Hello alle,
I miss you all, really I do. I just can't seem to keep up with everything I want/need to be doing. It's honestly the travel that stresses me out the most, but I've also been looking at stuff for the summer. It's very disheartening to write your CV/resume and realize you've done nothing. But that's depressing news!
So when I last left you, it was mid-October. Oh, how time flies! We did no travelling the next weekends, which is probably why I did not end up posting (I generally try to do one a week, I swear!). We had a nice quiet weekend at home. I organized a beer pong (technically Beirut, but whatever) tournament, which was great because everyone was home. We also went to the Flomarkt (flea market) again, which is always fun. The weather was nice and we explored Dresden a little bit. We found a beautiful park and I took some great pictures, which will be up on my photobucket whenever I get the chance. We had our first biology exam at the end of October, and it was a joke. There were yes/no questions! YES/NO QUESTIONS ON A SCIENCE CLASS'S EXAM. There just isn't a whole lot to report over the last two weekend in October.
Halloween, a huge party holiday in the US, was really stupid here. I was not in the spirit, as I knew it would not be the same and I was trying to be more Deutsch in my Halloween separation. All we really did was go to the student's bar and have a beer on Halloween, which is fine with me. I'm too poor to buy a costume anyway!
The next week was stressful, as we hadn't travelled in a while and we were going to Dublin on the weekend. Also, we had a hell-day with class from 7:30 to 12:00 and lab from 1:30 to 5:00. It was terrible, as expected, but clearly I lived. It was worth the suffering to go to Dublin this past weekend!
Dublin was a little different than the last trips we've been on because it was just Zeynep and I. We had a reasonable flight at 1:30 from Berlin to Dublin, so we took a bus on Friday at ten to get to the Berlin airport. We went through security, did all that, then took our flights. Zeynep told me right before we took off that she HATES planes (I was surprised, she travells internationally quite a bit), so that was a minor bump in the road. Everything was fine, obviously, so we arrived in Ireland at about 3:30pm. Of course we were starving, so we went to a pub to eat some traditional Irish food. I had bangers and mash, which is like basically German potatoes and sausage, but it was delicious. Then we went back to the hostel, walked around some and sat on the River Liffey to enjoy the nightfall. We went into a pub, grabbed a pint just to be Irish, and went to bed early.
On Saturday we started by walking to the Guinness Storehouse, which was quite the trek from our hostel. We got a little lost, but we left with plenty of time, and we saw some sights we wouldn't have otherwise. Lots of beautiful old churches in Dublin. The storehouse was amazing. So much information on the history of Guinness and just the brewing process, I was fascinated. With the admission price you get a free pint, so we got that on the top floor in their gravity bar with a 360 degree view of Dublin. The weather was nice and it was beautiful to look out over the city.
Next we went on a free walking tour, which was great. I have done them in two (maybe three?) cities so far, and the guides are great and it's so nice to have some background on the history and the people in the city. Our guide was a native Dubliner, and was very sweet. We got some food with her afterward, and she explained the rules of rugby to us while we watched Ireland vs. South Africa. Rugby is the most violent game in the entire world, and they wear NO PADDING. *Shudders* It was about six by the time we were done eating, so we went back to the hostel to rest.
I don't normally do pub crawls, but Dublin was definitely a great place to do it! There were a lot of people who were fun to talk to, and I enjoyed the atmosphere of all the places they took us. Of course they were all like "O'Neil's" or some such. Hilariously stereotypical. We ended at a club sort of thing, but I honestly do not like house music. That is one thing about Europe I dislike- I'm a much bigger fan of hip-hop (Blackmusic auf Deutsch) for dancing and party-going. Zeynep and I had been up since seven, so we were exhausted. We went home pretty early and went to bed.
Sunday was frustrating because the bus didn't come on time, so we had to take a taxi to the airport. That also used up most of our money, so we were just hanging out waiting to go back to Germany. We discovered we had to have our boarding passes stamped because we weren't EU citizens, and had to run from our gate back through security and back to the gate in fifteen minutes, but we made it. Barely. What now, ghetto European airlines?! Take that! We arrived back in Germany at about one and took a bus back to Dresden at two. We got home and I lazed about for the rest of the day, as per my usual Sunday routine.
I started writing this on Monday and now it's Wednesday, and I SWEAR I am going to post this before the weekend. We have our week-long break (holiday, Urlaub, whatever) starting on Friday. Our flight leaves at eight, so we're catching the bus to Berlin at 4:45AM. That should be a great time. I'm running around doing last minute things like printing out directions to the hostel, thinking about places I want to go in the cities we're visiting, and doing laundry. We also have a cultural excursion today in twenty minutes, so I have to go to that. I'm honestly really stressed right now and I'm mad at myself that I left everything to the l ast minute, as per my procrastinator's nature. That's honestly all I can say right now. I won't be on the computer during the week long break, because I don't want to bring it and it get stolen, so you'll have to do without me for a little while. Miss you all terribly.
Tschuss!
Monday, November 8, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
A Weekend at Home, Exams, and Munich Round II
So I'm terrible at updating this thing, forgive me! I'll probably end up glossing over some of the two weeks that have passed, but that's just a reason for you all to ask me questions when I come home! :)
Our chemistry exam went well enough, of course I made silly mistakes and could've done better as per my usual academic performance. The rest of that week is a blur of being relieved that my exam was done. We had a really nice weekend at home, I did laundry and cleaned my room (still looking for a vacuum though). I meant to do some kitchen stuff but I still haven't gotten around to it. The main event of the weekend was making chili, which was a multi-hour process. I bought a kilo of ground beef, and we added red onions, white onions, yellow and orange pepper, and maybe some other stuff. I just used some tomato sauce I knew I liked and found something I thought was tomato paste (it was! my German must be getting better...). We made it Saturday day and let it simmer until dinner. Then we ate chili for most of Sunday and Monday. I really liked staying in, and I'm excited to that this weekend.
The next week was just regular classes, as per the normal. I've started to keep a journal to remember the specific days, and it really helps. Thursday night we left again for Munich, but this time with longer plans.
Of course we decided to be cheap and have a four hour layover at a random train station (from 12:00 AM to 4:00 AM), and I have decided I am never doing that EVER AGAIN. Sleeping on the ground is awful, sleeping in the cold is not restful, and doing both is painful on a level I cannot describe. At least we were all together, I suppose. Anyhow, we got into Munich at about 9:45 and went to the hostel. We checked in and all that jazz and got food. We went back to the train station to get a train to Fussen to see the Neuschwanstein castle (DISNEY CASTLE!). The train ride is about two hours and the southern German country side looks SUSPICIOUSLY like southern Indiana. We got to Fussen and walked around a very cute German town and ate a nice lunch. Then we took a bus up to Schwangau, the town at the base of the castle.
We were considering a horse carriage ride up to the castle, but it was very expensive, we're young, and I actually hate horses, so that decision wasn't too difficult. The walk up really provided some great opportunities for pictures, which are going to be on my photobucket by the time I post this HOPEFULLY. The foliage was just breathtaking, and the castle really is a fairytale. We took an audio tour of the castle, which is about 35 minutes long. It was very crowded, but still beautiful. The inside is so lavishly decorated. I think Americans have a hard time realizing just how wealthy the European royalty was until you are confronted with it face to face. Everything is gold, silver, satin, jewels. We found a cool bridge that gave us a great vantage point for taking pictures of the castle, then went back home. The train ride home was delayed about a half hour, which felt like forever.
When we got back some people went out, but I was very tired from the horrible train station "sleep" so I stayed in. On Saturday we woke up and ate breakfast at the hostel. Then we went on a three hour walking tour of Munich. Of course I forgot my camera, but it was rainy and cold anyway. The tour was super interesting though and we had a great tour guide. Then we went back to the hostel, ate a quick lunch, and went to the Bayern game. The soccer game was amazing and so much fun. We stood for the whole game and cheered and they won 3-0, so it was just a good time. The pictures and videos are on photobucket and they do a better job of showing the enthusiasm of the crowd.
After the game we went to the Hofbrauhaus, Munich's oldest and most famous beer hall. It is very touristy, but still very fun with the Bavarian band and the waitresses in dindrl and waiters in lederhosen. We went back home after the Hofbrauhaus, and ended up sleeping pretty late on Sunday. Our train left at noon, so we didn't have too much more time to run around Munich. I can't decide whether I like Munich or Berlin better! I definitely want to go back to both, I feel like we only got a glance of each city.
This week (about two hours ago) I had my German midterm and another organic chemistry exam. Next week I have a bio exam on Monday, so I'm spending the week in the library, writing posts and uploading pictures as procrastination. For now, I am going to go home and make dinner for myself and my friend and maybe call a friend or two before I sleep. I have lab and class tomorrow, so I have to be well prepared.
Here's the link to my Munich pictures on photobucket!
http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z254/rusher116/Studying%20Abroad/Munich%20Round%20II/?start=40
Tschuss!
Our chemistry exam went well enough, of course I made silly mistakes and could've done better as per my usual academic performance. The rest of that week is a blur of being relieved that my exam was done. We had a really nice weekend at home, I did laundry and cleaned my room (still looking for a vacuum though). I meant to do some kitchen stuff but I still haven't gotten around to it. The main event of the weekend was making chili, which was a multi-hour process. I bought a kilo of ground beef, and we added red onions, white onions, yellow and orange pepper, and maybe some other stuff. I just used some tomato sauce I knew I liked and found something I thought was tomato paste (it was! my German must be getting better...). We made it Saturday day and let it simmer until dinner. Then we ate chili for most of Sunday and Monday. I really liked staying in, and I'm excited to that this weekend.
The next week was just regular classes, as per the normal. I've started to keep a journal to remember the specific days, and it really helps. Thursday night we left again for Munich, but this time with longer plans.
Of course we decided to be cheap and have a four hour layover at a random train station (from 12:00 AM to 4:00 AM), and I have decided I am never doing that EVER AGAIN. Sleeping on the ground is awful, sleeping in the cold is not restful, and doing both is painful on a level I cannot describe. At least we were all together, I suppose. Anyhow, we got into Munich at about 9:45 and went to the hostel. We checked in and all that jazz and got food. We went back to the train station to get a train to Fussen to see the Neuschwanstein castle (DISNEY CASTLE!). The train ride is about two hours and the southern German country side looks SUSPICIOUSLY like southern Indiana. We got to Fussen and walked around a very cute German town and ate a nice lunch. Then we took a bus up to Schwangau, the town at the base of the castle.
We were considering a horse carriage ride up to the castle, but it was very expensive, we're young, and I actually hate horses, so that decision wasn't too difficult. The walk up really provided some great opportunities for pictures, which are going to be on my photobucket by the time I post this HOPEFULLY. The foliage was just breathtaking, and the castle really is a fairytale. We took an audio tour of the castle, which is about 35 minutes long. It was very crowded, but still beautiful. The inside is so lavishly decorated. I think Americans have a hard time realizing just how wealthy the European royalty was until you are confronted with it face to face. Everything is gold, silver, satin, jewels. We found a cool bridge that gave us a great vantage point for taking pictures of the castle, then went back home. The train ride home was delayed about a half hour, which felt like forever.
When we got back some people went out, but I was very tired from the horrible train station "sleep" so I stayed in. On Saturday we woke up and ate breakfast at the hostel. Then we went on a three hour walking tour of Munich. Of course I forgot my camera, but it was rainy and cold anyway. The tour was super interesting though and we had a great tour guide. Then we went back to the hostel, ate a quick lunch, and went to the Bayern game. The soccer game was amazing and so much fun. We stood for the whole game and cheered and they won 3-0, so it was just a good time. The pictures and videos are on photobucket and they do a better job of showing the enthusiasm of the crowd.
After the game we went to the Hofbrauhaus, Munich's oldest and most famous beer hall. It is very touristy, but still very fun with the Bavarian band and the waitresses in dindrl and waiters in lederhosen. We went back home after the Hofbrauhaus, and ended up sleeping pretty late on Sunday. Our train left at noon, so we didn't have too much more time to run around Munich. I can't decide whether I like Munich or Berlin better! I definitely want to go back to both, I feel like we only got a glance of each city.
This week (about two hours ago) I had my German midterm and another organic chemistry exam. Next week I have a bio exam on Monday, so I'm spending the week in the library, writing posts and uploading pictures as procrastination. For now, I am going to go home and make dinner for myself and my friend and maybe call a friend or two before I sleep. I have lab and class tomorrow, so I have to be well prepared.
Here's the link to my Munich pictures on photobucket!
http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z254/rusher116/Studying%20Abroad/Munich%20Round%20II/?start=40
Tschuss!
Monday, October 4, 2010
Oktoberfest
So I'm going to write a shorter post about just this weekend, because I want to tell you all of my shenanigans before I forget about Oktoberfest, but I do have an organic exam tomorrow.
So the weekend started out on Thursday at 10:00 PM. We went to the train station and caught our train at 10:30, and rode for about two hours to Leipzig. We had a five hour layover in Leipzig, so we ate a large amount of McDonald's food and tried to stay warm. We all did fall asleep, but not at the same time so we were able to keep our seats in McDonald's. I read a little bit of my book (Black Hawk Down), which was really good. Then our train came in at 5:00 AM, and we got on a four hour ride from Leipzig to Munich. We got into Munich at 9:45, and went to the bank and the bathroom and all that stuff.
Next we walked toward the festival by following all the people in dirndl and lederhosen. I must say, lederhosen are strangely attractive on some people. We walked all around the festival. It really reminded me of the state fair, but with large beer tents in the middle. We went on a very cool roller coaster, and I missed Six Flags and wanted to go to Cedar Point. Then we were hungry, so we went to a beer tent.
The beer was really expensive, but quite delicious. I also had a really good pretzel. We had a lot of fun just listening in the beer tent, listening to the little polka band play on the platform. Be sure to check out the pictures on my photobucket, they look like postcards! Then we went back outside and wandered around and met a lot of people in the festival. We saw some of our other group, and generally had fun.
Then it was about ten thirty and the festival was shutting down. We decided to get something to eat at a small place until about 11:30, then went to wait in the train station until 5:00 AM again. It was very cold in the train station, so we all snuggled together. We saw a group of people that had brought a tent (so smart!). We got back into Dresden at 11:30 AM on Saturday, and I slept most of Saturday away to recover and be warm.
Sunday was laundry, phone calls, and studying day, and today is final-cram-oh-my-goodness-first-organic-test day (and we have our first lab tomorrow, which the timing really pisses me off). I'll let you know how the exam goes, but I need to get back to work!
So the weekend started out on Thursday at 10:00 PM. We went to the train station and caught our train at 10:30, and rode for about two hours to Leipzig. We had a five hour layover in Leipzig, so we ate a large amount of McDonald's food and tried to stay warm. We all did fall asleep, but not at the same time so we were able to keep our seats in McDonald's. I read a little bit of my book (Black Hawk Down), which was really good. Then our train came in at 5:00 AM, and we got on a four hour ride from Leipzig to Munich. We got into Munich at 9:45, and went to the bank and the bathroom and all that stuff.
Next we walked toward the festival by following all the people in dirndl and lederhosen. I must say, lederhosen are strangely attractive on some people. We walked all around the festival. It really reminded me of the state fair, but with large beer tents in the middle. We went on a very cool roller coaster, and I missed Six Flags and wanted to go to Cedar Point. Then we were hungry, so we went to a beer tent.
The beer was really expensive, but quite delicious. I also had a really good pretzel. We had a lot of fun just listening in the beer tent, listening to the little polka band play on the platform. Be sure to check out the pictures on my photobucket, they look like postcards! Then we went back outside and wandered around and met a lot of people in the festival. We saw some of our other group, and generally had fun.
Then it was about ten thirty and the festival was shutting down. We decided to get something to eat at a small place until about 11:30, then went to wait in the train station until 5:00 AM again. It was very cold in the train station, so we all snuggled together. We saw a group of people that had brought a tent (so smart!). We got back into Dresden at 11:30 AM on Saturday, and I slept most of Saturday away to recover and be warm.
Sunday was laundry, phone calls, and studying day, and today is final-cram-oh-my-goodness-first-organic-test day (and we have our first lab tomorrow, which the timing really pisses me off). I'll let you know how the exam goes, but I need to get back to work!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Dieses Wochen
I swear I was going to post this mid-week last week, but Blogger has been surprisingly awful. I'll just smash what I had written into the post about Prague.
This last week has been alright. I've decided Mondays are house chores days. I generally only have biology at eleven and German at two fifty, so it's pretty easy to get stuff done. I did laundry, cleaned up my room, unpacked my Berlin bag, and did some travel planning.
Speaking of travel planning, I don't know what I'm going to do about German Christmas. I don't want to spend Christmas here alone, but I want to travel so badly. There's also an issue of my bags. I would want to get rid of my suitcases and just have a backpack to gallivant around with. I wrote this a week ago, and I haven't really made any specific decision yet. :-(
Tuesday was uneventful, as I remember almost nothing of it, although I did go to the bank and my PIN didn't work. I decided to give it a day and come back on Wednesday.
Wednesday was the biggest test of my patience so far. I felt like I was running errands for hours, and I still couldn't get money out of my debit card. It was very frustrating to have a bad day somewhere you don't speak the language already. I treated myself to some TV that night and went to bed relatively early.
Thursday everything got right back on track, figured out my PIN situation (I have the memory of a 105 year old, apparently) and got money out of my bank account for Prague. We learned our lesson from waking up late last week, so we stayed in and played cards.
We left for the bus station at 6:20 on Friday and got to Prague around 9:00. I slept most of the way, the countryside was boring anyway. We rolled in and went straight to the hostel, which was nice. It's good to get rid of our stuff, I only carry a backpack but a backpack full of clothes isn't super-light. Our hostel was very nice and very quaint. On Friday we went on a bus tour of Prague and that was good. Saw a lot of historical sights. We also got out and walked around in the Prague Castle, which was very beautiful. I saw a wedding taking pictures and it was cute. We had our best weather on Friday, and I didn't appreciate it at the time. We walked around the Old Town and they had a little festival with food booths, so of course I got fried dough covered in garlic, cheese, and salt. It was delicious!
Friday night we went out to a very intense club. Five stories of fun! I stayed on the Blackmusik floor (hip-hop/dance music) and proceeded to dance the night away. Three people asked me if I was Czech...apparently I blended in with the locals? I had a great time, but Prague's public transportation system sucks. We knew when we went out that the trains shut down from 12 AM- 5 AM, so we made a conscious decision to stay out that late and got a really late dinner (or really early breakfast?) at "Nonstop" (24-hour) McDonalds near the train station at 4:30. We got home and slept.
Woke up a little later than we had planned on Saturday, about ten thirty. We had free breakfast at the hostel and went out to view the town. We ended up spending most of the day in Old Town Square and visited the rest of the Old Town again. We wanted to go to a chocolate museum, but the student price wasn't good enough. It was cold and rainy and I was glad I wore leggings under my jeans. There was a cool trophy tour for the UEFA (maybe those initials are right), the big soccer league here. The trophy was cool and it had a little exhibit with jerseys and I got really excited for the Bayern Muenchen game that we're going to in mid-October.
Saturday night Zeynep and I went to a little classical music concert (Vivaldi's four seasons, two Mozart sonatas) played by about ten people on time-period instruments. It was very cool, and the concert was in this beautiful little church. Saturday night we went to a bar near our hostel and tried Czech pivo (beer). It is the best beer I have ever tasted. Czechs invented the Pilsner, did you know that? It was delicious and very cheap, so good stuff.
Sunday we woke up late again, although we had come in at about one. We checked out of the hostel and walked along the Charles Bridge, which is from like the 1200's or something. It was very beautiful, despite the rain. We wanted to be dry and warm, so we ate lunch in a little mall and stayed until we went back to the bus station. The bust left at 6:00PM, and by that time everyone in our group was ready to go home. Which leads me to my overall comments about Prague.
Prague was beautiful when it wasn't horribly sketchy. The nice parts of town are historical and quaint, while the off-the-beaten path parts (e.g. near our hostel) are creepy and a little dirty. A girl in our group was pickpocketed on the train (someone bumped into her and stole her wallet), and I felt so terrible. She lost all her credit cards and her passport. Mackenzie is a trooper though, and handled a bad situation very well. She called her dad and had him cancel all her cards and I think she knows how to get a new passport. But :-( anyway! We got home and I did some homework, took a shower, and went to bed.
This week has been trying to juggle travel planning (the last of our flights are booked- Paris and Venice in December :) ), studying for our organic exam next Tuesday and being excited about Oktoberfest! And all the other stuff, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning. I am super excited about Oktoberfest, but now that you know I have an organic exam you've probably figured out that I am writing this blog post to procrastinate (or have a study break, I've been in this library for four hours already today after six yesterday), so I'll say goodbye.
Tschuss!
This last week has been alright. I've decided Mondays are house chores days. I generally only have biology at eleven and German at two fifty, so it's pretty easy to get stuff done. I did laundry, cleaned up my room, unpacked my Berlin bag, and did some travel planning.
Speaking of travel planning, I don't know what I'm going to do about German Christmas. I don't want to spend Christmas here alone, but I want to travel so badly. There's also an issue of my bags. I would want to get rid of my suitcases and just have a backpack to gallivant around with. I wrote this a week ago, and I haven't really made any specific decision yet. :-(
Tuesday was uneventful, as I remember almost nothing of it, although I did go to the bank and my PIN didn't work. I decided to give it a day and come back on Wednesday.
Wednesday was the biggest test of my patience so far. I felt like I was running errands for hours, and I still couldn't get money out of my debit card. It was very frustrating to have a bad day somewhere you don't speak the language already. I treated myself to some TV that night and went to bed relatively early.
Thursday everything got right back on track, figured out my PIN situation (I have the memory of a 105 year old, apparently) and got money out of my bank account for Prague. We learned our lesson from waking up late last week, so we stayed in and played cards.
We left for the bus station at 6:20 on Friday and got to Prague around 9:00. I slept most of the way, the countryside was boring anyway. We rolled in and went straight to the hostel, which was nice. It's good to get rid of our stuff, I only carry a backpack but a backpack full of clothes isn't super-light. Our hostel was very nice and very quaint. On Friday we went on a bus tour of Prague and that was good. Saw a lot of historical sights. We also got out and walked around in the Prague Castle, which was very beautiful. I saw a wedding taking pictures and it was cute. We had our best weather on Friday, and I didn't appreciate it at the time. We walked around the Old Town and they had a little festival with food booths, so of course I got fried dough covered in garlic, cheese, and salt. It was delicious!
Friday night we went out to a very intense club. Five stories of fun! I stayed on the Blackmusik floor (hip-hop/dance music) and proceeded to dance the night away. Three people asked me if I was Czech...apparently I blended in with the locals? I had a great time, but Prague's public transportation system sucks. We knew when we went out that the trains shut down from 12 AM- 5 AM, so we made a conscious decision to stay out that late and got a really late dinner (or really early breakfast?) at "Nonstop" (24-hour) McDonalds near the train station at 4:30. We got home and slept.
Woke up a little later than we had planned on Saturday, about ten thirty. We had free breakfast at the hostel and went out to view the town. We ended up spending most of the day in Old Town Square and visited the rest of the Old Town again. We wanted to go to a chocolate museum, but the student price wasn't good enough. It was cold and rainy and I was glad I wore leggings under my jeans. There was a cool trophy tour for the UEFA (maybe those initials are right), the big soccer league here. The trophy was cool and it had a little exhibit with jerseys and I got really excited for the Bayern Muenchen game that we're going to in mid-October.
Saturday night Zeynep and I went to a little classical music concert (Vivaldi's four seasons, two Mozart sonatas) played by about ten people on time-period instruments. It was very cool, and the concert was in this beautiful little church. Saturday night we went to a bar near our hostel and tried Czech pivo (beer). It is the best beer I have ever tasted. Czechs invented the Pilsner, did you know that? It was delicious and very cheap, so good stuff.
Sunday we woke up late again, although we had come in at about one. We checked out of the hostel and walked along the Charles Bridge, which is from like the 1200's or something. It was very beautiful, despite the rain. We wanted to be dry and warm, so we ate lunch in a little mall and stayed until we went back to the bus station. The bust left at 6:00PM, and by that time everyone in our group was ready to go home. Which leads me to my overall comments about Prague.
Prague was beautiful when it wasn't horribly sketchy. The nice parts of town are historical and quaint, while the off-the-beaten path parts (e.g. near our hostel) are creepy and a little dirty. A girl in our group was pickpocketed on the train (someone bumped into her and stole her wallet), and I felt so terrible. She lost all her credit cards and her passport. Mackenzie is a trooper though, and handled a bad situation very well. She called her dad and had him cancel all her cards and I think she knows how to get a new passport. But :-( anyway! We got home and I did some homework, took a shower, and went to bed.
This week has been trying to juggle travel planning (the last of our flights are booked- Paris and Venice in December :) ), studying for our organic exam next Tuesday and being excited about Oktoberfest! And all the other stuff, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning. I am super excited about Oktoberfest, but now that you know I have an organic exam you've probably figured out that I am writing this blog post to procrastinate (or have a study break, I've been in this library for four hours already today after six yesterday), so I'll say goodbye.
Tschuss!
Massive Post II: Berlin
Berlin has easily been my favorite weekend thus far for a couple of reasons, but if I start with those, you won't get the magic of the whole story.
It begins Thursday night, when we decide we should have a "quiet night in" because we leave at 5:20 AM on Friday morning. This "quiet night in" lasts until about 2:00 in the morning, and I wake up to a girl on my floor knocking and saying "we're meeting in the foyer now." Thank God I had packed before. The only things I forgot were my iPod (I can live without) and my camera charger (which I was pissed about). Anyhow, we got to the train station on time; small miracles do happen. I proceeded to sleep on a double seat for forty five minute intervals during the three hour train right.
Ah, waking up to Berlin. We arrived at the Haupbahnhof (main train station), which was rebuilt in 2006 for the World Cup. It is an immense structure, made of mostly glass. We bummed around the city for a while, visiting Alexanderplatz (one of the million historical platz..es). Then we got lunch in an Italian restaurant. I got delicious lasagna, but I could only eat 30% of it because it was only 11:00. It was at the restaurant that I realized my camera had no battery. :-(
After lunch, we walked around another square until we met for our bike tour at two. The tour was three and a halfish hours long. Did you know Berlin is nine times the size of Paris? Riding around, it was so beautiful. It's tragic to think about how everything must have looked when it was bombed and then gutted in the winter of 1945. We rode past so many things, the Rotrathaus, the red governmental building that houses the Burgermeister (literally town master; mayor). Berlin has the world's third largest gay population. The city slogan that the mayor campaigned on was "poor, but sexy." Fabulous. We rode past an old communist monument to "Communist Santa" Karl Marx. I enjoyed the Fernsehturm, a dome built by the Swedes in East Berlin to show the West that they were prospering. Interestingly enough, when the sun shines on the dome, it has a bright cross on it. Ironic, considering super Communist (read: godless heathens) East Berlin. Of course we saw the Wall, and even rode past Hitler's bunker. It's actually just a parking lot for a residential area with a small information board. Our guide told us they kept it low-key so the Neo-Nazis don't have a shrine to worship, which is very, very wise.
We rode past basically everything to see in Berlin, so I'll just skip to my favorites and move on to Saturday. My favorite was easily the Brandenburg Gate. It's one of the original entrances to Berlin from the era of the Prussian kings. After our bike tour, we walked around the area around our hostel and ate at a small cafe. They had "American" food, which was fun to try. The burger was decent, but they had a different sauce. The fries were spectacular though! Then we got back to the hostel and thought that we would take a quick nap before we went out for the night. The plans didn't quite pan out, however, because none of us wanted to get back up! It had been a long, long day of travelling and hostel-paying-for-in-a-group-of-thirty. We decided to call it a day and get up early to visit some touristy sights.
We did get out of the hostel by eight on Saturday, which is another miracle. We got to the Reichstag (the government building) around nine because we had to buy tickets and such. We waited in line for about two hours to go into the Reichstag and up into the dome. The wait was surprisingly fun. It was a touch chilly, so we pretended we were penguins and ate candy I had stashed in my bag. When we got into the Reichstag, we took the elevator up to the dome and walked around and learned about the history of the government building. It's quite colorful, like everything in Berlin! I used most of my camera video to take 360 degrees of pictures of Berlin. You can really see from the top how huge the city is.
After the Reichstag, we wandered down Unter den Linden, or Under the Linden trees. The trees were planted a long time ago, but were chopped down for firewood or bombed, so they're only about sixty years old. Still, beautiful pedestrian walkway. I ate currywurst (love it) and we did some touristy shopping. We were planning to go to the Pergammnon (spelling?!), but I was meeting up with a friend from high school and our group got distracted by a flea market. I swear, Zeynep has a sixth sense for them.
My friend met me just outside the museum and it was so good to see him. His dad is German, so he goes to University in Berlin. After we graduated I was sure I would never see him again; it was such a nice surprise to be able to. We ate dinner at a popular Italian food chain, Vapiano. It was good but a touch expensive. Kind of like a Panera but with dinner food. We went back to the hostel and bummed around for a while. Then we went to a club Christian knew about and had fun dancing. We also got in for free because it was a friend's birthday! Hoorah! We got back to the hostel at about three in the morning.
Sunday we had to check out by ten and we wanted to do some other sightseeing, so we got up around eight. We were out the door by nine and spend most of the rest of our time at the Memorial to the 6 Million Murdered Jews of Europe. It is very somber, and the inside museum-y part of the memorial was heartbreaking. There was a section of letters from the people who were sent to the concentration camps and there was one from a little six year old who said "Papa, I love you very much and I know I am never coming back." Afterwards, we got doner (I got a crepe), and laid in the sun. Then we had to take the train back to our group's meeting point.
Which is where my only complaint about the trip comes in. Our trip was organized by our RA, who is just flat-out incompetent. She told us to meet at two different times, and also did not tell all the people and just relied on word of mouth. Furthermore, she told us to meet at the train station to walk to the bus station together. I would rather just be told where the bus station is and the time we are leaving. Her phone was also off during the hour preceding our departure, so we couldn't even call her to tell her that I read the map wrong for the S-bahn stops and we had to walk a few blocks to the meeting point. I was also very put off when she was angry at the group for the stress caused by her own lack of planning. Not my fault you're a terrible RA. She also lives on my floor and sings(actually off-key shouting)/plays guitar horribly at eleven at night, so I'm not particularly inclined to like her. Anyhow, other than our stressful leaving situation, Berlin was an amazing weekend. I hope to go back at LEAST once, and perhaps twice if I can go to the Christkindlmarkt in Berlin, even though Dresden has a fantastic one. Thus ends my weekend adventure. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to post about this week/upcoming Prague! Maybe I'll try to manage my responsibilities responsibly, we'll see how it works out!
Tschuss!!
It begins Thursday night, when we decide we should have a "quiet night in" because we leave at 5:20 AM on Friday morning. This "quiet night in" lasts until about 2:00 in the morning, and I wake up to a girl on my floor knocking and saying "we're meeting in the foyer now." Thank God I had packed before. The only things I forgot were my iPod (I can live without) and my camera charger (which I was pissed about). Anyhow, we got to the train station on time; small miracles do happen. I proceeded to sleep on a double seat for forty five minute intervals during the three hour train right.
Ah, waking up to Berlin. We arrived at the Haupbahnhof (main train station), which was rebuilt in 2006 for the World Cup. It is an immense structure, made of mostly glass. We bummed around the city for a while, visiting Alexanderplatz (one of the million historical platz..es). Then we got lunch in an Italian restaurant. I got delicious lasagna, but I could only eat 30% of it because it was only 11:00. It was at the restaurant that I realized my camera had no battery. :-(
After lunch, we walked around another square until we met for our bike tour at two. The tour was three and a halfish hours long. Did you know Berlin is nine times the size of Paris? Riding around, it was so beautiful. It's tragic to think about how everything must have looked when it was bombed and then gutted in the winter of 1945. We rode past so many things, the Rotrathaus, the red governmental building that houses the Burgermeister (literally town master; mayor). Berlin has the world's third largest gay population. The city slogan that the mayor campaigned on was "poor, but sexy." Fabulous. We rode past an old communist monument to "Communist Santa" Karl Marx. I enjoyed the Fernsehturm, a dome built by the Swedes in East Berlin to show the West that they were prospering. Interestingly enough, when the sun shines on the dome, it has a bright cross on it. Ironic, considering super Communist (read: godless heathens) East Berlin. Of course we saw the Wall, and even rode past Hitler's bunker. It's actually just a parking lot for a residential area with a small information board. Our guide told us they kept it low-key so the Neo-Nazis don't have a shrine to worship, which is very, very wise.
We rode past basically everything to see in Berlin, so I'll just skip to my favorites and move on to Saturday. My favorite was easily the Brandenburg Gate. It's one of the original entrances to Berlin from the era of the Prussian kings. After our bike tour, we walked around the area around our hostel and ate at a small cafe. They had "American" food, which was fun to try. The burger was decent, but they had a different sauce. The fries were spectacular though! Then we got back to the hostel and thought that we would take a quick nap before we went out for the night. The plans didn't quite pan out, however, because none of us wanted to get back up! It had been a long, long day of travelling and hostel-paying-for-in-a-group-of-thirty. We decided to call it a day and get up early to visit some touristy sights.
We did get out of the hostel by eight on Saturday, which is another miracle. We got to the Reichstag (the government building) around nine because we had to buy tickets and such. We waited in line for about two hours to go into the Reichstag and up into the dome. The wait was surprisingly fun. It was a touch chilly, so we pretended we were penguins and ate candy I had stashed in my bag. When we got into the Reichstag, we took the elevator up to the dome and walked around and learned about the history of the government building. It's quite colorful, like everything in Berlin! I used most of my camera video to take 360 degrees of pictures of Berlin. You can really see from the top how huge the city is.
After the Reichstag, we wandered down Unter den Linden, or Under the Linden trees. The trees were planted a long time ago, but were chopped down for firewood or bombed, so they're only about sixty years old. Still, beautiful pedestrian walkway. I ate currywurst (love it) and we did some touristy shopping. We were planning to go to the Pergammnon (spelling?!), but I was meeting up with a friend from high school and our group got distracted by a flea market. I swear, Zeynep has a sixth sense for them.
My friend met me just outside the museum and it was so good to see him. His dad is German, so he goes to University in Berlin. After we graduated I was sure I would never see him again; it was such a nice surprise to be able to. We ate dinner at a popular Italian food chain, Vapiano. It was good but a touch expensive. Kind of like a Panera but with dinner food. We went back to the hostel and bummed around for a while. Then we went to a club Christian knew about and had fun dancing. We also got in for free because it was a friend's birthday! Hoorah! We got back to the hostel at about three in the morning.
Sunday we had to check out by ten and we wanted to do some other sightseeing, so we got up around eight. We were out the door by nine and spend most of the rest of our time at the Memorial to the 6 Million Murdered Jews of Europe. It is very somber, and the inside museum-y part of the memorial was heartbreaking. There was a section of letters from the people who were sent to the concentration camps and there was one from a little six year old who said "Papa, I love you very much and I know I am never coming back." Afterwards, we got doner (I got a crepe), and laid in the sun. Then we had to take the train back to our group's meeting point.
Which is where my only complaint about the trip comes in. Our trip was organized by our RA, who is just flat-out incompetent. She told us to meet at two different times, and also did not tell all the people and just relied on word of mouth. Furthermore, she told us to meet at the train station to walk to the bus station together. I would rather just be told where the bus station is and the time we are leaving. Her phone was also off during the hour preceding our departure, so we couldn't even call her to tell her that I read the map wrong for the S-bahn stops and we had to walk a few blocks to the meeting point. I was also very put off when she was angry at the group for the stress caused by her own lack of planning. Not my fault you're a terrible RA. She also lives on my floor and sings(actually off-key shouting)/plays guitar horribly at eleven at night, so I'm not particularly inclined to like her. Anyhow, other than our stressful leaving situation, Berlin was an amazing weekend. I hope to go back at LEAST once, and perhaps twice if I can go to the Christkindlmarkt in Berlin, even though Dresden has a fantastic one. Thus ends my weekend adventure. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to post about this week/upcoming Prague! Maybe I'll try to manage my responsibilities responsibly, we'll see how it works out!
Tschuss!!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Massive Post I
I am officially a fail at doing more than three things at once. For why I'll never be an adult, please visit http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html
Since I cannot keep up multiple things at once, this massive post of the last two and a half weeks will be broken into two pieces: Meissen and my classes here, and the Berlin excursion. Perhaps there will be another post before I leave for the weekend about my excitement for Prag? (Let's not raise our expectations too high).
So apparently, I can call phones in the US from my email address for FREE. This is why I love Google! I hope to be calling everyone at least once from Germany, just for the novelty of it all.
Last week heralded the start of real classes, which has been exciting. We have cell biology very sporadically, so it has been a ridiculously easy week so far. I met my new German teacher, and he seems very kind. He was telling us about a better, cheaper grocery store that is within biking distance (speaking of, I now have pictures of my one true love-my bike- on my photobucket. I've been getting into the rhythm of going to class and trying to make three balanced meals a day for myself. It's hard to not eat just sausage and bread here, both of which are delicious.
Thursdays are a tough day, I have four classes. I have organic lecture and discussion, which are alright. Our first professor (Dr. Reuner) is very kind, but we were learning functional groups and his accent does not help me keep them clear. When I come home, you can hear my nearing-perfection German accent. After organic we have a quick lunch and go to German class, which is alright. Again, I wish I knew more than the present, but at least I have learned some prepositions and some more vocabulary. Then we have our culture class, which is 98% bullshit. I love it. It's like high school English class all over again. I can barely pay attention and still contribute the most to class discussion, and I learned we only have to write one 10 page paper. We also get to do cool cultural excursions around Dresden, one of which I will write about after Meissen.
This weekend we went to Meissen for our cultural excursion. About forty five minutes away on the train, it's a very quaint little town (describes 90% of Germany I've seen thus far) that houses the first manufacturing plant of European porcelain. We didn't have to wake up ridiculously early, and took a nice stroll through a museum about the porcelain manufacturing process, especially the artisan-ship that goes into each piece. It was all very beautiful in the gift shop (I made sure to keep my hands in my pockets), but ridiculously expensive. We ate at a delicious little restaurant. I had potatoes and veggies au gratin, something I would never had the patience to make myself, and it was 80% cheese. It was so good, but I couldn't finish all of it. Then we went to another museum, but larger and inside a castle. It was so neat, and I took a lot of pictures. I liked the thrones and all the decorations on the walls. I've discovered that I really enjoy slowly strolling through a museum on my own, reading all the little placards and looking closely at the paintings and such. The return from Meissen and the rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful, standard Hausaufgaben (literally "housework") procrastinating/doing and room cleaning.
Monday started our second week of classes, which was interesting. We had cell biology for the first time, which is on Dresden's medical university campus, forty five minutes away. We also have biology at 11:00 Monday and 7:30's on Tuesday/Wednesday. Needless to say, I brought a full thermos of coffee on Tuesday. Our professor is hilariously German (he wears neck scarves and his name is Peter Dieter!), and also very kind. His English is superb, he says his wife is American. He is also on my good list because he let us finish all our slides for the week on Tuesday so we didn't even have class on Wednesday! Hurrah for nice professors.
The rest of the week's classes were pretty standard. We did have a cultural excursion for our German class, though! It was to a Kindergarten! TINY GERMAN CHILDREN. We went at about two in the afternoon. German Kindergarten is not just the first year, its more of a daycare for children from 1-6 years old. They were all very well behaved, and I made a tiny German Freunde named Tom because I pushed him on the tire swing. It was pretty funny because I speak basically no German, but gestures saved the day again. I really liked visiting, it was such fun to play with the kids on their really awesome playground. I noticed that they don't really have a lot of adults with the kids, just a few per about twenty kids. It looked like fun though. All the kids have cubbies with their name and pictures and it made me think about my school days when I had my cubby! The rest of the week flew by, between our excursion on Wednesday and my four-class Thursday. Friday we were off to Berlin. I think I'll stop here and share the link to my Meissen pictures below:
http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z254/rusher116/Studying%20Abroad/Meissen/
Since I cannot keep up multiple things at once, this massive post of the last two and a half weeks will be broken into two pieces: Meissen and my classes here, and the Berlin excursion. Perhaps there will be another post before I leave for the weekend about my excitement for Prag? (Let's not raise our expectations too high).
So apparently, I can call phones in the US from my email address for FREE. This is why I love Google! I hope to be calling everyone at least once from Germany, just for the novelty of it all.
Last week heralded the start of real classes, which has been exciting. We have cell biology very sporadically, so it has been a ridiculously easy week so far. I met my new German teacher, and he seems very kind. He was telling us about a better, cheaper grocery store that is within biking distance (speaking of, I now have pictures of my one true love-my bike- on my photobucket. I've been getting into the rhythm of going to class and trying to make three balanced meals a day for myself. It's hard to not eat just sausage and bread here, both of which are delicious.
Thursdays are a tough day, I have four classes. I have organic lecture and discussion, which are alright. Our first professor (Dr. Reuner) is very kind, but we were learning functional groups and his accent does not help me keep them clear. When I come home, you can hear my nearing-perfection German accent. After organic we have a quick lunch and go to German class, which is alright. Again, I wish I knew more than the present, but at least I have learned some prepositions and some more vocabulary. Then we have our culture class, which is 98% bullshit. I love it. It's like high school English class all over again. I can barely pay attention and still contribute the most to class discussion, and I learned we only have to write one 10 page paper. We also get to do cool cultural excursions around Dresden, one of which I will write about after Meissen.
This weekend we went to Meissen for our cultural excursion. About forty five minutes away on the train, it's a very quaint little town (describes 90% of Germany I've seen thus far) that houses the first manufacturing plant of European porcelain. We didn't have to wake up ridiculously early, and took a nice stroll through a museum about the porcelain manufacturing process, especially the artisan-ship that goes into each piece. It was all very beautiful in the gift shop (I made sure to keep my hands in my pockets), but ridiculously expensive. We ate at a delicious little restaurant. I had potatoes and veggies au gratin, something I would never had the patience to make myself, and it was 80% cheese. It was so good, but I couldn't finish all of it. Then we went to another museum, but larger and inside a castle. It was so neat, and I took a lot of pictures. I liked the thrones and all the decorations on the walls. I've discovered that I really enjoy slowly strolling through a museum on my own, reading all the little placards and looking closely at the paintings and such. The return from Meissen and the rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful, standard Hausaufgaben (literally "housework") procrastinating/doing and room cleaning.
Monday started our second week of classes, which was interesting. We had cell biology for the first time, which is on Dresden's medical university campus, forty five minutes away. We also have biology at 11:00 Monday and 7:30's on Tuesday/Wednesday. Needless to say, I brought a full thermos of coffee on Tuesday. Our professor is hilariously German (he wears neck scarves and his name is Peter Dieter!), and also very kind. His English is superb, he says his wife is American. He is also on my good list because he let us finish all our slides for the week on Tuesday so we didn't even have class on Wednesday! Hurrah for nice professors.
The rest of the week's classes were pretty standard. We did have a cultural excursion for our German class, though! It was to a Kindergarten! TINY GERMAN CHILDREN. We went at about two in the afternoon. German Kindergarten is not just the first year, its more of a daycare for children from 1-6 years old. They were all very well behaved, and I made a tiny German Freunde named Tom because I pushed him on the tire swing. It was pretty funny because I speak basically no German, but gestures saved the day again. I really liked visiting, it was such fun to play with the kids on their really awesome playground. I noticed that they don't really have a lot of adults with the kids, just a few per about twenty kids. It looked like fun though. All the kids have cubbies with their name and pictures and it made me think about my school days when I had my cubby! The rest of the week flew by, between our excursion on Wednesday and my four-class Thursday. Friday we were off to Berlin. I think I'll stop here and share the link to my Meissen pictures below:
http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z254/rusher116/Studying%20Abroad/Meissen/
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Cultural Excursion 3 and the Weekend
Hallo alle,
Look at me, not waiting forever to write another blog post! Oh my goodness! I am currently working on getting my pictures online, and if I am done before I post this...post, I will include a link. The problem is that I have a ridiculous amount of pictures, and we only get so much internet bandwith a week, so I'm trying to ration things. Skype takes up a monstrous portion of my allocation, so I'm sorry if I don't get to talk to everyone as often as I want to.
When last you left me (I know, I missed me too), I had two tests the next day. My German test went pretty well (I think), although I know I forgot the possessive pronouns for the formal subject. I did write a very good paragraph, which is very difficult when you have the vocabulary of a four year old and only the present tense to work with. Thursday was exhausting between the two exams and we had a meeting to fill out our residence permits (Germans love paperwork, apparently). We also got our schedules for class, which are just crazy difficult to understand. I spent some time today just writing down all my classes in my datebook and now it makes more sense. Because our program is taught by professors with full loads from TUD (Technische Universitat Dresden), our classes are sort of squeezed into the beginning and the end of the day. Our Biology teacher is apparently some really important guy that travels a lot, so we don't have lecture while he's gone (which is almost three weeks), and then we have a ton of lectures in a row. A few of my classes start at 7:30 AM on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I shouldn't complain because the kids in the program taking stats start at 7:30 _every_ day. Still, 7:30 is an unholy hour. We have organic chemistry three days a week (T, W, Th) at 9:20, and labs start in October.
Honestly, although it's more difficult to understand than BU's schedules, this is much easier. I only have German twice a week, culture class once a week, and then organic as above. We also have no class on Fridays. Whoo three day weekends every weekend! We've got group plans for most of the weekends until the first weekend in October. Next weekend is Meissen (something to do with porcelain?), then Berlin, then Prague. Then it's the last weekend of Oktoberfest, so we're going to buy tickets to Munich.
Yesterday I did some planning with Zeynep and a few other friends for our free weekends and our week long break, but for now I will remain mum until it is 100% certain! Despite being exhausted Thursday, we all managed to drag ourselves out to the club. It was fun as per the usual, but I was tired and I had to take a friend home so I left a little bit earlier than some other people. We also had to wake up at eight thirty for our cultural excursion.
Speaking of, our cultural excursion was phenomenal. We went to Koenigstein (King stone), which is a large fortress/castle a half hour train ride away. It was built in the mountains between Saxony and Bohemia (they didn't get along) and was controlled by various people during it's history. It was at the pinnacle of weapons technology until WWI, and even then it served as French Allied officer prisoner quarters and it contains the oldest soldier's barracks standing in Europe. We walked around and had a tour. Our tour guide said at the end of the tour "I'm sorry, we don't get English speaking tours so often, I forget the words." Which she did not. All of the Germans who have said they "speak terrible English" speak English quite well. Certainly better than I speak German! The fortress was very beautiful, with a wonderful view of the Elbe and the town below and pretty German country side. I hope you take some time to look at the pictures, I really like them.
We came back from our cultural excursions thinking we would do something, but everyone was tired from Thursday night and we had a quiet night in. On Saturday, we woke up early (I mean like 8:30) and got to a flea market near the Elbe. I bought a few smaller things, but most importantly, a bike! I'm very excited to have it, because it's quite a walk to class, and Dresden was made for biking. It's also purple and has a more comfortable seat than I've ever had. Trying to haggle with a language difference is a big pain, but I only paid 35 euro, so it's all good. Then last night we stayed in again, played cards, and drank champagne.
The only frustrating thing was that I started my laundry at 9:00, and here nothing dries. The dryer ate my money twice, and I wasn't going to give it any more, so I am line drying everything. I am changing my attitude toward laundry for Europe. At BU, I just wait until basically everything is dirty, then wash everything. Here, the washing machines are so small that you can't even do that if you don't want to spend 10 euro on laundry. So I have decided to adopt a policy of hand washing things every few days. One girl in my hall told me she's never hand washed anything before and proceeded to ask me how to do it...you use hot water and soap. It's like when you take a shower, but with clothes instead of skin. Oh the rich kids that go to BU. Anyway, I learned my laundry lessons (alliteration!) so I will not make that mistake again. I'm spending the rest of today calling people, cleaning my room, and getting ready for classes on Monday. I am excited and terrified, but mostly excited. By the time you all get around to reading this post, the pictures should be uploaded and labelled, so here's a link: http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z254/rusher116/Studying%20Abroad/Koenigstein/
Happy viewing, and I miss you all!
Love,
Lani
Look at me, not waiting forever to write another blog post! Oh my goodness! I am currently working on getting my pictures online, and if I am done before I post this...post, I will include a link. The problem is that I have a ridiculous amount of pictures, and we only get so much internet bandwith a week, so I'm trying to ration things. Skype takes up a monstrous portion of my allocation, so I'm sorry if I don't get to talk to everyone as often as I want to.
When last you left me (I know, I missed me too), I had two tests the next day. My German test went pretty well (I think), although I know I forgot the possessive pronouns for the formal subject. I did write a very good paragraph, which is very difficult when you have the vocabulary of a four year old and only the present tense to work with. Thursday was exhausting between the two exams and we had a meeting to fill out our residence permits (Germans love paperwork, apparently). We also got our schedules for class, which are just crazy difficult to understand. I spent some time today just writing down all my classes in my datebook and now it makes more sense. Because our program is taught by professors with full loads from TUD (Technische Universitat Dresden), our classes are sort of squeezed into the beginning and the end of the day. Our Biology teacher is apparently some really important guy that travels a lot, so we don't have lecture while he's gone (which is almost three weeks), and then we have a ton of lectures in a row. A few of my classes start at 7:30 AM on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I shouldn't complain because the kids in the program taking stats start at 7:30 _every_ day. Still, 7:30 is an unholy hour. We have organic chemistry three days a week (T, W, Th) at 9:20, and labs start in October.
Honestly, although it's more difficult to understand than BU's schedules, this is much easier. I only have German twice a week, culture class once a week, and then organic as above. We also have no class on Fridays. Whoo three day weekends every weekend! We've got group plans for most of the weekends until the first weekend in October. Next weekend is Meissen (something to do with porcelain?), then Berlin, then Prague. Then it's the last weekend of Oktoberfest, so we're going to buy tickets to Munich.
Yesterday I did some planning with Zeynep and a few other friends for our free weekends and our week long break, but for now I will remain mum until it is 100% certain! Despite being exhausted Thursday, we all managed to drag ourselves out to the club. It was fun as per the usual, but I was tired and I had to take a friend home so I left a little bit earlier than some other people. We also had to wake up at eight thirty for our cultural excursion.
Speaking of, our cultural excursion was phenomenal. We went to Koenigstein (King stone), which is a large fortress/castle a half hour train ride away. It was built in the mountains between Saxony and Bohemia (they didn't get along) and was controlled by various people during it's history. It was at the pinnacle of weapons technology until WWI, and even then it served as French Allied officer prisoner quarters and it contains the oldest soldier's barracks standing in Europe. We walked around and had a tour. Our tour guide said at the end of the tour "I'm sorry, we don't get English speaking tours so often, I forget the words." Which she did not. All of the Germans who have said they "speak terrible English" speak English quite well. Certainly better than I speak German! The fortress was very beautiful, with a wonderful view of the Elbe and the town below and pretty German country side. I hope you take some time to look at the pictures, I really like them.
We came back from our cultural excursions thinking we would do something, but everyone was tired from Thursday night and we had a quiet night in. On Saturday, we woke up early (I mean like 8:30) and got to a flea market near the Elbe. I bought a few smaller things, but most importantly, a bike! I'm very excited to have it, because it's quite a walk to class, and Dresden was made for biking. It's also purple and has a more comfortable seat than I've ever had. Trying to haggle with a language difference is a big pain, but I only paid 35 euro, so it's all good. Then last night we stayed in again, played cards, and drank champagne.
The only frustrating thing was that I started my laundry at 9:00, and here nothing dries. The dryer ate my money twice, and I wasn't going to give it any more, so I am line drying everything. I am changing my attitude toward laundry for Europe. At BU, I just wait until basically everything is dirty, then wash everything. Here, the washing machines are so small that you can't even do that if you don't want to spend 10 euro on laundry. So I have decided to adopt a policy of hand washing things every few days. One girl in my hall told me she's never hand washed anything before and proceeded to ask me how to do it...you use hot water and soap. It's like when you take a shower, but with clothes instead of skin. Oh the rich kids that go to BU. Anyway, I learned my laundry lessons (alliteration!) so I will not make that mistake again. I'm spending the rest of today calling people, cleaning my room, and getting ready for classes on Monday. I am excited and terrified, but mostly excited. By the time you all get around to reading this post, the pictures should be uploaded and labelled, so here's a link: http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z254/rusher116/Studying%20Abroad/Koenigstein/
Happy viewing, and I miss you all!
Love,
Lani
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Second and Third Weeks
Hallo alle,
I've been trying to start this blog entry about the second week since Monday, it is currently Wednesday. That might give you an indication of how this week has been! We'll start from where we left off last week; Saturday night and the second night of Stadtfest. It was so beautiful. We all took our cameras and took a ton of pictures. Stadtfest was magical, spanning the Elbe with a ton of things to do. We rode the Ferris wheel (it was pretty expensive, but I think well worth it) and I took some nice aerial pictures of Dresden at night. We also saw some beautiful fireworks (although Boston's were better) and generally had a great night outside walking around historic Dresden. Then on Sunday I lazed about, the usual for the school year. Zeynep did laundry and we discovered Europeans don't really believe in dryers, which is annoying as all get out.
Monday started off pretty warm, but the weather has slowly gotten worse this week. I'm trying to remember specific instances from each day, but honestly it's pretty difficult. Most of the week blurs together, as it does when I'm at Boston. I know I kept meaning to write this blog entry for most of last week, It is nice to only have class Montag-Donnerstag (Mon-Thurs), but having it from 8:00-1:00 and then culture class 2:00-3:30 is exhausting. I don't know how I got through four years of high school on basically 6 hours of sleep a night. We had our first quiz in German last week, and I did alright. The spelling is very tricky (although I'm sure literally everyone who learns English says the same thing). I did a bit of shopping last week for more essentials (laundry detergent, etc.) and that was fun. It was good to get our stipend money so I didn't feel as bad about spending it. I'm trying to be careful and manage my money so I don't have to use any (more) of my own to travel.
Speaking of travel, we had our second group outing on Friday. We went to Weimar, which is a beautiful little town in the middle(ish) of Saxon Germany. The train ride there took four hours (it was supposed to take a little over two) because there were some electrical problems, but more seriously a man committed suicide on the tracks in front of us, so most of the trains were shut down for a while. It was very frustrating and also a little bit of a somber note. What was worse was that we had all gone out Thursday night to a dance club (ladies get a free drink on Thursday!) and stayed out very late and we left the dorm at 7:30, an unholy hour for anyone under the age of 30. The trip was very awesome though, I took a ton of pictures.
*SKIP THIS PART IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE BORED WITH A TON OF GERMAN HISTORY*
Weimar is basically this tiny town in Saxony that the Duke realized wouldn't be important geopolitically, so he decided to make it a haven for the arts. First, Carl August (the Duke) invited Goethe to live in Weimar and gave him a summer home and some land so he could become a citizen of the Duchy. Goethe isn't really a super popular name in the U.S., but he wrote the original "Faust" story (a deal with the devil) that has been seen as a theme in many other works. He was also quite famous in his own time for a novel about a young man with unrequited love (he ends up killing himself, aren't German tales so sweet?). He also wrote plays and did a bunch of stuff of the Duchy and maybe had an affair with a person in the royal court (it was only 160 people, word got around) and then went off to Italy and fell in love with a girl and refused to marry her until 18 years after his son was born (SCANDALOUS). Goethe actually had a pretty big head about how important he was, so he left detailed instructions in his will to make his house into a museum when the line ended (with his grandson). I really wanted to walk through because Goethe had really interesting ideas about color (colors were linked to an activity, eating, sleeping, working, etc.) but because the train ride there took so long we didn't have time. The other neat part of the town was the Hotel Elephant, which has been used since the 1800's. What was crazy was that Weimar attracted a lot of artists and free-thinkers, but it was still a seat of the Nazi party. The Hotel Elephant was rebuilt by Hitler in the early 1930's, and he included a special balcony from which he could address the people. It was so eerie to see the balcony and recognize it from old black and white photos. The other weird thing was a memorial the Soviets built to the soldiers that died in Weimar (after the conflict, they probably died of sickness/age) during the GDR. Also, the tour guide told us that the Soviets used Buchenwald and Dachau (concentration/work camps) for the same purpose as the Nazis until the FIFITES. People on the other side of the Iron Curtain didn't even know that it was happening! The history here is amazing and so fascinating to me. The return train trip was uneventful, thank heavens.
Saturday I spent most of the day exploring Dresden with my friend Zeynep. We took the tram across the bridge to Neustadt, and then walked across a different bridge over the Elbe and took pictures of the skyline/us in the skyline. It was rainy, but when it cleared it was very beautiful. I loved walking around and seeing all the different buildings. We took some pictures in front of the Frauenkirche, which I know I've talked about before. It's crazy to think that the building is literally only as old as I am (the ruins weren't repaired by the GDR because commies have no religion). It's such beautiful sandstone, and Zeynep and I got to see inside too, but we couldn't go in or take pictures because there was a wedding. We're gonna try to go to a concert there because we saw that the cheapest tickets were only like 12 euro. It's so hard to do everything we want while we're here! The planning has my head spinning, and I'm awesome at planning. But we'll get to that later.
Sunday was a lazy day of course, and the rest of this week has been pretty unremarkable (sans the whole in-Germany thing). Monday was karaoke night at the student bar, and that was a ton of fun. I think the Germans liked watching us make spectacles of ourselves, but they proceeded to do the same thing! We've been trying to plan all week where we're going for Zeynep's birthday (October 13th's weekend). We want to go to Amsterdam, but there are no cheap flights then. Zeynep says that she hates flying, but here (like the US) it is both easier and way cheaper to fly than take the train. Flights to Amsterdam from Berlin take 2 ish hours and cost 19 euro. FLYING FOR $25!!! Crazy, crazy times. So since we can't go to Amsterdam for her actual birthday, we might spend that weekend in Budapest, because she really wants to see it. We also have a week (ten days including both weekends) around Thanksgiving time (well, a week before) and I think we're going either going to do Dublin/London/Edinburgh or Paris/Barcelona or try to go to Greece. I have no idea, honestly. More immediate travel plans include going on group excursions to Berlin (an hour north) and Prague (an hour south)...I love Europe. So close together! Hopefully we'll have our stuff for Oktoberfest set soon, as it actually starts the second week in September and goes to the first weekend in October. I also really want to go to a football game (soccer) in Munich, because everyone loves FC Bayern Munchen! I have a friend who'll be visiting Monaco for a few weeks, and I'd love to go see him at some point, but there is only so much time in four months. I still don't know how I feel about staying here longer, it stinks that there is so little time until Christmas, but this is also a huge opportunity. It's just all up in the air, right now. Hopefully this weekend will bring some more definite plans.
Well, I have a giant test tomorrow, so I'll write about our prison-turned church-turned school another time! Guten Nacht, und ich vermisse ihr!
I've been trying to start this blog entry about the second week since Monday, it is currently Wednesday. That might give you an indication of how this week has been! We'll start from where we left off last week; Saturday night and the second night of Stadtfest. It was so beautiful. We all took our cameras and took a ton of pictures. Stadtfest was magical, spanning the Elbe with a ton of things to do. We rode the Ferris wheel (it was pretty expensive, but I think well worth it) and I took some nice aerial pictures of Dresden at night. We also saw some beautiful fireworks (although Boston's were better) and generally had a great night outside walking around historic Dresden. Then on Sunday I lazed about, the usual for the school year. Zeynep did laundry and we discovered Europeans don't really believe in dryers, which is annoying as all get out.
Monday started off pretty warm, but the weather has slowly gotten worse this week. I'm trying to remember specific instances from each day, but honestly it's pretty difficult. Most of the week blurs together, as it does when I'm at Boston. I know I kept meaning to write this blog entry for most of last week, It is nice to only have class Montag-Donnerstag (Mon-Thurs), but having it from 8:00-1:00 and then culture class 2:00-3:30 is exhausting. I don't know how I got through four years of high school on basically 6 hours of sleep a night. We had our first quiz in German last week, and I did alright. The spelling is very tricky (although I'm sure literally everyone who learns English says the same thing). I did a bit of shopping last week for more essentials (laundry detergent, etc.) and that was fun. It was good to get our stipend money so I didn't feel as bad about spending it. I'm trying to be careful and manage my money so I don't have to use any (more) of my own to travel.
Speaking of travel, we had our second group outing on Friday. We went to Weimar, which is a beautiful little town in the middle(ish) of Saxon Germany. The train ride there took four hours (it was supposed to take a little over two) because there were some electrical problems, but more seriously a man committed suicide on the tracks in front of us, so most of the trains were shut down for a while. It was very frustrating and also a little bit of a somber note. What was worse was that we had all gone out Thursday night to a dance club (ladies get a free drink on Thursday!) and stayed out very late and we left the dorm at 7:30, an unholy hour for anyone under the age of 30. The trip was very awesome though, I took a ton of pictures.
*SKIP THIS PART IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE BORED WITH A TON OF GERMAN HISTORY*
Weimar is basically this tiny town in Saxony that the Duke realized wouldn't be important geopolitically, so he decided to make it a haven for the arts. First, Carl August (the Duke) invited Goethe to live in Weimar and gave him a summer home and some land so he could become a citizen of the Duchy. Goethe isn't really a super popular name in the U.S., but he wrote the original "Faust" story (a deal with the devil) that has been seen as a theme in many other works. He was also quite famous in his own time for a novel about a young man with unrequited love (he ends up killing himself, aren't German tales so sweet?). He also wrote plays and did a bunch of stuff of the Duchy and maybe had an affair with a person in the royal court (it was only 160 people, word got around) and then went off to Italy and fell in love with a girl and refused to marry her until 18 years after his son was born (SCANDALOUS). Goethe actually had a pretty big head about how important he was, so he left detailed instructions in his will to make his house into a museum when the line ended (with his grandson). I really wanted to walk through because Goethe had really interesting ideas about color (colors were linked to an activity, eating, sleeping, working, etc.) but because the train ride there took so long we didn't have time. The other neat part of the town was the Hotel Elephant, which has been used since the 1800's. What was crazy was that Weimar attracted a lot of artists and free-thinkers, but it was still a seat of the Nazi party. The Hotel Elephant was rebuilt by Hitler in the early 1930's, and he included a special balcony from which he could address the people. It was so eerie to see the balcony and recognize it from old black and white photos. The other weird thing was a memorial the Soviets built to the soldiers that died in Weimar (after the conflict, they probably died of sickness/age) during the GDR. Also, the tour guide told us that the Soviets used Buchenwald and Dachau (concentration/work camps) for the same purpose as the Nazis until the FIFITES. People on the other side of the Iron Curtain didn't even know that it was happening! The history here is amazing and so fascinating to me. The return train trip was uneventful, thank heavens.
Saturday I spent most of the day exploring Dresden with my friend Zeynep. We took the tram across the bridge to Neustadt, and then walked across a different bridge over the Elbe and took pictures of the skyline/us in the skyline. It was rainy, but when it cleared it was very beautiful. I loved walking around and seeing all the different buildings. We took some pictures in front of the Frauenkirche, which I know I've talked about before. It's crazy to think that the building is literally only as old as I am (the ruins weren't repaired by the GDR because commies have no religion). It's such beautiful sandstone, and Zeynep and I got to see inside too, but we couldn't go in or take pictures because there was a wedding. We're gonna try to go to a concert there because we saw that the cheapest tickets were only like 12 euro. It's so hard to do everything we want while we're here! The planning has my head spinning, and I'm awesome at planning. But we'll get to that later.
Sunday was a lazy day of course, and the rest of this week has been pretty unremarkable (sans the whole in-Germany thing). Monday was karaoke night at the student bar, and that was a ton of fun. I think the Germans liked watching us make spectacles of ourselves, but they proceeded to do the same thing! We've been trying to plan all week where we're going for Zeynep's birthday (October 13th's weekend). We want to go to Amsterdam, but there are no cheap flights then. Zeynep says that she hates flying, but here (like the US) it is both easier and way cheaper to fly than take the train. Flights to Amsterdam from Berlin take 2 ish hours and cost 19 euro. FLYING FOR $25!!! Crazy, crazy times. So since we can't go to Amsterdam for her actual birthday, we might spend that weekend in Budapest, because she really wants to see it. We also have a week (ten days including both weekends) around Thanksgiving time (well, a week before) and I think we're going either going to do Dublin/London/Edinburgh or Paris/Barcelona or try to go to Greece. I have no idea, honestly. More immediate travel plans include going on group excursions to Berlin (an hour north) and Prague (an hour south)...I love Europe. So close together! Hopefully we'll have our stuff for Oktoberfest set soon, as it actually starts the second week in September and goes to the first weekend in October. I also really want to go to a football game (soccer) in Munich, because everyone loves FC Bayern Munchen! I have a friend who'll be visiting Monaco for a few weeks, and I'd love to go see him at some point, but there is only so much time in four months. I still don't know how I feel about staying here longer, it stinks that there is so little time until Christmas, but this is also a huge opportunity. It's just all up in the air, right now. Hopefully this weekend will bring some more definite plans.
Well, I have a giant test tomorrow, so I'll write about our prison-turned church-turned school another time! Guten Nacht, und ich vermisse ihr!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
First Week
Wow, this has been insane. I'm not sure my thoughts will come out in an organized manner, but I'll try to keep it chronological. I haven't really been taking pictures, but I will once the weekends starts and I get my bearings enough to walk around with only a few people. I hate being in a huge group of 35+ and taking pictures. I have a few now from our walk around Aldstadt and some pictures of my room.
So the adventure began on Sunday. I woke up and hurried around getting my shit together to take the Megabus at 7:30. I ate McDonalds for breakfast and messed around on the computer on the free WiFi. The bus ride took about five hours, so we got into NYC at 12:30. I didn't have much time to enjoy the city (although, to be honest, it scares me shitless) because I hopped in a cab to take me to JFK. It was a long and boring car ride, and I texted friends goodbye through most of it. I got to the airport at around 1:30. While I was waiting in line to check my bags, I ran into Janhavee, a girl from a class first semester who is also on my program. She invited me to eat lunch with her family in JFK's food court, which was fun. Then I went through security while she said goodbye to her family. I got to my gate with 2+ hours to spare, so I called Ma and Dad, talked to Anthony and Laurel for a bit. As the time to board got closer, I met a lot of people in my program. We had a fun time talking about how none of us know German.
Then the first plane ride. Our flight was from JFK to Munchen (Munich) then Munchen to Dresden. JFK to Munchen is nine hours in the air, plus take off/landing time. It was easily the biggest plan I've ever been on. The great part about the flight was that it was not full by any means, I had a bank of three seats all to myself. I slept for a few hours, but then I couldn't (despite getting four hours of sleep the night before), so I watched three movies. We got to the Munchen airport at six AM GT (German Time). We waited for our connecting flight for literally three and a half hours. It was terrible. Then we got onto a smaller plane and flew into Dresden. It was now 12:30 PM, and I had been awake for 30 hours on four hours of sleep beforehand. Needless to say, everyone in our group was exhausted. We all wanted to sleep away our jet lag. But we had other plans.
We did some basic orientation things: here are the keys to your dorms (the doors lock automatically, do NOT leave your keys in the room), etc. etc. My room is actually the best on the floor (and the best in the program, as far as I've seen). We all live in singles, and most rooms are clearly singles: there is room for a bed, a desk, a dresser, a tall bookshelf, and a small table and chair. My room was definitely meant to be a double. I have all my furniture on one side and it looks NAKED. I told all the girls on my floor we could have one side of my room as a sort of common room. I hope they take me up on it; I enjoy studying and eating in groups. Hopefully some of the other people in our program not on our floor (we're on the second, third, and fifth floors of the Max Kade Haus). The rest of Monday is a very tired blur. We went to the free room where previous participants left the things they weren't taking back (duvets, books, hangers, trash cans and the like). I rearranged my furniture the way I wanted it, and unpacked. Most people went out to the bar that is in our dorm (Germans), but I knew I was too tired, so I slept for close to thirteen hours.
Tuesday morning, I was woken at seven by a church bell. Not just seven chimes of a church bell, easily over a MINUTE of it ringing. My RA Debbie says that it does that every week day, and rings at 9:30 on the weekends. I will never sleep in ever again. Tuesday was a busy, busy day. We registered as foreign students with the city of Dresden (Germany LOVES paperwork, apparently), and opened a bank account in Dresden so our stipends can be deposited (which is good...so poor). We ate lunch at a Menza (cafeteria), that reminded me of an American cafeteria almost exactly. The two differences were that you paid per item, and the background chatter was in German. We also paid our security deposits, then I took a nap, then we went to Ikea (pronounced EE-KAY-AH here). I bought some necessary things for me (another towel, a duvet cover, a blanket, a pillow) and took the tram. The trains here are nicer than anything I've ever seen in the US. They are clean, quiet, perfectly on time (they have a display screen telling you when every number bus/tram is coming), and a super-smooth ride. Tuesday everyone went out again, and this time I was up to it. I drank a few beers at the bar and headed home. I was still tired, and funny thing, alcohol doesn't help that at all!
Wednesday I woke up late, but luckily my group waited for me as I threw on jeans and a sweater. We went back to campus to listen to "Health and Safety," your standard college bullshit about not being irresponsible. I get irritated at listening to things like that, but I know that some people need to hear them. We got our student handbooks, which our director Silke made for us. They have a TON of useful information. What the city of Dresden has to offer, what TUD has, all the dates of our group excursions (I won't give you a list, it'll spoil the surprise!) and a ton of good phrases for different situations (bank, buying a train ticket). Silke is the BEST. She is such a sweet lady and you can tell she wants us to love it here. It's very funny because I'm used to university bureaucrats at BU saying "I'll get that done for you" and then it takes two weeks. When Silke says she'll get something done for us, she does it three hours later! Love that about Germans. We ate at another Menza, and I had German schnitzel for the first time. Everyone said it wasn't as good as restaurant schnitzel (cafeteria food is the same globally, haha), but I thought it was tasty. I'm still getting used to eating more at lunch than dinner. We then had a really, really long walking tour of TUD. It's the oldest technical university in Germany, and the campus is monstrous. The walk from our dorm (Max Kade Haus) to the classroom buildings is easily forty minutes. Some people want to get bikes, but I think I'm just going to suck it up and work on my calf muscles. We got back from the tour and just hung out for a while, then me and two friends went to a CVS-like store (called dm) because I forgot conditioner and they wanted hand soap. We went to the grocery store and then had a group dinner. That was a lot of fun. We came back, went to the bar for a little while, then called it a night. I think people were still pretty jet-lagged, but it was mostly gone by Thursday morning.
Thursday I woke up ridiculously late because I kept getting woken up at six and seven by huge, loud garbage trucks and sirens and general noise. I did some organizing, then we took special "biometric" pictures for our student IDs. They were freaking expensive, which is annoying because I am poor. Then we did a little grocery shopping and ate dinner. We then went as a group (35+ of us!) on a tram to Neustadt (New Town). Our RA's took us to a hookah bar and showed us a couple of clubs around. We went to a place called Katy's Garage, and I really liked the music. The dancing here is a lot different, which is awesome. It's much more fun to dance in a large group as opposed to pairs.
Friday was a fun day, but a lot of walking again. We started with a bus tour of Dresden, which is where most of my pictures are from. We were going to do just a driving tour, but Dresden's Stadtfest (town festival/fair thingy) is this weekend, so they were setting up and the traffic was terrible. I was happy to get out of the bus and walk around though, it was absolutely beautiful. Dresden is an unique European city because it is 800 years old, but all the old buildings were destroyed by the bombing or the firestorm in WWII. Thus, even though some of the buildings LOOK old, none of them were built before the end of the Soviet era. If details were known about the buildings, they were built as historically accurate as possible. My favorite was the church built using the remaining stones (and mostly new ones) and the refurbished courtyard. The courtyard was built to celebrate the wedding of Augustus the Strong's (king of Poland and electorate of Saxony) son and a princess of Austria. For three weeks, 1000 guests had 15-20 course meals with entertainment, live music, and dancing. It was so beautiful. The rest of the city tour was really interesting and our guide knew so much about the history of Dresden.
After we got back from the tour, we went as a group to T-mobile to get our cellphones and the bookstore to pick up our books. Travelling in a group of 15 makes everything take excessively long, so we got back to the rooms at about 5:00. I read for a while, then Zeynep and I cooked dinner. I was tired, but Zeynep convinced me we should go out to Stadtfest, the town festival. We were there for a few hours, but we were both really tired. We ate a tasty crepe with caramelized onions, chives, and butter. I'm super excited to go back tonight; it reminds me of a fair and the food is ridiculously good. Hopefully I'll have some pictures posted on photobucket or facebook by the end of the day today
Tschüss,
Lani
So the adventure began on Sunday. I woke up and hurried around getting my shit together to take the Megabus at 7:30. I ate McDonalds for breakfast and messed around on the computer on the free WiFi. The bus ride took about five hours, so we got into NYC at 12:30. I didn't have much time to enjoy the city (although, to be honest, it scares me shitless) because I hopped in a cab to take me to JFK. It was a long and boring car ride, and I texted friends goodbye through most of it. I got to the airport at around 1:30. While I was waiting in line to check my bags, I ran into Janhavee, a girl from a class first semester who is also on my program. She invited me to eat lunch with her family in JFK's food court, which was fun. Then I went through security while she said goodbye to her family. I got to my gate with 2+ hours to spare, so I called Ma and Dad, talked to Anthony and Laurel for a bit. As the time to board got closer, I met a lot of people in my program. We had a fun time talking about how none of us know German.
Then the first plane ride. Our flight was from JFK to Munchen (Munich) then Munchen to Dresden. JFK to Munchen is nine hours in the air, plus take off/landing time. It was easily the biggest plan I've ever been on. The great part about the flight was that it was not full by any means, I had a bank of three seats all to myself. I slept for a few hours, but then I couldn't (despite getting four hours of sleep the night before), so I watched three movies. We got to the Munchen airport at six AM GT (German Time). We waited for our connecting flight for literally three and a half hours. It was terrible. Then we got onto a smaller plane and flew into Dresden. It was now 12:30 PM, and I had been awake for 30 hours on four hours of sleep beforehand. Needless to say, everyone in our group was exhausted. We all wanted to sleep away our jet lag. But we had other plans.
We did some basic orientation things: here are the keys to your dorms (the doors lock automatically, do NOT leave your keys in the room), etc. etc. My room is actually the best on the floor (and the best in the program, as far as I've seen). We all live in singles, and most rooms are clearly singles: there is room for a bed, a desk, a dresser, a tall bookshelf, and a small table and chair. My room was definitely meant to be a double. I have all my furniture on one side and it looks NAKED. I told all the girls on my floor we could have one side of my room as a sort of common room. I hope they take me up on it; I enjoy studying and eating in groups. Hopefully some of the other people in our program not on our floor (we're on the second, third, and fifth floors of the Max Kade Haus). The rest of Monday is a very tired blur. We went to the free room where previous participants left the things they weren't taking back (duvets, books, hangers, trash cans and the like). I rearranged my furniture the way I wanted it, and unpacked. Most people went out to the bar that is in our dorm (Germans), but I knew I was too tired, so I slept for close to thirteen hours.
Tuesday morning, I was woken at seven by a church bell. Not just seven chimes of a church bell, easily over a MINUTE of it ringing. My RA Debbie says that it does that every week day, and rings at 9:30 on the weekends. I will never sleep in ever again. Tuesday was a busy, busy day. We registered as foreign students with the city of Dresden (Germany LOVES paperwork, apparently), and opened a bank account in Dresden so our stipends can be deposited (which is good...so poor). We ate lunch at a Menza (cafeteria), that reminded me of an American cafeteria almost exactly. The two differences were that you paid per item, and the background chatter was in German. We also paid our security deposits, then I took a nap, then we went to Ikea (pronounced EE-KAY-AH here). I bought some necessary things for me (another towel, a duvet cover, a blanket, a pillow) and took the tram. The trains here are nicer than anything I've ever seen in the US. They are clean, quiet, perfectly on time (they have a display screen telling you when every number bus/tram is coming), and a super-smooth ride. Tuesday everyone went out again, and this time I was up to it. I drank a few beers at the bar and headed home. I was still tired, and funny thing, alcohol doesn't help that at all!
Wednesday I woke up late, but luckily my group waited for me as I threw on jeans and a sweater. We went back to campus to listen to "Health and Safety," your standard college bullshit about not being irresponsible. I get irritated at listening to things like that, but I know that some people need to hear them. We got our student handbooks, which our director Silke made for us. They have a TON of useful information. What the city of Dresden has to offer, what TUD has, all the dates of our group excursions (I won't give you a list, it'll spoil the surprise!) and a ton of good phrases for different situations (bank, buying a train ticket). Silke is the BEST. She is such a sweet lady and you can tell she wants us to love it here. It's very funny because I'm used to university bureaucrats at BU saying "I'll get that done for you" and then it takes two weeks. When Silke says she'll get something done for us, she does it three hours later! Love that about Germans. We ate at another Menza, and I had German schnitzel for the first time. Everyone said it wasn't as good as restaurant schnitzel (cafeteria food is the same globally, haha), but I thought it was tasty. I'm still getting used to eating more at lunch than dinner. We then had a really, really long walking tour of TUD. It's the oldest technical university in Germany, and the campus is monstrous. The walk from our dorm (Max Kade Haus) to the classroom buildings is easily forty minutes. Some people want to get bikes, but I think I'm just going to suck it up and work on my calf muscles. We got back from the tour and just hung out for a while, then me and two friends went to a CVS-like store (called dm) because I forgot conditioner and they wanted hand soap. We went to the grocery store and then had a group dinner. That was a lot of fun. We came back, went to the bar for a little while, then called it a night. I think people were still pretty jet-lagged, but it was mostly gone by Thursday morning.
Thursday I woke up ridiculously late because I kept getting woken up at six and seven by huge, loud garbage trucks and sirens and general noise. I did some organizing, then we took special "biometric" pictures for our student IDs. They were freaking expensive, which is annoying because I am poor. Then we did a little grocery shopping and ate dinner. We then went as a group (35+ of us!) on a tram to Neustadt (New Town). Our RA's took us to a hookah bar and showed us a couple of clubs around. We went to a place called Katy's Garage, and I really liked the music. The dancing here is a lot different, which is awesome. It's much more fun to dance in a large group as opposed to pairs.
Friday was a fun day, but a lot of walking again. We started with a bus tour of Dresden, which is where most of my pictures are from. We were going to do just a driving tour, but Dresden's Stadtfest (town festival/fair thingy) is this weekend, so they were setting up and the traffic was terrible. I was happy to get out of the bus and walk around though, it was absolutely beautiful. Dresden is an unique European city because it is 800 years old, but all the old buildings were destroyed by the bombing or the firestorm in WWII. Thus, even though some of the buildings LOOK old, none of them were built before the end of the Soviet era. If details were known about the buildings, they were built as historically accurate as possible. My favorite was the church built using the remaining stones (and mostly new ones) and the refurbished courtyard. The courtyard was built to celebrate the wedding of Augustus the Strong's (king of Poland and electorate of Saxony) son and a princess of Austria. For three weeks, 1000 guests had 15-20 course meals with entertainment, live music, and dancing. It was so beautiful. The rest of the city tour was really interesting and our guide knew so much about the history of Dresden.
After we got back from the tour, we went as a group to T-mobile to get our cellphones and the bookstore to pick up our books. Travelling in a group of 15 makes everything take excessively long, so we got back to the rooms at about 5:00. I read for a while, then Zeynep and I cooked dinner. I was tired, but Zeynep convinced me we should go out to Stadtfest, the town festival. We were there for a few hours, but we were both really tired. We ate a tasty crepe with caramelized onions, chives, and butter. I'm super excited to go back tonight; it reminds me of a fair and the food is ridiculously good. Hopefully I'll have some pictures posted on photobucket or facebook by the end of the day today
Tschüss,
Lani
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