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!