A Long-Overdue Update

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry I've been so absent these past few weeks- it's been a busy month. At the beginning of the month, I had a million things due (and by 'a million', I mean two papers and a presentation), then I was in Prague with my bffl (best friend for life) Katie, and then I had an oral final for one of my classes, then I had a performance for one of my classes, and then everyone left.

I'll break it down for you:

Prague

Katie and I hadn't seen each other since our birthdays in September, and we decided to meet up somewhere, and we somehow (after entertaining the idea of just about every other city in Europe) ended up deciding on Prague. We were in Prague in the summer of '08, so it wasn't a totally new experience for us, but it was still a lot of fun. We didn't do so many touristey things, and instead wandered around their Christmas markets, drank tea, found bagels (!!), ate Indian food, and went to a museum about Communism.

It was a good weekend, if stressful- I flew, and my flight was delayed, and finding Katie at the train station was a struggle, and then we found out I had booked our hostel for thursday and friday, not friday and saturday, so our reservation had been lost. Thankfully we were directed to another hostel...across the river, not 10 minutes from where we had just come from.

Bagels were a huge success, in that we found them and then ate a bunch of them and then came back the next day early in the morning to buy some to take home with us. The Communism museum was also something I would (and have) highly recommend- hearing the Czech version rather than from the American point of view was very interesting.

Oral Final/Performance:

My oral final was in the class I have with Herr Dörr- it's a reading, listening and understanding course where we write a lot, and practice reading articles and such things that increase our proficiency. So the final consisted of picking two of the articles we had read during the semester and reading them aloud to him, and then he would ask us questions about the Inhalt- the content, and the Vokabel- vocabulary. I was very nervous and prepared for it as such. I thought it went fairly well- he told me that my reading was very nice (I tried to hard to use all I had learned in both my phonetik courses) and, I'm warning you right now that the next sentence is me bragging: I was told by Herr Doerr that Dan and I had the best oral finals of the class. I felt so validated!

The performance was for one of my Phonetik classes I'm in- it was a performance of excerpts of Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language" or "Die Schreckliche Deutsche Sprache"- which is really funny, especially if you've ever tried to learn German. We were all assigned parts to practice and then we performed it in front of Heidelberg alumni on Friday. I also sang this little ditty here. That was most nerve-wracking for me, because it was an a cappella solo. We did well, I think.

Everyone leaving:
After Mark Twain on Friday, Haleigh and I headed to Annika's to make dinner, exchange Christmas presents, and then bake cookies before heading to Aaron's for a good-bye party. It was surreal, the whole weekend, saying goodbye to everyone, even when we were helping Annika pack up. After dinner, presents, some baking and some cleaning/packing, we headed to Aaron's where we met up with Aaron, Stefan (his roommate), Mattheis (Aaron's Sprachpartner, my and Dan's friend from church), Brian and Dan. Megan and Anne were in Paris for Megan's birthday, so they were unfortunately unable to come.

We ate pizza and drank beer and then at the end of the night said bye to Aaron and Stefan Mattheis and Brian, and headed back to Ringstraße with Annika and Dan to spend the night with Annika finishing packing and cleaning and all that needed to be done. After waiting outside her apartment for a while since she forgot her keys and it was two thirty, we got in and packed and cleaned with Annika until four, when we went to bed for 45 minutes in order to get her up and to the train station to meet Aaron and go to the airport.

I forgot to mention earlier that I fell down some icy stairs Friday morning (I have some great bruises). This will come into play in a few seconds. We gathered all of Annika's stuff up, including the bags of things we were taking from her and a box that was our Christmas present from her, we headed to the Hauptbahnhof, booking it because we were a tad late. In our hurry, I slipped down some stairs outside of the Ringstraße building (like I said, awesome bruises) and fell, meaning I had to limp power walk the rest of the way to the station. We got her on, and then found out which car Aaron was in to go say bye to him. I may or may not have cried as soon as the train pulled away...

Haleigh and I got home around six, and immediately went to bed. Later that day, Brian and Dan and I hung out since it was Dan's last night- watched Flight of the Conchords, went to Yufka's for dinner, and talked until it was time for him to go back to his apartment to get picked up. Mark left the next day, as did Megan- Mark and Haleigh and I hung out on Sunday night, and then Haleigh and I went over to Megan's in the morning to say bye to her.

All in all, a sad weekend. It was really not fun to say goodbye to my friends I've made here- it feels like I've known them forever, but it's only been three and a half months! It's pretty insane. The upside is that now I have friends all over the country and have more of an excuse to go travel to the Midwest and East Coast now. See how positive I'm being?

Christmas is coming!

A Story About How...My Life is Like an Action Movie

Here's a story for you all:

I nearly die almost every time I try to do anything in my room. I cannot tell you how often I nearly fall off my bed or out of the window. It's a death trap. Much like the Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof, but that's another story.

This morning I decided to be productive and do some more laundry, as our washer was recently repaired and it is now a viable option as opposed to the sink. I did the cycle, and as I usually do, decided to hang it to dry in my room. This is because a) it's easy b) it makes my room smell good c) it's good for the environment d) our dryer is a piece of crap and e) the dryer takes forever and I don't have that kind of time.

As I was hanging my sheet across my curtain rod, balancing on the edges of my bed so it doesn't collapse again, I lost my balance and fell into the window. Thank goodness a) my bed didn't crash and b) the window wasn't open/didn't break. I don't actually think I could have broken the window, but it's still unnerving, especially since this happens often. Every morning when I, half-asleep, balance on the edges of my bed to crack open my window, inevitably, I teeter and catch myself just in time not to fall and give myself a concussion.

Point is, I live my life on the edge. I do no-excuses laundry...

A True German Thanksgiving...er, what?

Well, as I'm sure you all knew, yesterday was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is probably one of my most favorite holidays of all. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, it's awesome, but I also really love Thanksgiving. I love that all my extended family gets together in Berkeley to spend time together and be loud and rambunctious, and I love that I also get to have a Thanksgiving with my other side of the family that is smaller and I love that my mom, stepdad, brother and I now have a tradition of serving Thanksgiving in the City (San Francisco).

Enough about how great my family is, let me tell you what thanksgiving is like in Heidelberg: anticlimactic. I got up, went to work, went to my internship (where I got to make a bear hand puppet out of a brown paper lunch bag and I got to color and it was really fun). I watched the Macy's Day Parade online with Haleigh which was awesome because it was so traditional and

American, and we laughed at the cheese factor of Matt Lauer and Katie Couric. Matt Lauer actually said "what's more American than Pizza?"- there was an actual pizza team! What did they do? twirl pizza dough.

Our program had a dinner for us at a restaurant in the area (fun fact: they've had Thanksgiving in the same restaurant for 24 years), which was a lot of fun- we dressed up a little, and got to talk in English with our professors who pretend like they don't know English the rest of the year. My table was especially fun- Aaron, his parents and his Pfarrer, Frau Heckmann (our resident director), Herr Doerr (the most amazing German Professor ever), Brian and Dan.

Dinner was pretty good for it being a German Thanksgiving, but it was nowhere near as good as a real Thanksgiving dinner!

It snowed on Thanksgiving, although it was only for a little while, and it didn't stick. It was still really exciting for me. As you can see from the pictures, it's Christmas in Heidelberg! The last one shows the show on the top of a mountain in town. It's unbelievably beautiful here right now. I'm loving the snow!

France again and Harry Potter

So last Friday Dan and Brian and I were going to go to France, but Dan got sick on Thursday night, so Brian and I went alone. It's free for us through our semester pass which lets us use public transportation for free within a certain area, so it became a premiere destination :) It's about two hours by train, and I created a handy-dandy googlemaps image to show you how you'd get there if you drove.

It was a ton of fun! Wissembourg is a pretty little town, but we knew nothing about it, so we spent a few hours walking around. I guess you could say we got lost, but because we had no idea where we were going, we didn't count it.

Brian had been craving a Big Mac, so we looked for the McDonald's that we saw as we were pulling into Wissembourg from the train. It became a game of "Find that McDonald's!" We found it, so yes, I ate McDonald's in France. It's not my proudest moment, but Brian enjoyed it so

much that I don't regret it!

We kept walking around after McDonald's, trying to find the Old City. Thankfully, Wissembourg has a bunch of handy maps of the city all over the place, so we were able to check our progress often enough that we eventually found it, and it was very cute!

Funny thing about us wandering around...we eventually wandered into Germany. No joke. It was awesome! We hopped the border a few times for pictures, and to be able to say we walked to Germany from France and back. It wasn't a particularly warm or good day for tourism, but it's cute and free, and I'd go again!

On Wednesday, Harry Potter 7 opened in Germany, and you can bet (especially because I'm telling you) that I was there! A group of us went to Mannheim to see it, and it was totally worth it. Not only because it was fun to be out with friends, but also because we got the bragging rights of seeing it two days earlier than those plebeians in the US!

Overall, it was a good week, even though yesterday I had to spend 6 hours at a choir practice for our show next week. The choir that

no one wants to be in anymore...but hey- joy, right?

Catch up!

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been so long. Some of you need to cool it and calm down about my 3 week hiatus. I've been busy, and I wanted to stay chronological with my posts.

A few weeks ago, I got to go to Wiesbaden which is near Frankfurt to visit with some friends from home: The Osiers (who are from Folsom but are living in Wiesbaden), my friend Michelle and her husband Daniel (they live in Cologne, but I know Michelle from middle school youth group where she was my small group leader) and another friend, Diane. We all know each other from Folsom, and joked that we were having a Lakeside reunion, since we all went to Lakeside Church in Folsom. It was a great time! I also got to visit the commissary which was nice, where I got some (and by some I mean a lot) of American food.

We also found a great Mexican place! It was seriously so delicious

The week after that was Halloween, and I worked at the DAI's Halloween party, which was a blast. I got to work the pumpkin carving table, so I was up to my elbows in pumpkin guts all night, but I got to hang out with some cool kids, practice my German, and meet some Germans, so it was a success. I made friends with a family I met there, which was really fun, and we spoke in a mix of German and English which was an added bonus.

I visited my friend Ashley in Mainz the next day, where she's teaching English through a Fullbright there. We played some Tischtennis (okay, she played some Tischtennis) and wandered around Mainz and went to the Gutenberg Muesum (GO THERE! I'd completely go back, we didn't get to see it all because I had to catch a train). It was great to see her, and also fun to be shown around a town by someone who lives there, as opposed to touring with a guide, or alone without any real idea of what's up.

The same day, when I got back to HD, Dan and I went to a game night at the church we go to, which was really fun. I didn't necessarily get to know as many Germans as hoped, but I definitely had a good time (I even made it into the message the next day).

Halloween was the next day, and Haleigh, Anne, Annika, three other girls and I (although really, everyone else did a lot more work than I did so I can't take credit) made some delicious pumpkin soup and had a mini Halloween party.

My grandparents came the next day, and my week got super busy! Monday my grandma and her friend Diane got in, and then my step grandparents got in on Tuesday night so I didn't see them until Wednesday. On Thursday, they all cooked dinner for my friends and me at my building, which was really nice; everyone got to meet everyone else and eat delicious food. We spent Friday shopping (I got a very nice coat from my grandma, but was unable to find shoes. It seems large footed women are prejudiced against even in Europe) and then I met up with some friends later to try (operative word here) to go bowling.

Ah, bowling. In German, Bowling, or Kegeln. We knew where a place was, so a bunch of us met up and walked there, but since it was a Friday night, the lanes had all been reserved. Megan remembered a different place in a different part of town, so we walked around HD for about 3 hours looking for a place to go bowling, and ended up stopping at Rewe (a grocery store) to get chocolate, and then heading back to the Wartburg (my building) for leftovers and talking. We talked for a long time, and it was a lot of fun, though bowling never was achieved. We have plans to make it happen though.

The next day my grandparents and I went to Baden Baden which was a nice town, and we basically just spend the day at the baths. It was certainly an unexpected and interesting experience for me. We went to a Beethoven concert the next night, and it was a really good decision. The room was beautiful, the orchestra talented, and the tickets were reasonably priced. On Monday I had breakfast with everyone and said goodbye, which was sad, but I had a good week with them!

Stay tuned for my adventures in France!

Salzburg through photos

A weekend in Salzburg

So you might remember me telling you that we were given German Rail Passes by AJY, and that I used a day to go to Oktoberfest. Well, I have 4 days left, and need to use them by the end of the month, so I need to travel, and fast! Luckily, Annika had a hankering to go to Salzburg. Haleigh, Anne, Annika and I decided to go last weekend.

We left on Friday night, caught a train from Heidelberg to Munich and then were going to take a train from Munich to Salzburg, and get in somewhere around midnight. We caught the train to Munich no problemo, chug chug chuging away (except trains don't run on coal, so there was no actual chugging) but then we stop for a prolonged time in Stuttgart. We hear that we are going to be delayed 10 minutes...then 20...5 which would have been fine, if we had more than 23 minutes between trains. Which we didn't, I'm sure you're surprised to hear. Once we got to Munich, we ran like crazy in case our train was still there, but it was just pulling away. We made haste to the ticket machine, and got our tickets for the next train to Salzburg.

After wandering around the train station for a while, we got nervous we'd miss our train, so we hopped on and found our compartment (awesome!), met a guy named Sam from Boston who was under the impression that four women traveling alone needed his help to get in their compartment, which was nice of him, but unnecessary. We thoroughly enjoyed the compartment, and got to Salzburg at 1:17 in the morning. We got out our GoogleMaps directions, ready to head to the hostel....aaaand realized it would take us an hour and a minute, which was not a big deal, we were just like "well, let's hop to it!"

We got a little lost on the streets of Salzburg, and it ended up taking us about two and a half hours to get to our hostel. We weren't stressed or anything, we were just ready for bed, but the weirdest part was how fine we all were with the fact that we were wandering around, without really knowing where we were going. It was great, I had a blast. We all agreed it was a good thing Megan wasn't there (by her own admission) she would not have dealt with that situation in the same way.

Someone was walking in the door as we got to the hostel, so we didn't have to worry about getting in (which turned out to be our downfall, but we'll get to that in a little bit). Went to the reception desk which was (unsurprisingly) not open. We called the number posted, to no avail. Eventually it was almost 4 and we needed sleep. Since we had no other options, we found a room off the foyer that had a few chairs in it, and we dove right in, Anne and Annika taking the chairs, Haleigh and I taking the marble floor (so warm I almost felt cold). We snuggled down (as much as one can snuggle with marble in a room with motion sensitive lights) and fell asleep.

I managed to sleep for about an hour before I woke up, and saw that Anne and Annika were both awake too. I sat up, the lights flickered on, and we sort of sat there, cold and tired for a little while. Eventually we put on all the clothes we brought with us, Haleigh and I laid our bath towels down to create a buffer between the ice cold marble and us, and drifted off to sleep for a short time. We woke up a little while later and once the reception desk was open, checked in, and the lady asked us "Warum habt ihr die Glocke nicht geklingelt?"- " why didn't you ring the bell?"

Apparently, had we not been able to get in behind the young man walking in at the same time as us, we would have seen a bell that would have rung to her room, and she could have checked us in that night. Well, c'est la vie. We paid for our nights (we still had to pay for the night before, due to their cancellation policy, which was a bummer but understandable), got our linen, came back downstairs to eat breakfast and then jumped in bed for a nap.
Once we woke up from our three hour nap in the hostel, we got ready and explored the city! This consisted of us going to the Altstadt and looking at historical-ey things, like Mozart’s Geburtshaus where we took a picture and moved on (that museum=lame). We also found a Flohmarkt where Haleigh and I bought some rings and then moved onto the Festung. The Festung is the castle, and it’s got quite a hike to get up to the top, something we did gladly instead of paying 10 Euro for the bus thing. We stopped at the world’s largest Amber museum, may or may not have (hint: it happened) purchased a present for Annika’s upcoming birthday, and enjoyed the warmth of the museum before venturing out back into the cold and up the mountain.

We got to the top, and really enjoyed the view of what was directly below us and fog. Look…clouds! It was a chilly day, let me tell you. Something happened to my foot (shocked, aren’t you, Mom?) when I was at the top which made getting down the hill difficult, but we got to see the legit Sound of Music nunnery (it was founded in 714! It’s the oldest continuously running nunnery) which was pretty sweet. After we got to the bottom, we were cold and ready to eat. We remembered we had seen a restaurant earlier that day that had delicious-sounding Kürbiscremesuppe (pumpkin cream soup), and decided to go find it again, which was such a good decision. Annika and I shared a bowl of soup and pumpkin gnocci, which was all really good. The soup was aptly described by Anne as being so good “you want to cry and eat it forever.”

We walked back to our hostel and all got ready for bed, luxurating in the fact that we had beds and heat and a room that was meant for sleeping in! We talked for a while, basically having a sleepover (Anne even French-braided my hair!) and enjoyed going to bed early.

Sunday we decided to go do a few things we had missed on Saturday and then catch a train around 13:30 to head home. First we went out back of our hostel and reenacted the Wizard’s Chess Harry Potter scene with the giant board of chess pieces, and then reenacted “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” in the pitiful gazebo (wooden structure with plastic chairs in it).

We went back into the city and got our Mozartkugeln, tried to see another church (mass was in session, so we weren’t able to though) and went to the gardens where Maria and the children run through singing Do Re Me- a great decision. First of all, we found a garden of statues we all had to pose with, we found a super neat playground, and used continuous shot for us skipping through the covered ways, AND we found a maze like in Harry Potter and reenacted scenes from HP. It was fantastic.

About the park: there was this crazy looking slide we found (we were above it, looking at the gardens, and we saw this crazy looking slide. “that looks so crazy. [pause] that looks dangerous. [pause] let’s go!” We did, and it was quite the adventure to get up it. First of all, there were platforms you had to crawl up, it wasn’t possible to just use a ladder (although there was a particularly useless ladder there, taunting us at it’s potential usefulness, had the architect thought it out), meaning we had to heave our bodies up each level, precariously balancing and grasping at boards and beams to gain some control. Second of all, it got smaller as we climbed up it, a fact we should have realized when we saw it, since it was a triangle frame. It wasn’t exactly built for use by four adult sized women. Whatever, we did it anyway, and it was fine. Since getting up was so difficult, we decided we HAD to leave via the slide (something we weren’t planning on doing, since it was a particularly wet day in Salzburg). Anne didn’t want to slide down it (though she said she’d take pictures of us), but we agreed she’d take too long to get down so we peer pressured her into going first (adulthood at it’s finest).

After the park, we went to Schweedy, a Swedish candy store that opened at one, and we definitely didn’t pick our train based on when it opened, because that would have been silly. Annika was psyched to see some candy she hadn’t seen since Swedish Bible School; we blazed through there and moved it to the Hbf, caught the train, and found a compartment that wasn’t reserved until Munich. When we got to Munich, we tried to find more seats, but were unsuccessful, and spent the next few hours crouching/standing/sitting in the aisle next to the compartments.

All in all, a satisfying weekend, despite the problemos we had initially. We all had a great time, laughed so much everyone knew we were Americans (typisch Amerikanerinnen!) and experienced things that were unexpectedly awesome- a trip full of beautiful mishaps, as Annika would say.