Model’s judges. I found it really funny that she was pinned up on their walls next to Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. Good times. The music in the place was funny too. At one time they played the “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, a lion sleeps tonight…” song from The Lion King. Now, I’m not sure if another group sang that before Disney added it to their movie, but if so I have never heard it before. Ultimately, I learned that America equals Janice Dickinson, Disney, and Lady Liberty. Pretty good stuff.
One cool thing about German restaurants is that most of the time, when you order the server has a handheld wireless PDA that they type your order into. It goes directly back to the kitchens and let’s them know what they need to make. Pretty cool. It has been at most places I’ve eaten at. Also, each server carries around a large coin purse on their belt that they keep bills and coins in. They bring you your check and wait at the table for you to pay and then give you change from their coin purse. This startled me the first time it happened but now it’s fine. Also, they always include the tip in the bill. Something I should have probably known before I got here. Now it makes sense why the servers were so thankful when I gave them an extra Euro or two before I left, hah.
I am very excited about next weekend! Originally Kate and I planned to meet in Amsterdam while she was living in London for the summer. Amsterdam is almost directly between Berlin and London so we figured it was the cheapest way for both of us. Unfortunately Kate couldn’t book a flight to Amsterdam – they were all full. So, change of plans, we are going to Paris this weekend! Before this summer I had no intentions of visiting France – it just never appealed to me. Since we’ve decided to go there I’ve got excited. I got even more excited once I read Meredith’s reply to an email I sent her asking her for cool stuff to do while in Paris. Since she lived there for 9 months I figured she could hook me up. Turns out I was right – I’m excited to check out some of the things she mentioned. Somehow the city sounds a lot cooler now.
I just got internet in my apartment! Yay! I’m pretty sure some student just created a network and put up a bunch of wireless routers. Whatever, I emailed him and he let me join for a small fee of 20€. No biggie. Turns out I can only get decent signal if I put the computer on the edge of the kitchen table. Even then the signal fades in and out the whole time. Great. Whatever, I can’t complain because at least now I can Skype! Yay! Definitely worth it.
Click here to check out my pictures!
I left the internet place around 8pm. I hadn’t expected to stay there that long but I had nothing else to do besides eat dinner so it really didn’t matter. I have discovered that most everything in the city closes by 8pm so I really didn’t expect to find a place to eat at that night. But, with the thought of eating a 2nd turkey sandwich for the day, I headed off to the Aldstadt to check and see if anything was open. Luckily the American food restaurant was still open – their sign said that they close at midnight. Although this meal wasn’t very cultural or eye opening, I did need food so I figured I would grab a burger. I ordered a patty melt and a large glass of Lübzer Pils. Probably the best beer I had yet. Very tasty. I wish I could say the same thing for the patty melt. The place was almost exactly like Steak ‘N Shake. The interior was very similar except that this one had a large bar in it. I guess I expected a delicious patty melt much likes the ones I get at home. I read on the menu that they put onions on it – I didn’t mind at all because I love onions – but much to my surprise they put onions that were cooked in some type of brown gravy and then put the brown gravy all over the burger inside the two pieces of toast. Bleh. Not the best thing in the world. I felt like I was eating meatloaf in a sandwich. Gross. The fries were okay and the beer was good so I guess I can’t complain.
I found the whole concept of the restaurant pretty amusing. It said in large letters “American Restaurant” on the outside so I assumed that this is what the German people thought of America. I got to eat with an American flag napkin that also had Lady Liberty on the front. Up on the walls they had all the typical Steak ‘N Shake style décor. The thing I liked most was the large Smirnoff advertisement that had an airbrushed picture of Janise Dickinson on it dressed as a scandalous Lady Liberty. Yes, the one and only, Janise Dickinson: the first ever super model and of course one of America’s Next Top Model’s judges. I found it really funny that she was pinned up on their walls next to Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. Good times. The music in the place was funny too. At one time they played the “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, a lion sleeps tonight…” song from The Lion King. Now, I’m not sure if another group sang that before Disney added it to their movie, but if so I have never heard it before. Ultimately, I learned that America equals Janice Dickinson, Disney, and Lady Liberty. Pretty good stuff.
One cool thing about German restaurants is that most of the time, when you order the server has a handheld wireless PDA that they type your order into. It goes directly back to the kitchens and let’s them know what they need to make. Pretty cool. It has been at most places I’ve eaten at. Also, each server carries around a large coin purse on their belt that they keep bills and coins in. They bring you your check and wait at the table for you to pay and then give you change from their coin purse. This startled me the first time it happened but now it’s fine. Also, they always include the tip in the bill. Something I should have probably known before I got here. Now it makes sense why the servers were so thankful when I gave them an extra Euro or two before I left, hah.
I am very excited about next weekend! Originally Kate and I planned to meet in Amsterdam while she was living in London for the summer. Amsterdam is almost directly between Berlin and London so we figured it was the cheapest way for both of us. Unfortunately Kate couldn’t book a flight to Amsterdam – they were all full. So, change of plans, we are going to Paris this weekend! Before this summer I had no intentions of visiting France – it just never appealed to me. Since we’ve decided to go there I’ve got excited. I got even more excited once I read Meredith’s reply to an email I sent her asking her for cool stuff to do while in Paris. Since she lived there for 9 months I figured she could hook me up. Turns out I was right – I’m excited to check out some of the things she mentioned. Somehow the city sounds a lot cooler now.
I just got internet in my apartment! Yay! I’m pretty sure some student just created a network and put up a bunch of wireless routers. Whatever, I emailed him and he let me join for a small fee of 20€. No biggie. Turns out I can only get decent signal if I put the computer on the edge of the kitchen table. Even then the signal fades in and out the whole time. Great. Whatever, I can’t complain because at least now I can Skype! Yay! Definitely worth it.
Click here to check out my pictures!
Second Letter Home
Meine Erste Wochenende (My First Weekend)
Friday was a really short day at work. Annika and I went over exactly what I will be doing for the first week or two. She showed me the samples of soil that I will be working with and she explained to me some of the background information about what we are studying. It was pretty interesting. I wasn’t sure how excited I would be to be working with soil, but so far it has caught my interested, so I’m excited to start working. We got done with everything around 1.30pm and she said that I was free to leave whenever. Because my office is the only place where I have internet access, I stayed there until about 5pm talking with a few people online, checking email, looking up travel information (cost of train rides, flights, etc), etc. Unfortunately the building my office is in is closed over the weekend so I am not able to access my computer over the weekend.
After coming back from the office and relaxing a while I set off to find some dinner. I have been making it a point to fix breakfast and lunch in my apartment and then go out for dinner. I walked around the Altstadt for a while looking at different food options. The Altstadt is a large square in the “downtown” area of Cottbus. Altstadt means “old city”, so it is the part of town that was there from the beginning. There are a few restaurants around the square (one that I have already eaten at) and some ice cream parlors and the like. After looking around at all of the restaurants I decided not to eat at them because it would look really weird if I went in all by myself. Many were very crowded and it would just look sad if I went in and took up a four person table by myself. I walked around some of the smaller streets looking for a restaurant but again, I didn’t really feel comfortable eating in many of them alone. Finally, after a while of looking, I found a place that had a lot of tables outside, many of which were empty. I decided to eat there. I ordered this delicious pasta – it was like fettuccini shrimp scampi and the sauce tasted exactly like coconut! I knew there was coconut in the dish somewhere because I saw it on the menu, but I had no idea that it would be a coconut sauce. It was really good! I also ordered a few beers – Beck’s. I think we have those in the states, but that’s all they had. It was a fancier place but I didn’t feel like paying for any nicer drinks. After that I headed back to the apartment and watched a few more episodes of The Office.
It was surprising to see everything close so early on a Friday night. It was kind of sad because I had planned on checking out a lot of the shops and stuff in the city. Oh well. I ended up going to bed pretty early for lack of anything else to do (I was pretty tired though) and was then woken up at about 2am by other students hanging out in the apartments and making lots of noise. Reminded me of home, hah. Except I wouldn’t be sleeping that early. Oh well.
Saturday I slept in until noon. I decided to sleep in and then go explore this really large park that is south of the city. I left around noon and packed my backpack with my books, some snacks, water, and my camera. The plan was to find a nice place in the park to read and relax. I headed out with my map and started my journey. I passed through many smaller parks on the way to the large one that I was looking for. I was walking through this one park that ran along the river when I came upon this large group of people with lots of 90’s music playing. The music was in English, which made me happy. When Germans listen to English music they are a decade or more behind – it’s pretty amusing. Turns out it was a radio station putting on something in the park. Oddly enough, everyone was carrying rubber ducks with them. I looked and the ducks had writing on them – numbers and letters – but no words or anything. Huh. Well, I kept on walking, passing all the people, until I got to a bridge that had a large sign on it that said “START”. I’m pretty sure that they had a giant rubber duck race in the river! It makes sense because when I saw all the people, there were workers removing this huge inflatable tube that stretched across the river – that must have been the finish line and the way that they kept all of the ducks from continuing to float along the river. I’m really upset I missed it – it would have been awesome to see all these yellow rubber ducks racing down the river! I’ll keep my eyes open to see if it happens again.
I keep going through the parks, walking along the river most of the way. I was walking and saw these people standing off to the side of the path next to the river. They were looking at something so I stopped to investigate. There, a few feet away from the water on the bank, is a giant otter! It had to be about the size of Pokey! First I wasn’t sure if it was an otter or a beaver – it had big teeth and really long whiskers, but no large tail, just a little thin one. Without the huge tail I assumed it had to be an otter. The people were trying to feed it something and a few more of them came out of the water to investigate. I began to take out my camera but I think I scared them off or something because they all ran back into the water. The people left but I stayed to take some pictures of them swimming in the river. A few minutes later they all started to come out of the water again. There were probably 5 or 6 total. You could see at the bottom of the nearby trees where they had been biting the bark. I continue taking pictures and this other family comes up, lead by two little girls and their dog. The dog sees the otters and immediately starts barking and chases them into the water. It was pretty funny. For the next 15 minutes the family comes up and we all watch the otters and watch their dog bark at them and try to run into the water the catch them. At one point the otter and dog were about 1 foot apart from each other and sniffing each other. I have a great picture of it – pretty funny. I wanted to ask the family how to say “otter” in German, but I never did. I’ll have to look it up.
I continued walking and found a planetarium. It was closed but I might check it out before the summer is over. The place looked really run down, but it could still be interesting, even if it is all in German. Annika explained that Cottbus is a really poor town with bad infrastructure. The planetarium showed that well. She told me that it used to be a big mining town – that was where most of the people that lived in it worked. After the Reunification of Germany, many of the mines were shut down, people lost their jobs, and the city hasn’t really recovered ever since. Most things here are covered in graffiti and there are many buildings that are just abandoned with graffiti everywhere and their windows broken in. Kind of sad. Throughout the Planetarium Park they had scaled down models of the plants that were placed throughout the park at scaled down distances from the planetarium, which represented the sun. Many of the larger planets were covered in graffiti and torn up. I saw Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Uranus was really far from the planetarium, way after I stopped looking out for them. Not quite sure where Pluto was, or why they would even put it up because it is so tiny and far away from the planetarium, hah.
Continuing on my walk toward the park, I started walking down this large street and then stopped for a minute to check my map. This man on a bike rode up and stopped and said something to me in German. I told him, in German, that I didn’t speak it well so he switched to English. I assumed that he needed help or had a question because he saw me with my giant map pulled out, but it turned out he stopped to help me because he could tell I was lost a little. How nice! He spoke some broken English, I spoke some broken German, and he pointed me in the right direction and gave me some background information on the park and what all was inside of it. It was really cool that he stopped and helped.
As I continued to the park the sky started to get dark and I could tell it was going to eventually rain. I ended up finding the park and began to walk and explore it. There was supposed to be a large dirt pyramid in the park, which I ended up finding. I also wanted to see the “water pyramid” that was supposed to be there as well. It is a very large dirt pyramid that is in the middle of this lake. It’s really cool! It’s essentially this big island but it is all just a giant pyramid that sticks out of the water. Pretty neat-o. By the time I found that it was raining pretty steadily and I decided to try and find the café that was supposed to be in the back of the park. I started following the signs that lead toward the Schloß because they had a picture of a fork and spoon on them, which I figured meant food. I eventually found the café by the time it was pouring rain. Apparently everyone in the park was headed that way to get out of the rain so it was pretty crowded. I successfully ordered a cappuccino and a piece of cake entirely in German. I asked her where to pay, how much the post cards cost, and a few other things all in German! I was very proud of myself. I can work my way through a restaurant in German, which is pretty cool. Kudos me.
Anyhow, after the café I explored the rest of the park. It stopped raining and sun came out again so it was nice. I spent good while there and took lots of pictures. It was a really cool place. There’s a castle (well, a large palace/house) in the back of the park and I walked around that and all of the other buildings around it. There were two people, a man and a woman, dressed up as the people who lived in the palace. I avoided running into them because I didn’t want them to talk and embarrass me in German, hah. I’m not that good yet…
About 6.30pm I ended up back at my apartment. I showered (because I was dirty from walking in the park while it was raining) and got all nice to go out to dinner. By myself. I found this Mexican restaurant on the way back to my apartment that looked good and it stayed open late, so that’s really what I was looking for. I started out of the apartment building and it started to rain. Then pour. Then torrential downpour. I had my little umbrella but ended just making a circle around the block and headed back inside. Yesterday I bought some chicken nuggets at the store just for this occasion. I don’t have a freezer, just a mini-fridge, but I figured they would be okay because they are precooked and it’s okay if they thaw a little. Well, I opened the box and found that “chicken nuggets” in Germany are really cut up pieces of uncooked chicken that are breaded. Go figure. Apparently Germany isn’t big on the frozen foods. Probably for the best. Well, I cooked them in my frying pan (Annika let me borrow cooking stuff). Turns out they were gross and as soon as I started cooking them the sun came out. I decided to throw the nuggets away and head back to the restaurant that I set off to in the first place.
The restaurant was good. I ordered gnocchi (potato pasta) with chicken. Yes, although the restaurant was called “El Mexico”, they actually specialized in Mexican, Italian, and Argentinean food. Go figure. This was no Mexico Tipico… Which actually makes sense if Mexico Tipico means “typical mexico” (but I’m not sure if that’s right or not, so whatever). The gnocchi were good but the sauce wasn’t the best. Oh well, it was still much better than my chicken nuggets, just not as good as my coconut pasta. Once again I checked out the beer menu. They had a large selection, unlike the last place that I ate at. At every restaurant I’ve been to someone has ordered some drink and it looks like red beer. Looking over the drink menu I found what I had been seeing all of these other people get. It’s called a “Potsdamer”. Potsdam is another city in Germany. The description was “red lemonade with beer”. Hmmm. I decided to go for it – why not? It was actually pretty good! Tasted like strawberry/lemon beer. More strawberry, less lemon. I liked it. The beer they used was Warsteiner. Sounds German enough. They also had a drink called “Diesel”, which is coke and beer. I think we have those in the states, but I’m not sure. I’ll have that for another time. So, two successful restaurant trips in one day! And I spoke in German the whole time! Go me!
After dinner I headed back to the apartment to do what I’ve been doing every night since I’ve gotten here – watch The Office. I find it’s a great way to end the day.
Sunday I slept really late for lack of better things to do. Then I cleaned my room a bit and downloaded the pictures that I took the last few days. And now I’m here finishing up this letter. Woohoo.
Friday was a really short day at work. Annika and I went over exactly what I will be doing for the first week or two. She showed me the samples of soil that I will be working with and she explained to me some of the background information about what we are studying. It was pretty interesting. I wasn’t sure how excited I would be to be working with soil, but so far it has caught my interested, so I’m excited to start working. We got done with everything around 1.30pm and she said that I was free to leave whenever. Because my office is the only place where I have internet access, I stayed there until about 5pm talking with a few people online, checking email, looking up travel information (cost of train rides, flights, etc), etc. Unfortunately the building my office is in is closed over the weekend so I am not able to access my computer over the weekend.
After coming back from the office and relaxing a while I set off to find some dinner. I have been making it a point to fix breakfast and lunch in my apartment and then go out for dinner. I walked around the Altstadt for a while looking at different food options. The Altstadt is a large square in the “downtown” area of Cottbus. Altstadt means “old city”, so it is the part of town that was there from the beginning. There are a few restaurants around the square (one that I have already eaten at) and some ice cream parlors and the like. After looking around at all of the restaurants I decided not to eat at them because it would look really weird if I went in all by myself. Many were very crowded and it would just look sad if I went in and took up a four person table by myself. I walked around some of the smaller streets looking for a restaurant but again, I didn’t really feel comfortable eating in many of them alone. Finally, after a while of looking, I found a place that had a lot of tables outside, many of which were empty. I decided to eat there. I ordered this delicious pasta – it was like fettuccini shrimp scampi and the sauce tasted exactly like coconut! I knew there was coconut in the dish somewhere because I saw it on the menu, but I had no idea that it would be a coconut sauce. It was really good! I also ordered a few beers – Beck’s. I think we have those in the states, but that’s all they had. It was a fancier place but I didn’t feel like paying for any nicer drinks. After that I headed back to the apartment and watched a few more episodes of The Office.
It was surprising to see everything close so early on a Friday night. It was kind of sad because I had planned on checking out a lot of the shops and stuff in the city. Oh well. I ended up going to bed pretty early for lack of anything else to do (I was pretty tired though) and was then woken up at about 2am by other students hanging out in the apartments and making lots of noise. Reminded me of home, hah. Except I wouldn’t be sleeping that early. Oh well.
Saturday I slept in until noon. I decided to sleep in and then go explore this really large park that is south of the city. I left around noon and packed my backpack with my books, some snacks, water, and my camera. The plan was to find a nice place in the park to read and relax. I headed out with my map and started my journey. I passed through many smaller parks on the way to the large one that I was looking for. I was walking through this one park that ran along the river when I came upon this large group of people with lots of 90’s music playing. The music was in English, which made me happy. When Germans listen to English music they are a decade or more behind – it’s pretty amusing. Turns out it was a radio station putting on something in the park. Oddly enough, everyone was carrying rubber ducks with them. I looked and the ducks had writing on them – numbers and letters – but no words or anything. Huh. Well, I kept on walking, passing all the people, until I got to a bridge that had a large sign on it that said “START”. I’m pretty sure that they had a giant rubber duck race in the river! It makes sense because when I saw all the people, there were workers removing this huge inflatable tube that stretched across the river – that must have been the finish line and the way that they kept all of the ducks from continuing to float along the river. I’m really upset I missed it – it would have been awesome to see all these yellow rubber ducks racing down the river! I’ll keep my eyes open to see if it happens again.
I keep going through the parks, walking along the river most of the way. I was walking and saw these people standing off to the side of the path next to the river. They were looking at something so I stopped to investigate. There, a few feet away from the water on the bank, is a giant otter! It had to be about the size of Pokey! First I wasn’t sure if it was an otter or a beaver – it had big teeth and really long whiskers, but no large tail, just a little thin one. Without the huge tail I assumed it had to be an otter. The people were trying to feed it something and a few more of them came out of the water to investigate. I began to take out my camera but I think I scared them off or something because they all ran back into the water. The people left but I stayed to take some pictures of them swimming in the river. A few minutes later they all started to come out of the water again. There were probably 5 or 6 total. You could see at the bottom of the nearby trees where they had been biting the bark. I continue taking pictures and this other family comes up, lead by two little girls and their dog. The dog sees the otters and immediately starts barking and chases them into the water. It was pretty funny. For the next 15 minutes the family comes up and we all watch the otters and watch their dog bark at them and try to run into the water the catch them. At one point the otter and dog were about 1 foot apart from each other and sniffing each other. I have a great picture of it – pretty funny. I wanted to ask the family how to say “otter” in German, but I never did. I’ll have to look it up.
I continued walking and found a planetarium. It was closed but I might check it out before the summer is over. The place looked really run down, but it could still be interesting, even if it is all in German. Annika explained that Cottbus is a really poor town with bad infrastructure. The planetarium showed that well. She told me that it used to be a big mining town – that was where most of the people that lived in it worked. After the Reunification of Germany, many of the mines were shut down, people lost their jobs, and the city hasn’t really recovered ever since. Most things here are covered in graffiti and there are many buildings that are just abandoned with graffiti everywhere and their windows broken in. Kind of sad. Throughout the Planetarium Park they had scaled down models of the plants that were placed throughout the park at scaled down distances from the planetarium, which represented the sun. Many of the larger planets were covered in graffiti and torn up. I saw Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Uranus was really far from the planetarium, way after I stopped looking out for them. Not quite sure where Pluto was, or why they would even put it up because it is so tiny and far away from the planetarium, hah.
Continuing on my walk toward the park, I started walking down this large street and then stopped for a minute to check my map. This man on a bike rode up and stopped and said something to me in German. I told him, in German, that I didn’t speak it well so he switched to English. I assumed that he needed help or had a question because he saw me with my giant map pulled out, but it turned out he stopped to help me because he could tell I was lost a little. How nice! He spoke some broken English, I spoke some broken German, and he pointed me in the right direction and gave me some background information on the park and what all was inside of it. It was really cool that he stopped and helped.
As I continued to the park the sky started to get dark and I could tell it was going to eventually rain. I ended up finding the park and began to walk and explore it. There was supposed to be a large dirt pyramid in the park, which I ended up finding. I also wanted to see the “water pyramid” that was supposed to be there as well. It is a very large dirt pyramid that is in the middle of this lake. It’s really cool! It’s essentially this big island but it is all just a giant pyramid that sticks out of the water. Pretty neat-o. By the time I found that it was raining pretty steadily and I decided to try and find the café that was supposed to be in the back of the park. I started following the signs that lead toward the Schloß because they had a picture of a fork and spoon on them, which I figured meant food. I eventually found the café by the time it was pouring rain. Apparently everyone in the park was headed that way to get out of the rain so it was pretty crowded. I successfully ordered a cappuccino and a piece of cake entirely in German. I asked her where to pay, how much the post cards cost, and a few other things all in German! I was very proud of myself. I can work my way through a restaurant in German, which is pretty cool. Kudos me.
Anyhow, after the café I explored the rest of the park. It stopped raining and sun came out again so it was nice. I spent good while there and took lots of pictures. It was a really cool place. There’s a castle (well, a large palace/house) in the back of the park and I walked around that and all of the other buildings around it. There were two people, a man and a woman, dressed up as the people who lived in the palace. I avoided running into them because I didn’t want them to talk and embarrass me in German, hah. I’m not that good yet…
About 6.30pm I ended up back at my apartment. I showered (because I was dirty from walking in the park while it was raining) and got all nice to go out to dinner. By myself. I found this Mexican restaurant on the way back to my apartment that looked good and it stayed open late, so that’s really what I was looking for. I started out of the apartment building and it started to rain. Then pour. Then torrential downpour. I had my little umbrella but ended just making a circle around the block and headed back inside. Yesterday I bought some chicken nuggets at the store just for this occasion. I don’t have a freezer, just a mini-fridge, but I figured they would be okay because they are precooked and it’s okay if they thaw a little. Well, I opened the box and found that “chicken nuggets” in Germany are really cut up pieces of uncooked chicken that are breaded. Go figure. Apparently Germany isn’t big on the frozen foods. Probably for the best. Well, I cooked them in my frying pan (Annika let me borrow cooking stuff). Turns out they were gross and as soon as I started cooking them the sun came out. I decided to throw the nuggets away and head back to the restaurant that I set off to in the first place.
The restaurant was good. I ordered gnocchi (potato pasta) with chicken. Yes, although the restaurant was called “El Mexico”, they actually specialized in Mexican, Italian, and Argentinean food. Go figure. This was no Mexico Tipico… Which actually makes sense if Mexico Tipico means “typical mexico” (but I’m not sure if that’s right or not, so whatever). The gnocchi were good but the sauce wasn’t the best. Oh well, it was still much better than my chicken nuggets, just not as good as my coconut pasta. Once again I checked out the beer menu. They had a large selection, unlike the last place that I ate at. At every restaurant I’ve been to someone has ordered some drink and it looks like red beer. Looking over the drink menu I found what I had been seeing all of these other people get. It’s called a “Potsdamer”. Potsdam is another city in Germany. The description was “red lemonade with beer”. Hmmm. I decided to go for it – why not? It was actually pretty good! Tasted like strawberry/lemon beer. More strawberry, less lemon. I liked it. The beer they used was Warsteiner. Sounds German enough. They also had a drink called “Diesel”, which is coke and beer. I think we have those in the states, but I’m not sure. I’ll have that for another time. So, two successful restaurant trips in one day! And I spoke in German the whole time! Go me!
After dinner I headed back to the apartment to do what I’ve been doing every night since I’ve gotten here – watch The Office. I find it’s a great way to end the day.
Sunday I slept really late for lack of better things to do. Then I cleaned my room a bit and downloaded the pictures that I took the last few days. And now I’m here finishing up this letter. Woohoo.
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