Author Archive
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
It’s 6 a.m. in Iowa– my brain turned on like a light around 5:30 and despite my pleads and bargaining myself, I guess I’m up for the day. Apparently it’s easier to fall into your sleep pattern when returning to the US from Europe, but in my little experience with it before, that is so not the case for me. Also, I’m ravenously hungry. All of my flights were for the most part on time yesterday, and I arrived in Des Moines at 10:30 p.m. to a ridiculously happy Savannah, and my dad who had come prepared with a can of Diet Pepsi and my new cell phone. What a guy. The bags under my eyes betrayed that I’d had about a combined hour of sleep during my entire 20-ish hour journey from alarm clock to baggage claim yesterday. Upon arriving home, I was too excited to unwrap all my wares (mustard! chocolate! shot glasses! …an odd amount of shot glasses!) to fall right into bed. Once I did, I dreamt of nothing but airports, airplanes, and last-minute Mother’s Day gift shopping (which will happening some time today.)
I’m looking forward to many things this week, but am also quite frankly scared shitless of being thrust back into it all, and holy heartache, Batman– I miss Germany and D-Bag. So much. When I got to the US-bound flights terminal in the Munich airport, the American-ness was palpable. So many overweight senior citizens complaining about the extra security or something they didn’t like about their bus tour of Germany, while sweating away in their Mickey Mouse track suits and visors. Once we landed in Chicago and it was REAL, like real-real, yours truly wasn’t exactly bowling people over in the aisles to get my feet on American soil. Let’s just try not and get salty tears all over your customs declaration form, okay Ma’am? I guess this is my last post on the ol’ Iowa Girls Gone Wild; as we all know, you can find me here. Good luck to Lauren in her return journey, but mostly with the whole saying of good-byes thing; it really does suck more than you could prepare yourself for. WOW this post was much more Debbie Downer depressing than I’d planned on it being. Overall, studying abroad was the BEST DECISION EVER and I MISS IT and it was GREAT, but I’m still REALLY hungry so will bid you Auf Wiedersehen, dear readers. You’re the best (ok, you could have commented more.) Thanks for putting up with my bipolarity and general uninteresting observations on all things about life abroad. Time to go drink Diet Pepsi by the gallon and pee in public restaurants just because I can.
Tags: airplane, airport, home, Iowa, leaving
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
….here I come, America!
I got a surprising amount of sleep last night and am already showered, caffeinated, and marzipaned with plenty of time to get to the airport. It’s raining and gloomy; typical Germany refusing to give me one last sunshine-y memory. One of my two suitcases is quite certainly overweight, and just maneuvering both of them through bus, train, subway, and airport is the greatest source of my anxiety right now. Either way, in just over 22 hours I should be coming down the escalator towards my father and Savannah in the Des Moines International (giggle) Airport. I’ve left my flatmates a lovely note (because that’s really the most fitting good-bye considering our relationship) and got enormous bear hugs from the Slovak and my other neighbor last night. I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, OH AND GUESS WHAT– my friend Katie and I WON karaoke the other night (D-Bag and I left early.) The prize is a 50 Euro tab to be used at the bar, so while I’m sad I wasn’t there to claim my prize or use it, it’s probably for the best. And by “won” I mean they put all of the participants’ names in a hat and randomly draw a winner each week, so it’s not like the judges were super impressed by my coordinated and oft-rehearsed boy band moves.
AUF WIEDERSEHEN, DEUTSCHLAND! ICH LIEBE DICH UND ICH WERDE DICH VERMISSEN!!
Tags: airport, flatmates, leaving
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
We’ve hit the 24 hour mark, and these last ones will be filled with packing (since I haven’t started, though at least all my clothes are finally clean) and cleaning and not hanging out with D-Bag because he’s GONE. Perhaps I’ll touch on that later, perhaps I won’t, but at least if any tears were shed, they happened after our hallway parting in the solace of one’s empty, cold, clean laundry-strewn room. Oh yes, that definitely does not not need to be touched upon. Since my sheets are drying for my room-check later today, I slept on my couch last night and will again this evening. And by couch, I mean half of a loveseat that wakes me up at 6:30 a.m. because of shooting back spasms and is no way fit to make one feel even remotely like sitting on a plane for a very long time very soon.
Last night I sang karaoke for the first time in my life– Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way” AND Guns ‘n Roses’ “Sweet Child o Mine.” The best part about these two songs, besides of course my obvious sobriety, was that I can sing them verbatim without the words on the screen. This is especially helpful when one wants to really emote on stage, or if you were to say have the Sweet Child o Mine video memorized and want to swing the microphone by it’s cord during Slash’s last guitar solo, only to be verbally reprimanded by the German karaoke controller man. My bad, sir. My friend Katie also sang these with me so I didn’t feel like a complete fool, and there may be photos but I feel those are best left in the blackmail vault.
Is this my last post? Am I supposed to come back with some sort of drawn out good-bye or a list of thank yous or multiple personal revelations about how studying abroad has changed my life? I suppose I’ll save that for the plane, then give you one last nugget of wisdom so you know I’ve arrived safely. In the meantime, get prepared for my triumphant return to blogging solo (the link is just a shameless plug to my other blog; like this one, only less direction, no Lauren, and more embarrassing self-promotion.)
Tags: drinking, GNR, karaoke, leaving
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
I board my flight home (Hamburg to Munich to Chicago to Des Moines) in 49 hours! Perhaps it’s because I had some pleasant dreams of home last night, but I am in a very peppy mood about the coming two days. (Yes, I just said peppy. This could also possibly be attributed to the fact I’m trying to use up the rest of my instant coffee before I leave. I still have half a jar left– this day could get interesting, fast.)
Most people in my program met at the Hofbrauhaus in Hamburg on Monday for some last liters of beer and good-byes and photos. I also now really really really want my parents to redo our basement bar into a Hofbrauhaus theme. GO WITH ME ON THIS, I think it’ll be great. Yesterday I spent the better part of the afternoon walking around Luneburg, window shopping, browsing, souvenir-shopping… and came up pretty much empty handed. I got some panoramic postcards of the place for myself and a new pair of jeans (on sale! 15 Euro!) Oh and some gelato, but that was really just implied. I am in no way joking or planning a secret souvenir surprise when I say I am literally empty-handed for all of you readers. Oh wait, my brother’s getting a t-shirt. Feel free to send in desperate last-minute e-mails if you were expecting something specific, but there’s nothing I’ve found that screams “Kayla HAS to have that” or “THIS would make a good Mother’s Day gift.” Really, my presence is all anyone needs, and all anyone will be getting. I don’t even have anything for NPH, and it’s his birthday in five days. MY BAD.
Tags: leaving, presents
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Things I will miss upon my return to America:
1. Drinking in public. Germany has no open-container laws; I’ve never bowed down to non-existent legislature before. If we’re walking to bowling and someone hasn’t finished their beer, they can just take it with them! How much better would the world be if we could all just pop a beer on the walk home after class instead of remaining sober for the entire journey? Get your act together, Iowa.
2. Bakeries. They’re on every single corner, and that is in no way an exaggeration. It is completely acceptable to be eating bread at absolutely any hour of the day, in any venue or life situation. Bus, bike, train? Eating pastries, pretzels, bread rolls. Before, during, and after meals? More bread. Class? Carbs! And no one here is 400 pounds! Germans are CONSTANTLY EATING, something that will be sorely missed by yours truly.
3. D-Bag. My neighbor, best buddy, and personal therapist– Darin. I am 100% convinced I would have been mauled by a bear if it weren’t for him. Knowledgeable from having already been here a semester, he graciously let me follow his every move and showed me the ropes of this sometimes scary, always foreign place. While it would seem we have little in common save for our extreme sarcasm and general “I couldn’t give a shit less about 95% of the things happening around me if I tried” attitude, our oppositeness played nicely off each other and I’MGONNAMISSHIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4. Sassy German women. I’m speaking to the ones in the over 50-set– these women have spunk. Also, while we’re on the subject of spitfire generations, there are plenty of extremely active elderly people (we’re talking geriatrics who have stories from the war) who ride the bus with me every day. I’m continually amazed by them, mostly because I don’t plan on getting off the couch after I qualify for AARP.
5. Places only taking cash. I spend so much less money not being able to swipe a plastic card every time I want to make a purchase.
6. To lump many other things together: the beer/ the beauty (everyone told me it’s such a beautiful country, but you don’t realize til you’re here HOLY SCHMOLIGANS that’s a pretty landscape)/ ubiquitous public transportation/ my Slovakian neighbor/ my running trails/ soft pretzels/ H&M/ learning the language.
7. Getting A’s on everything because I’m treated like a five-year-old. This is perhaps just program-specific, but essentially if I showed up to class even half alive and turned in something by the end of the semester, I was received with heaps of praise. If I were treated with such kid gloves at home, my grades would be far improved. Now that it’s over (and as of 12:15 today, I am officially a senior in college) I can say I never got anything less than an A this entire semester.
Things I will not miss:
1. Getting stared at for being obviously foreign.
2. Having four roommates.
3. The entire country being shut down on Sundays/ weekdays after 6 p.m.
4. The language barrier
5. Being a slave to Skype/ Facebook/ Gmail if I want to talk to people from home
6. The USD to Euro conversion rate
7. Germans’ obsession with mayonnaise, their lack of spicy food, and their refusal to acknowledge barbecue sauce as a condiment
8. Paying for water. FREE REFILLS, here I come. Also, paying to pee in public. I’ve probably spent more money so I wouldn’t pee my pants than I have on beer. (That was a blatant lie, but I feel a strong comparison was needed to show how unjust I find spending 30-70 cents just to save my insides.)
I’m looking forward to: gas station fountain soda, tortilla chips and salsa, movie theater kettle corn, spicy chicken wings, and Oasis’ falafel and hummus. Sorry, NPH, but it will be a long, long time before I crave bratwurst again. Ooh, maybe a nice steak though. And funfetti cake. Dammit, I probably shouldn’t be writing this list while hungry.
Tags: class, drinking, food, leaving
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
As far advanced as Germany is in so many areas, they missed the boat on the whole WINDOW SCREENS thing. The bee currently buzzing around my room is the third one this week. My windows have to be open for temperature control, since they also never received the air-conditioning memo.
I saw part of a robin’s egg on my run this morning (ok, my jog this morning. My legs were not feeling movement today, which proved just fine since I might not have spotted the bright teal little gem if I’d been going at a normal pace.) I don’t really have much else to say about it, except it made me think of my mom.
A few hours after aforementioned physical activity, there was a rumbly in my tumbly that needed satiated. My shelves are pretty bare due to my imminent departure, so I ventured into Am Sande for lunch. Normally only McDonald’s and the Turkish Doner places are open on Sundays (both are pretty barf-tastic) but since everything was closed yesterday for the holiday, most eateries, bakeries, and gelato places were open today. So where did I go? For the first time since arriving here… SUBWAY!!! I figured I’d give it a try, having worked there for over three years during high school, and to hopefully satisfy my recent craving for lettuce. The menu was in English, and I ordered a toasted turkey on Vollkorn brot (“fitness” bread covered in seeds. It’s way good.) You only get to choose between sliced or cream cheese, and they have less veggies to put on it. I also thought it was hella expensive, but then remembered American Subways aren’t always known for their ease on the pocketbook, either. I got a meal since I was ready to gnaw off my arm at this point, though their chip selection was much more limited and you’re only allowed to fill your drink cup once. After inhaling my salt and vinegar chips at the bus stop, I came home and added some of my Regensburg mustard to my sandwich and chowed. IT WAS SO GOOD. The turkey tasted (and looked!) like real turkey instead of the slimy fart turkey our Subways have. Since my best friend Kayla has worked there for, what is it now… 6 years? 7? Your whole life?– I took a picture for her and will now share it with you (let’s ignore my general appearance, including whatever’s going on with my fingernail polish.)
Post-church trips to Subway can be added to my list of reasons I’m excited to live at home this summer, along with eating at Gateway Market, finally visiting the downtown Des Moines’ farmer’s market, and easily accessible Jordan Creek kettle corn. And yes, I realize those all have to do with food.
Tags: food, Kayla, leaving, running
Posted in Brittney | 3 Comments »
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
Today, besides being only ONE MONTH from my 21st birthday, is Labor Day in Germany. This holiday is traditionally characterized by political riots in the larger cities (especially in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin) and insane drunkenness everywhere else. It was supposed to rain this weekend, but when I woke up– much too early for a Saturday, damn you insanely vivid dreams– the weather could not have been more perfect. This called for a venture out of doors, and not just because I had seen people setting up bratwurst tents in the downtown area last night. Since Luneburg is far too family friendly for political unrest, the “gathering” near Am Sande was literally called a Family Festival, replete with marching band, inflatable play areas, and a face painting stand. When I got there, some guy was on stage speaking in staccato-ed German to a crowd holding party signs and homemade banners against military involvement in Afghanistan. Essentially, something NPH would have been far more interested in than I was. I turned my attention to the bratwurst stand, beer tent, and Kuchenbuffet (cake buffet. Let me say that again: CAKE. BUFFET.) Since it wasn’t even 11 a.m., I made a beeline towards the tent with the church ladies and their wares. Sorry, Lutherans schlepping coffee and bars back home, but these German Fraus know what’s up in the dessert for breakfast department. After much oggling, I settled on some sort of Quarkkuchen with apricots (peaches?) and slivered almonds on top. As if I need to tell you, it did not disappoint. The next couple of hours involved me walking around town, soaking in my last weekend here, taking pictures, and wondering why I didn’t get the memo on today’s holiday also doubling as “Large groups of older people getting really dressed up and taking guided tours of the city Day.”
Today could not have been more beautiful (ok, the first part anyway. The second part involves me attempting to study for my final on Monday but probably catching up on episodes of 16 & Pregnant online.) This came at a perfect time, because the whole “leaving” thing hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday when I was filling out my program evaluation. Wondering if I’m mentally ill because of my ever-changing feelings on going home is getting quite old, and I have to agree 100% with Lauren when she said she has much more anxiety about going home than when coming to Europe. I woke up and I was DREADING everything about America, but then I walked by someone today who smelled like my grandmother and I got really excited to be seeing family again in just a week for Mother’s Day. D-Bag decided to go all Yoda on me yesterday and explain that all good things must come to an end, and if we prepare for the inevitable good-bye, we can enjoy the time we have left (or something like that, my eyes tend to glaze over at these kinds of pep-talks.) I did kind of start cleaning my room yesterday, though far too much laundry needs to be done before I can pack, so I settled on starting random piles around my room. I really don’t have much in the souvenirs for loved ones department (sorry, Grandma, but pastries will NOT survive the flight back) because I don’t know what they’d want and most things here wouldn’t mean much to those who haven’t experienced it anyway. Oh, feel free to read this about the study abroad experience, something I contributed to The Next Great Generation’s week on education.
Tags: food, leaving, politics
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Today was my very last day of German class! The final is tomorrow and then I have another final on Monday, then the rest of the week is mine to pack, buy souvenirs, and CLEAN my room before I fly out on Friday. Is it real? No. Have I put that much thought into it? Not at all. I’m not chomping at the bit to get home, nor am I drowning in tears about leaving. True to form, our teacher knocked it outta the park today. We had a mini-breakfast party with strawberries, cheesy rolls, and Quarkballchen (essentially German donut holes.) She decorated the room and made us Schuletutes (school cones) something that German students get on their first day of school, filled with candy and pencils and stuff. Mine was blue and covered in dinosaur stickers because of my motto “Never forget your dinosaur.” We played a review game, which I won, so I got a little gold medal, a coffee cup with the German flag on it, and we all got shot glasses. She’s the best!!
The weather this week has been absolutely perfect; coupled with the surprisingly light amount of homework I have makes for ample time to roam about town. I usually stop for an afternoon pastry and then try to walk it off on my way home (how I will miss you, bakeries on every corner.) My life is relatively boring, and I’ve mostly just been enjoying the calm before the inevitable storm of leaving. Oh, on the good news from home front, I was elected Vice President of UI’s PRSSA chapter which I’m pretty excited about. I was going to pitch a fit if I didn’t get on the exec board this year since I was last year, but thankfully that tantrum will be avoided. Natalie, I’m scouring the greater Hamburg area for keychains this weekend. NPH made reservations for our first “official” date when I return, so there are definitely things to get excited about on the way to the airport.
Tags: class, food, leaving, NPH
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Turns out there’s a LOT to see in Berlin. I will make the bold statement that it’s by far the most historical city I’ve ever been to, or hey, might ever end up visiting, since all fantasies of any ventures outside Iowa for a long time involve my ass on a beach, drink in hand/ the Vegas strip, drink in hand. My most tourist-y trip to date started bright and early at 6 a.m. on Friday morning, and here now, a timeline of my weekend:
6 a.m. Wake up. Throw together a bag of hopefully enough clothes and toiletries since someone stayed up far too late Skyping her boyfriend instead of packing the night before. Also, wolf down an orange and banana with peanut butter because if I’m going to spending four hours on a bus with strangers, you best believe my blood sugar needs to be at a semi-tolerable level.
6:50 a.m. Get on charter bus, pretty stoked I have a seat all to myself. I recognize a few of the other students from around campus. The director lady greets us all auf Deutsch and explains the coming events without using English. I understand her (this weekend was generally a huge Win in terms of my German comprehension. )
10:00 a.m. We stop at a rest stop, some students have started talking amongst themselves. I eavesdrop like nobody’s business, about piss myself realizing I can still understand most of what they’re saying in Spanish. Trilingualism, here I come. Some people introduce themselves to me, turns out I am on the bus with: Finnish, Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Colombian, Italian, and Russian students. Their reactions were mixed when they found out where I’m from. ”America.” “Ooooh!!” or “America.” ”Oh.”
11 a.m.- 2p.m. City tour by bus. Berlin is extremely clean and cosmopolitan… and yet still completely defined by the Wall. It’s a beautiful city, though it’s spread out and not up, and I don’t like those kind of cities. I would say it’s my third favorite city in Germany (Munich and Hamburg, duh.) There are literally hundreds of famous buildings– my brain was on severe overload from all the new information. I was never a big history buff, but I found most all of the information gathered on this trip really interesting.
3 p.m. Lunch at an Indian restaurant with three Russian students. Note to self: you like Indian food, eat more of it. Their English was not great, and obviously I haven’t brushed up on my Russian in a while, so we resorted to broken German and hand gestures and comfortable chewing silences.
8 p.m. My first (and I would in no way be offended if it were my last) opera. We went to Strauss’ Salome. I can appreciate having been, but I don’t find operatic singing nice on the ears at all. The lyrics were thankfully projected on a small screen above the stage so I at least got a good German lesson. From what I could understand, there’s this princess who sees and lusts after this hairy prophet guy who lives in the ground, but she can’t have him. Her father then has her do a striptease for him, and in return she can have whatever she wants. She wants the prophet guy’s body, after a lot of, “No! Anything but that!” he gives in. Well, kinda– turns out they’d had him decapitated, so really she only gets his bleeding head. She kisses the head because she thinks he’s still alive (and apparently delusional, it is clearly bleeding all over the stage and herself) to which her father orders her to be killed. The end scene is her being shot.
10 p.m. We go to a quiet bar. I have a beer. The other girls at my table order lemonade or orange juice. One of them remarks at how quickly I drink. I try to politely nod and say something about being thirsty. We go back to our hostel.
Saturday– 10 a.m. Go to the Jewish Museum. It’s actually pretty interesting, lots of artifacts from the Holocaust.
1 p.m. I set off in search of the Wichtendahl Gallery. Thankfully we were giving subway passes for the weekend and a map, so this is not as complicated as it otherwise could have been. I introduce myself to the woman at the desk, turns out she’s the Wichtendahl who opened it. She thinks it’s just the Bees Knees that I came and we share a name, so we chat a bit and exchange contact info. For interested family members, I can fill you in on the details of this visit later.
3 p.m. I find myself at Germany’s largest mall. All of the sightseeing and museum-going had my brain a bit tired, so I had coffee crunch ice cream for lunch and went about window shopping. And then some real shopping; may God bless H&M. I bought two dresses, ideally I will buy 12 more before leaving (ok, at least two.) Fun fact for my at home audience: I love dresses. I love dressing up. Unfortunately now that I have more of them, I want to buy shoes and jewelry to go with. But mostly shoes.
8 p.m. We have a group dinner at an amazingly authentic Italian pizzeria and trattoria. The pizzas for one person are the size of at least a medium back in the States. They were fire-baked and everything. I went home afterward and was in bed by 10. Many of my counterparts went out and didn’t return til 7 a.m. I need sleep, I LOVE sleep. Also, if my friends at home aren’t around, I don’t particularly like drinking with strangers. Not to mention those precious Euros could be used to buy new shoes (see above.)
Sunday– noon to 5 p.m. Tour of the German parliament building. I was also uncharacteristically interested in this and learned lots o’ fun facts (my Facebook album has more info in the captions.) The rest of the afternoon was ours to do whatever. I went back to Checkpoint Charlie, which we’d seen on the city tour, and the wall. We arrived back in Luneburg around 9 p.m.
OVERALL, this trip was a roaring success. I’m really glad I did the group trip thing because the anxiety over getting on trains/ finding a hostel/ what to do where and when was essentially eliminated. There’s so much stuff to see, and I feel I was able to really do it all in a short amount of time. It was also by far the most intercultural experience I’ve had since coming here with all of our different nationalities and translating things for each other. Going off on my own was also a growing up experience but ultimately the most fun. This trip did make me miss my dad more than usual, not just all the WWII stuff, but the fact that I was very thirsty the whole time (he always seems to orchestrate a lot of water-buying when we first get someplace) and DMX’s “Back that Ass Up” came on my iPod during the bus ride home. It’s one of his favorite songs to dance and sing to in his office, as I’m sure it is for many of your fathers as well.
Tags: Berlin, bus, food, NPH, opera
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
One week of classes left. I am certainly not upset about this at all– I loathe academia more than perhaps anything in the whole wide world (besides Deutsche Bahn and Sarah Palin, of course.) This week has been quite the snooze fest in terms of blog-worthy tales, though my bathroom has FINALLY been restored to working condition after two weeks of dehumidification. The weather has ranged from sun to rain to sleet to hail to clouds to wind every day, so my time has been spent inside cleaning (!!!) and doing the ridiculous amounts of homework I have before leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning.
I’m going on a group trip (with no one from my actual program) which should be interesting, to say the least. A run down of my weekend: city tour by bus, opera, Jewish Museum, “The Story of Berlin” Museum, tour of the German parliament, and requisite sightseeing of Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburger Tor, etc. (Do you foresee problems with the amount of boring stuff on that list? It’s gotta be better than learning about the evolution of the steam engine last weekend at the Deutsche Museum, right?) There’s actually copious amounts of free time also scheduled in there, and I plan to take some of this to go see the WICHTENDAHL GALLERY. That’s right, folks– I’m so famous, they’re putting up shrines. In actuality, it’s an art gallery I happened to learn about when Googling my last name (Google.de produces much different results for it than Google.com, which is basically just a rundown of every position my father’s held over the last 15 years.) It just so happens it’s located in Berlin, not far from the train station, so I plan on making the trek to at least take a picture of myself in front of the sign. I hope it’s that easy.
Fifteen nights out, and the insomnia has officially set in. I lay awake at night thinking about things I’ll do when I get home, what I’ve yet to do here, and just generally wracked with anxiety about how heavy my suitcases will be, if I’ll cry when D-Bag and I part ways, my Intercultural Communication final, how many cupcakes I should make for NPH’s birthday, if I should dye my hair to finally get rid of the red, if my milk will go bad while I’m in Berlin, how I’ll manage living at home again after four months on a different continent, and whether I should eat my banana for breakfast with or without peanut butter. It’s quite exhausting to be me. About three nights before leaving, I’ll start waking up around 3 a.m. and not be able to fall back asleep– if you have access to a prescription pad or cases of NyQuil, let’s talk.
Off to take my weekly German test. My two presentations this week went well enough, I suppose. Oh, and I’m all registered for classes for my last fall semester of college (what.the.firetruck.) and don’t have any Wednesday or Friday classes. PRETTY STOKED about that one.
Tags: Berlin, class, insomnia
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Ahh, but you’re thinking to yourself—Brittney, WHAT about that volcano? You know I have something to say, and it sure as shit involves me typing this on a train to Luneburg at almost midnight on Sunday night. As you may remember, I FLEW to Munich, and that was absolutely glorious and pain free. Apparently I live in a nice little No Relevant News zone (or to give myself some credit, had been putting together a scholastic presentation and studying for a test when most of this was happening) because I took this “volcano” thing less than half-seriously. So imagine my hostility at Mother Nature when this “volcano” grounded my flight home. First of all, sorry in advance to your virgin ears, but WHATTHEFUCK. We can definitely put Mountains That Spew Magma and Ash in the column of Stuff I Forgot Exists. Second of all, this could not have happened on a worse weekend because my attendance in class tomorrow to give my semester-end presentation is pretty mandatory. Thirdly, I suppose if Iceland wants to blow up on its own time, I’m in no place to stand in its way, but I am only in Europe for four months. Could this not have waited? Now when people talk about this catastrophic world-changing event (I’m not being dramatic about this in the slightest) ‘twill be I who can grimly say, “I was there. I was a victim. And I saw the ash cloud hanging out over Bavaria.” I totally did, by the by. Sebas’ dad was all about updating us on it—the day started really sunny then it got cloudy but the giant cloud didn’t move and it never got cold or anything. Where were YOU when the world started to end?! Not on a Lufthansa flight back to Niedersachsen at a decent time, that’s for sure.
ANYWAY, so my only way to get home was the Blank Blankin’ There Aren’t Enough Words for How Much I Hate It Friggin’ Deutsche Bahn. I am not alone in this well-deserved rage either; all the Germans hate it, too. Perhaps I will go on a fifteen-minute rant about all the reasons Deutsche Bahn is Satan incarnate next time I’m drunk, a la NPH about the state of Indiana. I booked my ticket online this morning, a two-leg journey from Regensburg to Luneburg that would put me in my room around 10 pm. There was a small problem in that I booked it with a BahnCard which I don’t actually have in my physical possession, and that does NOT fly with the DB people. Sebas, bless his fluent little soul, came to the service counter to ask the lady if they could perhaps print me a temporary card so I didn’t get publicly humiliated on the train and have to pay lots of extra money. Somewhere within this process, the lady at the counter points out to him that I only have a ticket for the second leg of my journey because the first train is booked solid (“volcano.”) OH OKAY. Thank you, useless piece of shit Web site, for letting that transaction occur. She found me a three-leg journey that would put me in my room at perhaps 1 am. It was my only option, so this is the train on which I find myself currently. It would have been a two-leg journey since my previous train goes right to Luneburg every day of the year except for four random ones in April, and WOULDN’T YOU KNOW, yep. Today. One of my stopovers was in Nurnberg for an hour so I was able to find a place to pee, aka McDonald’s, and take pictures of some sick architecture. The Hannover train station was ridiculously busy, and not just with Germans (the Deutsche Bahn people are printing money out of all this ash.) I am in an oddly good humor for having had about four hours of sleep over the past 36. The plan is to take a taxi from the train station to my WG and then pass out. This bag is far too heavy to carry across town, though I could just go halfway and then sleep on the steps to my class tomorrow morning. I wouldn’t want to wake up covered in ash, though.
Tags: Munich, train, weather
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Saturday night we went to a town over and drank with some friends before going to a “Spring Break” party at some random ass club in literally the middle of nowhere. As in: field field field SHED WITH DISCO MUSIC field field. It wasn’t exactly my idea of a great time—wall to wall bodies, nay, wall to wall German bodies dancing and singing along to techno and German rap and smoking and being quite odiferous. Sebas’ German friends kept asking about America, “Is this like it is in America?” and practicing their English with me. They all wanted to know if I’d been on a real “Spring Break” and do I watch Jersey Shore and is this the same music you listen to in America? Their supermarket recently got guys to bag your groceries because “That’s how they do it in America.” Um yeah, and we also waste thousands of bags through this process.
Oh, random side note: at bars and clubs here, it is commonplace to have “Go-Go Dancers” shaking it on a platform. We were sitting at a restaurant/ bar on Friday night and then BAM, blonde woman wearing Lucite heels, leg warms, underwear, some sort of spangly belt thing, and a see-through top climbs atop this table, and suffice it to say some waxing place in town must be doing a lot of business. To her credit, homegirl was in SHAPE, nary a wobbly bit moving out of place as she did a lot of, I don’t know, troucing and bending. It was as if she were picked to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader but then got kicked off over a nude photo scandal, she was just so damn happy about it the whole time. Probably coke. Anyway, there were also some at the “Spring Break” party, but at least they didn’t discriminate and gave the ladies and gays in the audience something to ogle. At one point, the male go-go dancer on the left stage turned from the crowd so his female counterpart could pull down his pants, share with the crowd his glorious behind (do you think they all go to the same esthetician?), then spray him down with some sort of water gun. My German peers could not understand why I was a bit um, taken aback by this, because “Don’t you know that’s no big deal here?” I’m not sure if a woman essentially putting herself on a gyno-patient relationship with me will ever not be a big deal.
On Saturday, two Italian students arrived that Sebas’ family will host for a week while they did a mini-exchange. I knew more German than them; I’m pretty proud. His family continuously commented on how much my German has improved since I visited at the end of January. They were very impressed at how much I’ve picked up in just three months time; his mother spoke to me exclusively auf Deutsch, thus I think she likes me. On Sunday, she fixed a HUGE lunch of pork steak, BRATWURST with my favorite mustard in the world, rolls, salad, and Magum ice cream bars. The family thinks it’s hilarious how much I like that damn condiment, and they find it humorous to feed me til I can’t move. Not that I put up a huge fight. After lunch, Sebas showed them his yearbook that I brought back after Spring Break (only four years after the fact) and they thought it was amazing. His 14-year-old sister was beyond impressed at the cheerleaders. His mom gave me a coffee cup with a picture of the Danube and Regensburg’s cathedral to remember the town by. AND THEN—get this—while I was packing my things upstairs, she made up a sack dinner for me to take on the train. How awesome is this woman!? As if I hadn’t eaten enough brats at lunch to keep me satiated until I leave the country, she made me a sandwich with an apple, banana, bottle of water, bottle of apple juice, and three little Nutella candy things. We then all shook hands/ awkwardly cheek-kissed/ hugged good-bye and they told me I’m always welcome, whenever I’m in Europe. I very much like being semi-adopted by a German family.
Tags: drinking, eating, Munich, Sebas, Spring Break, sun
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Sunday, April 18th, 2010
After my arrival on Thursday afternoon, we went to the store to stock up on beer and bratwurst. Thousands of miles apparently have no effect on my grocery list. Sebas grilled up Nurnburger brats which we had on hard rolls with my FAVORITE MUSTARD in the world. I am returning to the states with three bottles and a tube of this mustard; it’s occupying prime real estate in my luggage. With our case of beer I got a free Paulaner Hefeweiss Bier glass that plays the Paulaner jingle when clinked in a cheers or “Prost!” with another. He lives in barracks (or perhaps just a dorm of servicemen?) so soon I found myself drinking with many insanely jacked members of the German Army. They were all very friendly and thought I was the shit, a common feeling people experience when in my presence. The weather was ridiculously nice all weekend, so I was a bit sad that we went inside on Friday to visit the Deutsches Museum. I suppose it was cool, but it wasn’t about Germany so much as a museum of technologies throughout history? Trains, planes, the printing press, mining, metals– meh, not exactly my cup o’ tea. But then we got ice cream, the first of four times I had ice cream in three days, so be jealous.
We went to Sebas’ hometown about an hour outside the city that night, after getting stuck in a RIDICULOUS traffic jam on the Autobahn. Apparently this happens every single day, so while in most parts it’s true there is no speed limit, good luck on finding an open enough stretch of road where you can actually take advantage of it. Saturday was the nicest day of the year yet weather-wise so we visited the Walhalla. I’m going to have to direct you to Google on this one—some famous guy built this massive Grecian-looking temple to honor the gods on a hill overlooking the Danube River. One word: spectacular. I didn’t realize how much hillier/mountainous Southern Germany is than the part I’m used to. HOLY AMAZING SCENERY, Batman. Bavaria is hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in the world—the views were indescribably fantastic. I took lots of pictures, but they don’t nearly do it justice. We continued our scenic tour of the Bavarian countryside in Sebas’ BMW Z4 convertible (I have heard so much about this f@#$ing car. I’ve seen the engine, know the horsepower… Is there a girl in the world who could care less? Probably not. But it was a nice ride and oh baby does she go fast. We did some math on kilometers to miles and at times we were apparently going 156 MPH.) I only thought my life was in peril at oh, every turn, but at least I was sippin’ on a McDonald’s milkshake—strawberry for yours truly, chocolate for my chauffeur. We drove around the farm country for a couple of hours. Tiny villages of just a few houses and a church or two (they’re quite Catholic down south) would be every mile or two, with larger farms between. They happened to be spreading manure that day so the smells didn’t really match the picturesque sights, but it sure did remind me of Iowa.
Tags: drinking, food, Munich, Sebas
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
I had a religious experience today. My test went well, I signed up for our group trip to Berlin with only hours til the cut-off deadline, and still made it to the train station with about half an hour to spare. I’d had a banana and orange with my coffee in the wee hours of the morning, but a rumbly in my tumbly started to grow around 10 am. With time to kill and fresh Sparkasse Euros burning a hole in my pocket, I went to the bakery across the street from the Bahnhof for some caffeine and (hopefully) something almondy. Oh baby, was I not disappointed. First of all, this might be my new go-to hang out for all sweets and treats because it’s ridiculously cheaper than the bakeries occupying prime real estate in the center of town. They also have quite the range of goods—from regular croissants to every frosted cake you probably can’t even think of, and lots of savory breakfast sandwiches as well. I took more time making my selection than I do on most decisions of far greater importance, but in the end ‘twas perhaps the most life-altering choice I’ve made in almost 21 years. It is called Marzipanzopf and it has changed my life. I am not exaggerating when I say this braided delight was the size (length and almost width) of my forearm. In fact, and write this day down in history, it was TOO big and I found myself only wanting at most half. It was regular sweet bread dough, the impossibly intricate colonies of yeast proving its handmade and not machine-produced origins. Sticky, almost clear marzipan slid between the strands of twisted dough (zopf means braid auf Deutsch) and it was all topped with impossibly sweet powdered sugar glazed and toasted almond slivers. I needed some alone time with this thing. And yes, I realize I just described a pastry as if this was a smutty novel set after hours in a bakery backroom. If I had been washing it down with a Diet Pepsi and not a Coke Zero, I’d make the bold statement that this was the single best meal of my entire life. (But then again, I’m sure I’ll proclaim that after everything I put in my mouth in Bavaria. My life is so hard.) It took a while to work my way through it; my body needed time to produce the proper amounts of insulin lest my vision start blurring, I pass out, and miss my stop in Hamburg.
While I was sitting on the train, April sun streaming down on my face as I enjoyed the scenery of rural Germany, the ticket man came around (don’t worry, this part of the story ends LEAGUES better than my train voyage to Munich the first time.) He asked for my ticket, which is our student pass that lets us ride (most) trains for free. You also have to show picture i.d. to prove you’re not just using your friend’s pass (this will be a big problem for D-bag who is currently using my expired student pass to ride the bus around town—his perished in the wash.) He saw my name on the student pass and said, “Ahh Brittney, aber nicht Spears!” He was by far the friendliest German I’ve ever met on the rails, and he made a pop culture joke about my name and I understood it and we guffawed together. What a touching intercultural moment. I showed him my passport to verify that I was indeed Brittney not Spears, and he started to leave then did a kind of double take, “Sie ist Amerikanerin!” Well yes Sir, I am aware. He must just not get a lot of foreign kids on his train, or is either really in love with or secretly loathes Americans. Either way, he left me alone after that, and I made it to the airport in plenty of time for my flight (even though I rode the subway here without a ticket and about had a heart attack just KNOWING I’d get caught. In my defense, I did try, but the damn machine just printed me out a schedule of subways I could take and then BAM it was there and I didn’t want to wait 10 minutes for the next one. D-bag and I got caught in Denmark being “Schwarz fahren” [without a ticket] but that was LEGIT we couldn’t read Danish and spent twenty minutes punching at the machine before deciding to test fate. Thankfully Danish ticket men are a hundred times nicer than their Deutsch neighbors, and the man simply told us to get off at the next stop, but normally he was supposed to get us a fine of over $300.)
SO NOW, I’m hanging in the airport, my body craving vegetables or anything besides the pounds of butter and sugar I’ve fueled it with thus far. In three short weeks, I’ll be here again (how I’m going to wrangle my two giant suitcases on bus, train, and subway then inevitably pay up the ass for one of them is still beyond me.) Oh, a big THANK YOU to D-bag for lending me a duffle bag to use as my carry-on. My backpack simply couldn’t hold my clothes, toiletries, Sebas’ yearbook, AND my laptop and hair straightener. Last time I came I made the choice between the latter two, really like picking a favorite child I would imagine, but this time I decided I didn’t need to suffer. I’m gonna go like walk around or pay 18 Euro for a water or something. The inevitable sugar crash is imminent—perhaps I’ll get a quick nap in on the plane?
Update: I have made it. To the beer halls!
Tags: airplane, airport, Berlin, food, Munich, Sebas
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
I will try my best to refrain from using lots of bold and CAPS, but my blood sugar is at Seek Medical Attention Immediately levels of high, so bear with me. Some friends and I just returned from our last CCC Meeting of the semester (coffee, cookies, conversation) and I overloaded on German cake, Girl Scout cookies D-Bag’s mom sent, and sweet sweet caffeine (at 7 pm. So dumb.) Today we talked about when people are going home, who’s ready to go, who’s freaking out, and what protocol is exactly for saying good-bye to people who you’re only ambiguously acquainted with. The general consensus is that most people don’t want to leave, and even I have to admit, I DON’T WANNA GO. We got an e-mail from the program director yesterday, “Things to do before you leave” and it was my first wait, whaaat? moment. Here I’ve been counting down the days until spicy food and NPH and stores being open on Sundays, but it’s finally sinking in that I’m not just visiting America for a week again. I’m going and I’m staying and this dream world I’ve been living in will be over. Harumph.
In happier news, after my first Intermediate German II test tomorrow, I’m boarding a place to Munich!!!!!!!!! I think we all know how in love with Bavaria I am, and there aren’t really words for how much I’m looking forward to a weekend of pretzels, Weisswurst, sweet mustard, beer, the Autobahn, and Sebas’ mama’s home-cookin’. I busted my ass today to get my semester book project done– Monday’s the big day– so I can relax (HA) about it. My teacher, bless her, is letting me take my test an hour early so I have plenty of time to get to the airport. Turns out I LOVE airports now, my general thought process is if I’m in one, I must be going somewhere. I’ll have almost four days of finally tolerable weather, and Sebas said we get to do WHATEVER I WANT because it’s MY weekend. I like this kid more and more.
A new trend in my life I’m not a fan of: BAD SLEEP. It takes me a while to fall asleep, then when I wake up I have NO idea where I am, what time it is, what day it is. I’ve had insanely vivid dreams since coming here, but lately they’ve gotten kinda scary (I woke up like dry sobbing the other night. Nice.) I always wake up at least an hour before my alarm, which I’ve at least been able to work to my advantage since there’s no going back to sleep. This morning I went into Am Sande before class and walked around the Wednesday morning market. Holy amazeballs. This thing puts any farmer’s market at home to shame. So many fresh flowers and vegetables and fruit and fish and meet and BAKERY CARTS. I got a giant bag of dried apricots (or nature’s candy as Iowa Girl Eats says. Couldn’t agree me) for only two Euro, seriously perhaps the best purchase I’ve made here. I then headed over to one of the bakery carts for breakfast, and giant surprise, ended up with some almond-y.
Um, yeah. It’s essentially a marzipan cookie, and the ends are dipped in dark chocolate. Germany will officially be the death of me. In my last three weeks, I have made a solemn vow to try every almond-flavored thing I can get my hands on– no easy task since the bakery cases are filled to the brim. On my radar is a Spanish almond cake, though it appears to only be sold in five Euro slabs as big as my torso and well, if I’d like to keep said torso approximately that size, I should not be eating sheets of cake. (Let’s be honest, people– that cake’s gonna mysteriously make it’s way to my WG by next week.)
Tomorrow starts my two-day blackout of social media (Facebook, Twitter– thankfully not e-mails) for a TNGG experiment. Expect a full Munich recap when I return– IF I return because yeah, it’s that great. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shower at my neighbor’s because the giant moisture-sucking machine of death is STILL in my bathroom. Yes, it’s been a week. No, I haven’t run this week because well, the world doesn’t need to be subjected to that if I don’t have a regular place to bathe after. If I don’t go for a run when I get back I. will. diiiiiiiiie (I’ve become one of those people. WHO KNEW?!)
Tags: airplane, airport, food, Munich, NPH, running, Sebas
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, April 12th, 2010
“Get me the f@?$ out of this country.” –one of my fellow American students, though he’s been here for almost nine months. This is essentially the sentiment of everyone around me; we’re going absolute bat-shit stir crazy. Perhaps it’s because the German students have returned and the campus is once again overrun with crowds, lines, and German people who will sit at your table even though there are 47 empty ones elsewhere in the cafeteria. The language is getting ridiculously harder, the natives are getting weirder, the food is tasting blander, the weather is getting colder, and we’re ready to go. I will be making the most of my last few weeks here, however– once I get this BLANK-BLANKIN’ project done, I can enjoy Munich, Berlin, and shopping in Hamburg. I’ve also thrown calorie counts to the wind and have been indulging in German pastries for really the first time since coming (it’s all for you, Bryce.) I can get a bowl of muesli at home any day, but I can’t walk down the street to a tiny bakery and pay for a piping hot, homemade European croissant/pretzel/you name it I hope to eat it before leaving.
Apparently I freckle when in the sun. Having not been exposed to direct sunlight for going on21 years, I was never aware this could occur. Or maybe it’s just a new thing– either way, my nose is nicely freckle-spotted.
My freak hand allergy has returned exactly five weeks after returning to Germany from America. This number is significant because it is almost the EXACT amount of time it took for it to mysteriously come about the first time. Coincidence? I THINK NOT! I shall arm myself with steroid cream and children’s allergy sleep medication (it was free from the Doc, thank you) and go into Official Battle until I figure out what the heck’s going on.
Oh, on the kinda big news front: for those of you who don’t stalk on me on Facebook/Twitter/ in real life, I’ve found gainful employment this summer as an event planning intern in Des Moines, thus won’t be living in Iowa City. I’ll in fact be putting down roots again with my family (parents AND little brother) in Adel. If you’re of the God-fearing kind, please pray for me. My ever-increasing anxiety problems have me much more worked up about living at home again (which I haven’t really done since leaving for college almost three years ago) than I am about actually doing well in my internship. In reality, I’m over the moon to be living so close to pretty much all of my family and getting to experience Des Moines as an adult, because I think it’s a much neater place to hang out than it’s given credit. As always, I’ll be missing NPH and that house full of slovenly boys to whom I’ve given my heart, but being two hours down the Interstate is much better than thousands of miles across an ocean.
Tags: allergies, home, Iowa, leaving, sun
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
Complete and total academic apathy has set in for all members of my study abroad program. I’ve given up on learning any more of the German language and will consider it a Life Win if I am present for the remainder of my classes. I’ll perhaps save the rant on why track classes are a complete waste for another time (if I wanna learn German, spending an hour having casual conversation with my roommates will teach me more than four weeks of classroom busy work. The other week we were introduced to the Genetiv verb tense by my teacher saying, “We don’t actually use this anymore, but you still have to learn it.” OH OKAY.) The countdown to home is now in weeks instead of months, and I waffle daily on how I feel about this. It seems the longer I’m here, the more hostile I get with the natives, and if I unapologetically get the German Stare one more time while doing something completely harmless to them, I PROMISE YOU I WILL GET VIOLENT.
Yesterday after our requisite weekly testing, we played some volleyball outside then came in for some good old-fashioned drinking games. I volunteered my WG and perfectly sized kitchen table for some beer pong even though there’s really nothing I hate more in this world than that wretched game and thus didn’t actually participate. My flatmate situation has changed drastically since the beginning of the year– I’m now living with two German girls, a German guy, and a Brazilian girl (woman? They’re all my age or older, I suppose the proper term is “female.”) This batch is about a million times more uppity than the last ones (two are the same) and are cleaning ALL THE TIME and tell me how dirty the bathroom is and made a chore chart with all of our names on it. You read that correctly. It’s like I’m in second grade and if I get 100 gold stars I get a trip to Disneyland. This week I’m on trash duty, and absolutely want to burn this place to the ground, if I can just be honest about my feelings. This chore chart combines so many of my least favorite things into one seemingly harmless but actually Satan-sent piece of cardboard: 1. CLEANING; 2. Community, sharing, getting along with others; 3. CLEANING. I realize my deeply-ingrained hatred for all things orderly is the point of the chart in the first place, but what kind of Type A anal-retentive European sat down with a glue stick, Sharpies (they spelled my name wrong, perhaps a large source of this angst) and decided that five adults couldn’t just take care of their own shit? I’m fairly certain a majority of the German population would drop dead if they saw the living conditions at 713. Cleanliness is definitely a huge cultural difference, even when comparing it to normal households and not the barely live-able house of five college guys.
ANYWAY, so after beer pong, we were looking forward to some schnitzel and Pommes at the Mensa for dinner, but turns out they don’t serve it on Fridays. We went into Am Sande to get Döner and gelato, then went to an outdoor bonfire/birthday party for some of the Erasmus (non-German European study abroad program) students. While oddly cold out, it was a pretty great time, and we witnessed yet didn’t actually try Spanish s’mores. Ok, not really s’mores at all, but it involves open flame and a stick, so the Americans thought Aha! marshmallows. It was actually some sort of bread dough brought out in saucepans, and then they’d take some and smear it on the end of the stick (which had been kind of pre-cleaned and cut? But not enough to where a German would eat it HA.) It took a while, but the bread would eventually puff up and cook and it was kinda like a breadstick. I did attempt this, but apparently used too much dough and caused a giant doughy mess on my hands and the stick and the fire– just step away from the carbs, Brittney.
Today we finally satisfied our burrito cravings in Hamburg, and I was able to clear out my pollen-clogged sinuses thanks to the Diablo Habanero salsa. It was good, but not nearly as spicy as something labeled similarly in America would be (Germans DON’T do spicy.) Afterward we went to Hamburger Dom, this carnival type thing that comes around like four times a year. It’s basically the Iowa State Fair with only the light-up, spinny rides and food stands, only the food stands here are way better because it’s German food and every other one sells some sort of beer, pastry, or wurst. I got my hands on perhaps the highlight of my life here so far– Mazipankuchen, essentially a marzipan-filled frosted donut. Holy diabetes, Batman– it was so hot and melty and oily and sugary and amazingly almond-ly delicious. Imagine the last time you enjoyed being naked with another person, take that times 100, and it MIGHT be what this tasted like. I just tried to upload a picture of it, but apparently WordPress only wants to work for Lauren, thus I will just tell you to click here for the Facebook album it’s in.
Tags: drinking, flatmates, food, Hamburg
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Apparently I’m allergic to pollen. This week has been a nice seesaw between extreme congestion and Snot Fest 2010.
The Hausmeister decided to finally show up and do something about the leaky bathroom situation. There is some sort of industrial-sized dryer in there now trying to undo some of the water damage, and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are we to go in there or open the door or even peek through the keyhole or God forbid shower. All five of us are vying for time and space in our other bathroom, but for some reason we’re not allowed to use the shower. This created quite the mini-conundrum when I got back from my run (in the heat of the day. In all black) yesterday. Now I can stand my own stink, but I had plans to go into public later. Thankfully my beautiful Slovakian neighbor recently returned from his glamorous Easter holiday of snowboarding and cross-country skiing in the mountains of his home country, and he graciously let me use his WG’s shower. Hopefully the monstrous bathroom machine is not emitting anything reminiscent of Chernobyl because you’d better believe I broke the rules and sneaked in to grab my comb and towel.
Tomorrow is our final in Intermediate German I. Intermediate German is HARD. I am not exactly looking forward to Intermediate II, but it’s three credit hours in only three weeks so I’m gonna tough it out (and curse the language heavens along the way.) The amount of homework I have to do this weekend is ridiculous. Granted, I’m finishing a few projects ahead of time since they’re due right when I return from Munich next weekend (!!!) but essentially I’m looking at lots of time chained to my desk this weekend. With a break for Qrito Burrito Take Two, of course, because it turns out we never got there on Monday. The buses are in a nasty habit of coming early, and unfortunately Matt missed the bus which then caused us to miss the train to Hamburg. Not wanting to wait around for an hour for the next one, we walked back into town and got some “snack boxes” at a Chinese place. Thankfully we didn’t go for actual entrees because Holy bland non-descript food, Batman. Less than satisfied, and bored and looking for adventure on Easter Monday, we set off in search of a Brazilian bar he’d heard of one time in passing that doesn’t serve beer, only really good cocktails with lots of fruit. We got some very ambiguous directions from his roommate and actually found it, but it didn’t open until 7 and it was only 5:30, dammit. Not being a quitter, we got some road beers (thing I’ll miss most: no open container laws) and strolled around town.
If you haven’t noticed a theme in my posts yet or had the privilege of spending more than an hour with me, let me clue you in that my bladder is perhaps the size of a pea. We don’t know why this is, ’tis my cross to bear. Of course I found myself on Monday in a place I’ve been far too many times before– in desperate search of a bathroom, no relief in sight. To his credit, Matt offered to stand vigil beside a bush or something, but in a last ditch effort to scrape together some sort of dignity, I decided I could make it across town to the McDonald’s. While I’m sure it’s not kosher to walk into Mickey D’s here just for use of their toilets, this is the one time I will proudly pull out and wave around my American card, nary a guilty glance toward the Dollar (erm, Euro) Menu as I walk out basking in sweet relief (literally.)
ANYWAY– we finally made it to the bar, an ancient, dusty, dimly-lit place that kinda looked straight outta Knockturn Alley. There was a completely bald, bespectacled bartender; a regular of about 50 seated opposite him; an eight-year-old girl to his left; and our waitress– a barely five foot, 107-year-old chain smoking Portuguese woman who maybe weighed 80 pounds. This woman is fabulous. She came off and started rambling German to us, none of which we understood, probably because she could barely see over our table. We ordered our cocktails– a “Zombie Classic” for me and a “Zombie Brasil” for Matt, and waited an inordinate amount of time. The wait was worth it, however, because these babies came packed with fresh fruit and BOY HOWDY were they strong. Probably the best 7 Euro I’ve spent here. Our favorite waitress of all time also brought over a bowl of crackers that actually tasted like potato chips but were shaped like dragons. Those damn Brazilians. We may have ordered an Absinthe cocktail or two after that– not fodder for a public blog if we did.
The 21 only ordnance in Iowa City officially goes into effect on my 21st birthday. Whether or not a deal with the Devil was made on that one, you’ll probably never know.
Tags: allergies, drinking, Iowa
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Props to Germany for making Easter a four day holiday. Today is Ostern Montag so I slept in til noon, went on a long run, and have been quite productive in cleaning the apartment before my flatmates return (dun dunn duhhhhh. Not looking forward to that. Pretty certain I was meant to live alone.) Any second now I’ll be starting my homework… after I return from an extended trip to Hamburg just for a burrito, of course. There’s a place called Qrito Burrito that’s essentially Germany’s Pancheros (or Qdoba, or Chipotle.) It’s interesting to get all the Americans together and discuss our preferences in these different establishments. Being from Iowa City, I’ve gotta rep Panch– shout out to Reid if you’ve stumbled upon this in your Internet patrol of all things tortilla related, how creepy am I?!– though my father swears by only Qdoba, and one student is counting down his days til America just so he can hop off the plane and land face first into some Taco Bell.
I am quite looking forward to the country resuming actual working hours tomorrow though because our WG has a bit of a situation and I have zero idea how to deal with it. The bathroom is, for lack of a better term, flooding. It started on Thursday with a weird dripping sound that I thought was maybe the heater, so obviously ignored it until the next day when it was quite obvious there was liquid (let’s hope just water) leaking from the ceiling. My solution was to put down a towel and go about my day. Flash forward to today where we have three soaked towels and ever-increasing water spots on the ceiling. D-Bag and I have hypothesized that whoever lives above me most likely committed suicide in the tub and it hath spilled over, or– since bathtubs are a luxury not afforded to us lowly students– someone was doing dishes, had an aneurysm, and died with the water running. Clearly our imaginations are feeling quite morbid. SO, if none of my flat mates return today to make the phone call to the Hausmeister, I will be looking up the German word for “flood” and making a trek to the housing office when it opens tomorrow.
I’m not a huge fan of Bucket Lists, but if I had one, I could check off “attend Easter service in a 500-year-old church where Bach played.” The flow of the service was freakishly similar to any other Lutheran one back home, though there was much less fanfare for the holiday part of it. For being a country where everyone dresses up WAY more on a daily basis than back home, they sure left their Sunday best in the closet for Easter. I felt like the town whore (keep your comments to yourself, please) in my just-above-knee-length aubergine American Apparel wrap dress– ESPECIALLY when I went up for communion and ended up standing smack in the middle of the aisle in front of the entire congregation (they do it standing in a circle, I can explain in greater detail to interested family members later) for a good five minutes. I don’t think I can properly convey the anxiety and trauma induced by this situation. Apparently I was the only one sufficiently embarrassed by my exposed knees however, as no one said anything, and one elderly German woman even smiled and nodded at me like, “Of COURSE you’re foreign and awkward, but we as a collective people will let it slide as it is an international holiday.” Danke very, very much kind old lady.
You’re probably wondering how my Easter dinner turned out, as if it were to go off as anything but AWESOME. My friend Matt (from Las Vegas, turns out we’re kinda soulmates) came over and made hamburgers with me. The Mensa every day turns out cuts of meat with vegetables and potatoes of some sort with gravy, so there was a game-time decision to make it super casual and just grill (read: fry) hamburgers instead of recreating an actual American Easter dinner. I’m quite certain I’ll never ever get the smell of greasy ground beef outta my WG, but in retrospect it’s all worth it. The Bavarian pretzel appetizers and chocolate lava cake with vanilla sauce desserts were leagues better than the actual main course, but dammit if we didn’t have fun in the process. Matt even brought over a six-pack of Becks because “You sounded sad” (the whole roof caving-in thing) so I’m quite boldly going to say we had the best Easter meal of my whole 20 years. That evening my father did Skype me in on the entire two hour Easter dinner happening at our house, however, so it was really the best of both worlds.
Not to get you all excited with a teaser, but get mentally prepped for the next post in which Matt and I eat Chinese food then break-in the only Portuguese bar in Luneburg that refuses to serve beer, only fresh fruit-heavy cocktails. The closer it comes to leaving, the more attached I get.
Tags: drinking, Easter, food, Hamburg
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
It’s the first day of April, next month is May. May is the month I leave Germany. It’s also my 20 and 5/6th birthday today! Two months til the big 2-1, the day we can all breathe a bit easier that finally I’m living on the right side of the law. In the twenty minutes I’ve been at my computer post-Mensa, the weather has gone from kinda sunny and quite windy, to SUPER DARK and raining, to HAILING and covering the ground with white, back to sunny and with all precipitation melted away. I just purchased my plane ticket to Munich in two weeks– it was cheaper to take an hour-long flight than a six hour train ride. I’m starting to really love flying, something I never thought I’d say.
Yesterday I cut Greg’s hair. You may be asking yourself why this happened. I’m not sure, either. He said earlier this week that he needed a haircut, and instead of coughing up the eight Euro for a professional one, he quite foolishly thought I sounded pretty convincing when I said, “I can do it.” Technically, I have cut one person’s hair before, but the circumstances surrounding that incredibly sketchy situation do not warrant re-telling, and the result was bloody awful. [Side note: it's raining again. Sideways.] D-Bag lent us some hair clippers, but Greg figured I should use scissors for the job. We’re talking like one step up from Fiskers craft scissors, incredibly dull, and in no way fit to cut hair. The blessed event went down in his room, floor covered in a sheet, towel around his bare shoulders (does it sound to you like I’m describing the opening scene from a low-budget pornographic movie? Because it does to me.) He has dark hair, and in retrospect I should not have been cutting it directly opposite the only light source in the room, the window he was facing. I did about five or ten minutes of snipping and was pretty proud of myself when we decided he should go check it out in the mirror. As he moved into the bathroom and his head became much more visible in the natural light, we both realized it was, erm, patchy. Like, some scalp was visible on the right side. And you could basically see where I made each cut– it was that uneven. He’s definitely more vain than any male I know and fah-REAK-ed out. Turns out he was headed down to Munich to spend Easter with some extended family today and needed it fixed ASAP. Luckily he was able to go into Am Sande and persuade a hairdresser who was starting to close that his was a desperate situation. I should be sorry, but I was laughing much too hard to choke out any words.
Today we had our last test in Intermediate German I before the final next week and it was HARD. We’re in the big leagues now, kiddies– no coddling us with translations in the directions, much much more homework, a presentation due in two weeks. I could not for the life of me remember the word for “tie” auf Deutsch, and ended up getting it wrong. After I flung some papers off my desk and proclaimed inevitable suicide later this afternoon, my teacher kindly reminded me it was only worth half a point. Damn first born perfectionism. Afterward, however, we had AN EASTER EGG HUNT. I love our teacher. We had two teams and answered questions for the chance to go find candy hidden around the room. German chocolate is a million times better than the best Hershey’s/ Dove/ whatever you’ll find in America. It was ridiculously fun and a nice way to get our minds off the fact that the majority of us probably failed the exam.
Keeping in line with the Easter theme… Germans don’t celebrate Maunday Thursday, though tomorrow is a national holiday for Karfreitag and it seems most of the churches in town have some sort of service. On Saturday, each town has an Easter bonfire at dusk– not really sure what that’s about, but I plan on checking it out and I’ll report back. For the main event, there are three big, ancient churches with giant steeples in town and I’ve gone ahead and chosen a favorite. Their first service on Easter Sunday is at FIVE-THIRTY AM (I realize Jesus resurrected, but I’m quite certain even he didn’t get up that early) which is followed by a baptism and breakfast, but I’ll be attending the 10 am service with Communion. Afterward (drumroll, please) I’ll be making and serving Easter dinner for my friends who are sticking around town. Since I have this giant apartment to myself, and we just got a new stove, and I am my mother’s daughter, her mother’s granddaughter, and my uncle’s niece, I will be throwing THE premiere event of the semester complete with flowers, a ham, napkin folds, place settings, etc. (Okay, so absolutely all of this is still in the planning stages, but I promise it will be more than wurst on paper plates and a Cadbury egg for all the guests.) Sadly, hominy does not exist in Germany– after searching for it in the story, the Internet told me it was most likely a no go. [For all of you besides the four readers who might know what I'm talking about, we have hominy (corn without the hull, soaked in lye? Or something like that?) for Easter each year because my grandfather loves it. And while it sounds kinda gross and I gagged on it for 15+ years, I've been warming to it the last couple times.]
My semester book is going together really well. It’s much longer than it needs to be, and I can’t quite get over the flashbacks of Weems’ “You won’t walk at graduation until this book is done!” threats, but I’m oddly having fun with it. I had two internship interviews this past week, one over the phone and one via Skype, and I don’t think I managed to flub up either of them too terribly. I’m currently walking the fine line between cautious optimism and realistic pessimism when it comes to my summer plans, but I really really REALLY don’t wanna just be schlepping sandwiches for slightly more than minimum wage for three months. Why can’t someone just pay me to blog and speak my new trademark language of Spanglerman?
Tags: Easter, food, friends, Munich, weather
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Warning: upon review, this is kinda long. Perhaps grab a snack or prepare to read it in installments.
Oh, Denmark. Perhaps the quote from our trip that could best sum up the experience was when Greg (formerly New England, but I feel these pseudonyms are not only confusing but pretty unnecessary) asked us something along the lines of “What would you do if you had one wish?” David’s answer, “Have enough money so I wouldn’t have to travel around Europe like a hobo,” served as oddly perfect foreshadowing for our less than 48 hours in Copenhagen.
Our bus to Denmark didn’t leave until 11:30 pm from Hamburg on Friday, so a group of us took the train in early to get Qrito Burritos, Deutschland’s version of Pancheros/Qdoba/Chipotle. Not as good, but darn tasty anyway. The SECOND D-Bag (his nickname stays because it’s starting to catch on. And because it’s slightly inappropriate) and I step out the door, the heavens unleash what I can only assume was Germany’s first hurricane. My umbrella didn’t stand a chance against the freak amounts of water blowing sideways at me, but I wasn’t as pissed about that as I was I had straightened my hair earlier, obviously now in vain. We managed to wade our way to Hamburg and eventually to the bus stop, soaked and frozen to the core, but pretty excited about our upcoming adventure anyway. We waited at the stop that said “COPENHAGEN” and tried to board the bus that said “COPENHAGEN” when it arrived, but you forget Dear Reader, this is Europe, thus nothing is ever that simple. Some Italian woman two cig puffs away from a tracheotomy yelled in broken German that we actually wanted the bus that said “STOCKHOLM” and would magically drop us off in Denmark. Luckily there were at least 20 other people getting the same direction, so we took faith in numbers and boarded the bus. The very. crowded. bus. Sitting next to any of my three amigos was immediately out of the question, so I plopped myself next to a stranger (I’m thinking Danish, approximately a year or two older than me) for the next five hours and hoped to God sleep would come quickly. Do you know what I didn’t notice about this young man when I chose him as a seat partner? His abnormally large ass. Such an ample body part that, when turned to his right to sleep on the window like he did, took up half of my lap. I won’t take you into a chronological history of my presumed psychological problems, but if there’s one thing the world knows I’m not a fan of, it’s another human coming into physical contact with me. Do. Not. Touch Me. Obviously something was going to have to change, so I shifted to my right as well to provide even an iota of neutral air between our hot, mashed up flesh. It was not comfortable, but we were not touching, thus eventually I fell asleep. I slept while spooning that Dane.
Quick question: did you know Copenhagen is not on regular Denmark, but in fact some sort of island/peninsula part that requires water-crossage to get to? If you did, you’re smarter than me. Imagine my surprise when we were woken halfway into our journey because our bus had pulled into the belly of a FERRY and we had to go up to the oddly cruise ship-like decks during the 45 minute crossing. It was all quite Twilight Zone-ish, and needless to say I got much less than the five hours of sleep that night I was gunning for. At a little after 5 am, we arrived in a dark and drizzly Copenhagen, looking and feeling mere heartbeats from death. Rich enough to not travel like a hobo, indeed. We hung out in the train station for a while, making game plans and trying to figure out the best way to procure Danish Kroner (because they don’t use the Euro. Put that little nugget of info in the Things Brittney Didn’t Know Before She Got There column also.) Our best plan was to find the hostel we’d booked to see if we could drop our stuff off/ check in as quickly as possible and SLEEP. Using subway maps in Danish and some Internet kiosk Googling, we set off in… completely the wrong direction. Of course we didn’t find this out until at least an hour after we’d walked toward absolutely nothing of use to us. I can’t even really say I got to witness a Danish sunrise because the RAIN AND SLEET CLOUDS were taking up most of the sky. So it’s about 6:30 am, we’re a group of four ever-increasingly soaked American students with backpacks, bleary eyes, not a clue in the world as to where we’re headed, and we all have to pee. For my comrades, anatomy served them well and facilitated their bladder evacuations without much ado. I was searching for alleys, bushes, really anything with even slight cover to go ahead and commit my public urination (if you think this was an isolated event during our Danish stay, you are so mistaken.) Finally along the harbor I see some low-walled children’s playground and have a mental struggle that ends with D-Bag telling me to just man and up and do it. So I did it. Where children play. I am so sorry, children. It was in a far corner in a very non-child friendly area anyway, so my moral compass isn’t losing too much sleep over this, and afterward it was actually very liberating like Huzzah– I’m one step closer to actual homelessness!
I’ll spare you the epic trek to our hostel, except to thank 7-11 for it’s straight up invasion of Denmark, thus providing us with cheap(ish) coffee and breakfast while getting absolutely dumped on by rain. I don’t get that wet in the shower. To say we got some strange looks when we FINALLY (3.5 hours after getting off the bus) arrived at our desired destination would be an understatement. Thankfully the hostel guys were really cool and invited us to chill on the couches until our rooms were ready, which we did and I got in a quick nap. We were able to drop off our bags in lockers and explore town; while still overcast, the rain had thankfully ceased. Copenhagen’s a really beautiful city, much dirtier trash-wise than Germany, and very Americanized. Absolutely everyone speaks English, and there are many more American shops and restaurants. Danes are much more laid back then the Germans, and seem freer to express themselves in how they dress, how loudly they talk, etc. The very best part of Denmark: THEY TAKE CREDIT CARDS. This is especially good because Copenhagen was oddly expensive, and the 10 dkk to 1 Euro thing made it seem like I was withdrawing ridiculous amounts of money if I needed to go to an ATM. We ate lunch in an Irish Pub where I ordered the BBQ ribs and may or may not have eaten alley cat for the first time in my life. That night we did more of the same– enjoying the lack of open container laws and engaging in general shenanigans.
On Sunday, D-Bag and I headed off to the Track Cycling World Championships. This kid is an insane cyclist so was obviously far more stoked for the activity than I was, but I figured it’d be a cool change of pace, not to mention I don’t often get to hang out in an arena full of Olympians. I learned more about biking, especially of the track variety (the bikes don’t have brakes so there’s no coasting– every turn of the wheel is because their MASSIVE THIGHS are pedaling) than anyone might ever need to know. It was actually really interesting and fun to watch, and a 17-year-old American won third place in something. My feet were absolutely ready to fall off from two days of straight walking and standing because oops I haven’t mentioned that my choice of footwear for the weekend was a pair of ballet flats (read: no support. At all. Essentially barefoot.) Family members, please spare me your e-mails– yes, I am a dumb ass, my feet were in SO. MUCH. PAIN. My blistered pinkie toes are probably the worst. Apparently while running I’ve also done some damage to my right calf and that screamed at me the entire day, especially when going up or down stairs. Oh, and my left arm feels like it’s been shot because D-Bag and I played Dead Arm and needless to say I lost (after one punch. He claims I punched him later that night like six more times in the arm, but he’s thoughtful enough to not give me the requisite six in return.) At the end of our journey yesterday, my mood took a nose dive and I wanted to go home NOW. Not like Germany home, but my big bed in America, why can’t I just drive a car, where the hell is NPH, put me on a plane HOME home. I realized this was all due to lack of sleep and managed to not flip shit on anyone around me, though now that I’m back in Germany things are looking up.
IN CONCLUSION: I feel kinda like I’ve been hit by a car. Copenhagen was really wonderful, though not a place I feel I could hang out for more than a day or two. It’s super expensive and there just generally isn’t THAT much to do, but a really pretty city with amazing scenery of the North Sea and a nice juxtaposition of super old buildings and really modern architecture.
Hey all you Facebookin’ family members: click here for my pictures from the trip.
Tags: Copenhagen, drinking, food, travel, weather
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 26th, 2010
Hot Roomie is moving out today. This is both good and bad– he’s taking his <insert expletive> Foozball table with him and the kitchen will be cleared of the piles of dishes he tended to leave out forever, but overall I’m sad to see him go. No more Monday night dinners with his hot friends, not to mention he was certainly the most outgoing of our WG 18 bunch. A moment of silence may be in order. Our door just buzzed earlier and a woman from the campus newspaper was here, asking if she could ask me a few questions on what I think about the housing. The best part is: she asked me in German and I understood. My handle on the language is near first-rate if I’m reading it, but when it comes to listening and speaking, this is where my brain still gets bamboozled. I was able to reply to her though that yes, she could come in but mein Deutsch ist schlect, to which she said no problem and conducted the interview in English. Score one for the home (away?) team.
In other news, the weather has been in the sunny low 70s so I’ve been spending an uncharacteristic amount of time outside. Apart from setting my alarm unnecessarily early to run in the mornings, we’ve also taken to playing soccer and/or sand volleyball after lunch. This provides heaps of entertainment for the Germans (who do e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. outside once the snow melts) who think we are just the most laughably dumb American group of people to e’er kick a ball around. One group was FILMING us on their cell phone the other day, most likely to show their friends and say “Can you believe they wore that and said this?” To their credit, we knew we were being heinously judged, thus played up our obnoxious inability to care at all what those around us thought. If there’s one thing studying abroad has changed about me, I will certainly no longer think any less of foreign students on our campus. Yeah, they might be weird, but how they act is normal to their culture and it has zero to do with me. You shoulda seen the stink eyes I was getting walking across campus today in flip-flips, rolled up jeans, and a guy’s Marvel comics t-shirt. WHATEVER. I’m all about assimilating to the culture, but on a sunny Friday afternoon post-test, I’m not gonna put heaps of effort into my appearance– priorities, people.
Tonight I’m boarding a bus for Copenhagen with three guys from my program (my mother: “Why do you never hang out with girls?!” As if she met me yesterday.) It’s an overnight bus and we’ll arrive early in the morning for a day of sight-seeing and GIANT COFFEE drinking because Denmark has 7-11′s. On Sunday there’s a bike race we’ll be attending which will be akin to Christmas for D-Bag because he’s a giant cyclist, then we’ll take the night bus back to Hamburg and arrive heinously early Monday morning. I’m not foreseeing much sleep in the coming days, but I’m super excited to visit a new country.
With only six weeks left til the program ends, some students are getting anxious for home and some are going into full-on “I’m never leaving Germany” meltdown mode. Most of the students also here for the fall session absolutely dread returning home, a lot of them it seems because they escaped from less ideal personal situations in the states. Those of us who have only been here since January have kind of kept one foot in Germany, one in America, and are eager to return to our normal routines and friends. While leaving will be HARD and suck and produce days of “Aaagh I miss Germany so much,” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to go home at all. My life in Iowa is great, and there are people and places I want to return to stat. My last six weeks look like they’ll be filled with travel, and my last weekend will be spent doing some fabulous shopping in Hamburg since I have done little to none in my time here (and someone needs a pretty new dress or ten to celebrate her 21st birthday in Vegas.)
Lastly, I have a project due for my one non-language class next month and it draws on my high school experience as yearbook editor (cue the dungeon music.) I’m making a “semester book” type thing and my teacher wants me to expand it, make it real professional like, and include everyone so they can possibly use it to show future students/ prospects. I’m not too concerned about this (though should be since I was supposed to start like… months ago) but who knows what types of posts written in pure frustration and agony might pop up later. Get excited.
Tags: class, Copenhagen, flatmates, home, semester book, sun, weather, weekend
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
It’s 1:30 pm and I’ve ne’er been more due for a nap. No, I did not go out last night, though I did stay up too late dancing with boys. There was also banana bread and an earlier than usual wake up time involved, but these will be explained in due time.
D-Bag’s got a new roommate who has easily captured the title of my favorite European of all time. He is from Slovakia, has lived in Germany the past ten years, spent a semester in Britain, but became really fluent in English during his year studying in Australia (from where he just returned) thus speaks like our mates from Down Under. I die. Not only is he rather easy on the eyes, the Slovak is perhaps the nicest damn person you’ll ever meet. Yesterday afternoon he popped in to get supremely jealous over how much bigger my apartment is, then we went back to theirs for coffee with another roommate and an impromptu German lesson. I learned more in that hour than I have in the past week; it was amazing. During our conversation (more like their conversation auf Deutsch while I tried to absorb as much as possible) the Slovak inhaled almost an entire plate of peanut butter cookies I’d brought over a few days earlier, so we decided trading baked goods for Deutsch lessons is a pretty fair deal. After my night class, I returned to turn a nearly black bunch of WG 17′s bananas (kinda like my German 713, you could say) into banana bread. Their kitchen is approximately the size of a shoebox, but four of us managed to fit, and D-Bag and the Slovak both wanted to get hands-on in the baking process. Now, for my firstborn perfectionist in the kitchen self, relinquishing control over the countertop is not always an easy feat. I did the majority of the measuring and mashing and mixing, but let the Slovak crack the eggs and D-Bag preheat the oven (<–haha okay that one doesn’t count at all, mostly I just didn’t want to Google what 350 degrees Fahrenheit is in Celsius.) But then, and I’m only retelling this because I think it was absolutely adorable, Darin gradually added the dry ingredients while the Slovak alternated the mashed banana as I held the mixer and scraped the bowl. I KNOW. (Maybe because I’ve been baking since the womb I find this much more endearing than my average reader?)
ANYWAY– we managed to turn out some kick ass banana bread. We used almost double the amount of bananas we were supposed to (NPH has since informed that there is no such thing as too many bananas in banana bread) which resulted in a super moist, dense loaf that we all sat around the tiny table and enjoyed a slice of while listening to party beats from the Slovak’s laptop. THEN, some Indian music came on (apparently Australian is rife with Indians) and the Slovak started dancing because he was in the Punjabi club last year. They performed an elaborately choreographed traditional Indian dance for the Festival of Lights and still remembers most of it, so tried teaching us as well (ok, teaching me– D-Bag kinda just sat in utter confusion and inquired as to where my camera was located because I looked like that big of an idiot.) It was a ridiculously fun evening. After the sugar high from the banana-y treats and the multiple hours of rap and dance music, my brain was wired for anything but rest even though it was after midnight. Sleep did not come so easily.
Why then did I set my alarm to go off an hour earlier this morning? So I could get my run in and over with (and of course enjoy banana bread for breakfast after.) Yeah, I’m proud of me, too. The morning is a great time to run for a variety of reasons, but the one exclusive to German is that I’m seen by less people in my very American running attire. When I’ve seen Germans out pounding the pavement, they’re always in some pretty serious-looking gear usually consisting of long, dark pants with some sort of dark long-sleeved windbreaker and the characteristic German grumpy face. Imagine their horror when out of the woods struggles a red-faced, heaving American with a “Relay for Life!” white t-shirt and cut-off high school sweatpants that say TIGERS over the butt. It doesn’t sound that out of the ordinary, but the foreigner is fairly easy to pick out, and after almost three months here I’m quite certain “Pick the Foreigner and the Judge the Shit Outta Them” is one of Germans’ favorite games. Also, I’ve only ever seen one of them running with an iPod, whereas I am clutching mine for dear life because God forbid I forget to charge it and am left with just my thoughts (which are usually centered on “Can we PLEASE stop running?!”) for a couple miles. Yes, I have one of those armband thingies it could safely sit in, but I much prefer it in hand so I can crank the volume when Miley comes on or frantically hit skip because sorry, Iron and Wine, you just aren’t that physically motivating.
In the only slight bit of relevant news you will actually find in today’s post: I need to make plans for Easter break. From that Thursday afternoon to the following Tuesday I don’t have class and would like to get outta town, possibly the country. Or if some readers want to come over and hang, that’s perfectly acceptable too, just don’t all jump on a plane at once now, ya hear? Also, not to get all politically minded, but I (and perhaps Lauren also?) wish I were in IC a teeny bit so I could see the PRESIDENT speak on campus on Thursday. …oh and… kudos to 219 votes on Sunday night 
That is all.
Tags: food, politics, running, Slovak
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Sorry to hear there’s snow back home– definitely not any here (knock on wood..) It’s been overcast and slightly misting all day, the perfect weather for my first outdoor run of the season! …oh baby am I outta shape. My legs already hurt, and I didn’t exactly go a marathon distance. While out on my non-characteristic spurt of physical activity, I stumbled upon some sort of Holy Grail nature preserve in almost literally my backyard that put the woods in Iowa to shame (again, Mom– you might want to start working on your German citizenship now.) There is a wide (and clear!) creek and wooden benches and trails and TALL trees and little bushes and lots of wet, leafy underbrush that goes on for acres. You could be naked for quite a while in the area and never get caught– it’s not thick with fauna, it’s just so BIG. After my body said “eff that” to the whole quickened pace thing, I wandered around the trails for a bit, never seeing another person save for the tree fellers (sorry) at one clearing. Eventually I figured I should find my way back to some sort of civilization, not hard to do once I got onto the big main trail. This is where I wouldn’t exactly say I was “lost” more as I was “pleasantly unsure of where my home was.” There was no cause for alarm, though I was a bit surprised when I realized I had gone outside of city limits. I made it back fine, though not without eliciting some full-on stares from my fellow Saturday morning pedestrians. I should learn how to say “Don’t be alarmed, I’m not actually about to fall over dead from a heart attack, my face just naturally turns this bright red every time I run” auf Deutsch.
One of my flatmates popped in for about three minutes today to, I don’t know, make sure the American could actually be trusted with the place on her own. He informed me he wouldn’t back til April when their school break is over (question: can I eat their food??), which I’m more than a little excited about because this whole living solo and playing German house thing has been pretty great. In his absence, his room is unlocked in case I wanna borrow any of his movies. He is so my new favorite.
Yesterday a group of us Yankee students went into Hamburg for some window shopping and HOFBRAUHAUS DRINKING!!! Before I get to the obvious best part of my day, props to my three guy friends who followed me around to… 4? 5? maybe 6 stores before I found an inexpensive yet cute purse. The weather’s getting nice enough that my coat pockets can no longer hold my camera/ cell phone/ bus pass/ wallet/ gum/ Kleenex, and being the sketch backpack girl everywhere isn’t really my thing. I finally found one I liked for less than 20 Euro so that beast came home with me. Hamburg has A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. shopping. I die. SO many beautiful things, so little time, even less money. Did the EU meet up a while back and say, “Hey, let’s charge ridiculous amounts of money for normal things!” Germany, you are killing me. Not that I’m dirt poor over here or need any of these things, but more than once I had the thought, “Man it’d be great if <insert name of someone who has lots of money to shower me with gifts> was here?” At least all of this window shopping worked up a bit of an appetite, so off we strode to ZE HOFBRAUHAUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They have one in Hamburg, not as great as the one in Munich, better than the one in Vegas (some people collect figurines, I visit beer halls.) Two more friends had joined us by this point in our journey and we all had a liter of Bier and Brezels (regular sized, unfortunately.) The waiter originally brought out liters for the four guys at the table, and HALF liters for me and the other girl in our party. Excuse me, Sir– I’m not sure who you think I am or where I come from, but I assure you I can handle the big one, thankyouverymuch. Luckily he asked when he brought the littles one if we’d prefer what’d we ordered (um, yes) so the change was made without too much bodily harm. The NERVE.
Tags: drinking, flatmates, Hamburg, nature, running
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
IT’S SO GORGEOUS OUTSIDE. I’m not one to usually get all hot and bothered by outdoors stuff, but after this winter (which the US Embassy informed us was one of the worst in Germany’s history) I just want to live outside. The giant sports field about ten feet from my front door is finally drying out so we can spend our days and nights playing soccer. It’s not even noon on Thursday and my weekend has started, I will definitely not be toiling away inside at my laptop. My flatmates have all mysteriously disappeared, glamorous ski vacations in the Alps and such during their time off from school, but you will hear no complaints of this from me. Spring is reminding me of Easter, which is oddly reminding me of my grandmother’s house (shout-out to Lin!) We get a solid four days off for the holiday and methinks D-Bag and I will be heading to Dresden/ some of the smaller surrounding towns. Sometimes I get really anxious that I haven’t been tons of places while abroad, but I like Lauren’s approach that I’m here so I’m going to explore here instead of trying to pack a bunch of 48 hour trips across the continent.
Germans don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but that in no way stopped us Americans from donning green and getting betrunken on a Wednesday. We went to the local Irish Pub, which thankfully was also celebrating and had the green beer a-flowin’. They were also giving out giant cloth Guinness top hats and had green “Tullamore Dew” streamers hanging from everything. I now have a giant pile of these on my floor thanks to people draping them around my neck, making bracelets out of them, etc. The hats were in hot demand and we nearly sparked an international incident trying to snag another before we left, but I’m proud to say one did manage to make it back with us, which D-Bag let me keep (or perhaps I’ve taken it hostage.) There was some Irish guy with a guitar singing songs; he played some Neil Young, Lynrd Skynrd, and after asking the crowd for requests (big mistake) some Guns ‘n Roses. Either he was drunk and sad or wanted the crowd to settle because “Simple Kind of Man” and “Patience” aren’t exactly party tunes in my book, but the crowd’s back-up vocals helped to liven them up, I guess.
I only have SIX WEEKS of class left which I’m sure will fly by. Not exactly stoked about leaving Germany, getting back on Monday was a huge sigh of relief. My body has fallen right back into my German sleep schedule, and as soon as I deplaned for my layover in Amsterdam my brain took hold of the language again. Yesterday I met with my Sprachpartnerin (speaking partner) for the first time and we had a bilingual lunch. Her English is much better than my German, but she was very patient with my “I know I know this word but I’m completely blanking out because I’ve never actually had to speak freely in German before” pauses. My brain hurt afterward, not to mention I was still wanting to say everything in Spanish. We’ll meet up a few times before I leave, and if you’re wondering, I VOLUNTARILY signed up to get a speaking partner. I do believe a pat on the back is in order for stepping out of my comfort zone.
Oh, after my creepy Senatorial stalking, the rest of my trip back was pretty uneventful. I was less than thrilled to be sitting between two people on the 7.5 hour trip from Detroit to Amsterdam, but luckily miracles do happen and I didn’t have to get up once. I watched The September Issue (documentary about “Vogue” and Anna Wintour– LOVED) and Paper Heart (lame pseudo-documentary about love I only watched because Michael Cera’s in it. It was boring and his ex-gf who stars in it absolutely annoys the shit outta me.) I got to sleep maybe four or five hours, mostly I’m just psyched that my passport has a shiny new Amsterdam stamp in it. Off to lunch with my homeslices, or the ones who aren’t bed-ridden all day thanks to St. Patrick, and then OUTSIDE or Hamburg or something WITHOUT A COAT!!
Tags: airplane, airport, drinking, flatmates, Netherlands, Sprachpartnerin, St. Patrick's Day, sun, weather
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, March 15th, 2010
Who has two thumbs and just stalked a US Senator through Detroit International Airport? You won’t be shocked to find out it’s ME! When boarding my flight in Des Moines, I turned to the guy next to me and asked, “Is that Senator Harkin?” about the stately, well-dressed man settling down five rows ahead of us. He didn’t think so, but I knew it was and texted Neil that I was riding the same regional jet as someone who gets to hang out with the President on the regular. He urged me to go strike up conversation with him about healthcare, but because I am complete chicken shit, I instead watched the back of his head read The Des Moines Register for most of the flight (this sounds much creepier than it actually was.) Perhaps it was the sugar rush from my in-flight orange juice and cookies, but I decided upon landing that I was going to go wish my senator good luck on the upcoming healthcare vote.
Unfortunately, by the time I deplaned (very last row, right next to the lavatory) he was nowhere to be found. Now, to the naked eye what I did next may seem borderline illegal, and if someone had actually noticed me closely following a US Senator through the underground tunnel from Concourse C to A I probably would have been tackled by security. I was just texting Neil that I was unable to talk to Harkin because he’d gotten off ahead of me, when I looked ahead on the escalator and THERE HE WAS. It was at this point I decided the universe wanted me to go bug him, and since I voted for him I figured there was a good chance he’d at least acknowledge my existence. Instead of doing what any normal, non-anxiety wracked person would do, I caught up to him then walked about three paces behind for the entire 1-200 yards of moveable sidewalk until mustering up the courage to finally ask, “Excuse me, are you Senator Harkin?” He said yes, and then I realized I had no opening line, so just dumbly shook his hand when he offered it and then introduced myself. He ushered me in front of him on the escalator as I barely audibly stammered something about making some phone calls for him and campaigning for Obama, which he thought was just dandy (he didn’t say “dandy”, but I’ve now idealized him as a wise grandfatherly figure who might, under the right circumstances, say “dandy.”) He asked me about myself, and I tried not to sound like a complete idiot, but quite frankly I was star struck (what—you don’t get this giddy over your politicians?) I then wished him luck on the healthcare vote, and he explained to me that it’s in the House this week and the Senate the next, where there would certainly be fireworks. I said I hope we win and he said, “Oh, we’ll win,” with a smile. After some small talk about studying abroad, we got off the escalator and I said it was nice to meet him and he said perhaps he’d see me this summer and I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, but I would love to see him this summer (perhaps in Washington? In some sort of internship position? Maybe I can invite him over for dinner, Neil could grill brats and impress the Senator with his whip-smart political mind. I am so going to the Iowa State Fair to see him this year.) I then went and hid behind a trash can to call Neil and tell him about my brush with my fame, of which he was quite jealous because he’s never met a United States Senator before. In conclusion, Senator Harkin was extremely gracious to me and I think he’s just the cat’s meow. And with THAT, my connection to Amsterdam is boarding. Deutschland, I’m coming for you!!
Tags: airplane, politics
Posted in Brittney | 3 Comments »
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Plan A would have had me drunk in Deutschland with mein Schmetterling D-Bag right now instead of watching my mother start her very own grow house in our kitchen. Thanks to Delta Airlines, Plan B (<– we should get some Google hits with that one) has me boarding a plane tomorrow at 6 pm and not returning to Germany until Monday afternoon. I don’t really want to get into intricate details of what an epic clusterfuck my afternoon was yesterday that resulted in me not getting on a plane, but if you are a representative for Delta Airlines reading this, I expect some class upgrades, free tickets, or at least the whole can of soda during beverage service tomorrow. The jist of it is that Delta sent an e-mail AND called me to tell me my flight would be delayed two hours, but then told me (when I showed up after adjusting my airport arrival time to accommodate this extra time) that the plane had actually come and left early. Yes, essentially they said “You don’t need to come so soon” but then said “Oh wait, you definitely should have been here.” Because I’m so great at telekinesis.
What’s a girl to do when she has 48 new hours of unplanned time hanging in her home state? Go back to Iowa City, obviously. Shout-out to future roomie Lauren for being my partner in spontaneous crime as well as my Pancheros-loving hungover couch partner this afternoon. My 713ers were all sadly off on their great Spring Break adventures– NPH and I parted Wednesday for me to have some family time in Adel after mooching off of them for the better part of the week. My family doctor debunked my German diagnosis of staph infection and instead gave me enough steroid cream and antihistamines to keep this mystery allergy at bay for the next two months. The mother and I got a pedicure (shamrock green, for me) and I went to Valentine’s Day, the cutest move in the history of time, with Kayla and Sav. They didn’t exactly share my review of the flick, but does plot even matter when Taylor Lautner is onscreen? Nein. I was accused of only liking it because of my recent boyfriend procurement, to which I’ll plead the Fifth because they’re probably right. Definitely do NOT watch this movie if you’re feeling cynical in the slightest– it will either cause you to breakdown in public and/or become extremely violent to the squealing saps around you like me whose boyfriends stand in the rain at 10 pm to grill them bratwurst after work even though they have papers they should be writing instead. Not like that’s happened to me.
IN CONCLUSION: I am beyond thrilled I came home for Spring Break, but I am so so so ready/ excited to get back to Germany. And I would be there right now if it weren’t for Delta Airlines.
Tags: food, Iowa, movies, NPH, Spring Break
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Just a quick update for my legions of admirers (okay, two people) who have inquired as to how Spring Break in Iowa is going… I made it by train and subway to the airport and checked in all by myself on Friday! With like five hours to kill, I had breakfast (one Euro for a hunk of bread as big as my thigh?! Win! Almost four Euro for a Coke Zero? Ahh, there’s the Europe I know and love.) I had a very quick layover from Hamburg to Paris, the only time I ever wish to spend in France. The flight to Atlanta was almost nine hours, but there were 130 empty seats on the plane, leaving much room to lay out and kinda sleep but mostly not. When the pilot welcomed us to the United States, I felt… SAD. My lack of sleep coupled with general travel anxiety definitely had me second-guessing my decision to come home. Also, the South definitely should not have been my first taste of America after two months– have you heard those people attempt to speak English? Being able to understand all conversations around me took a bit of getting used to, and I found myself responding “Danke” and “Entshuldigung” to flight attendants/ sales people/ those around me. FINALLY… after 11 p.m. on Friday, after over 24 hours of waking up in Germany, after 13ish hours in the air, I landed in Des Moines. There to greet me were my parents and… NPH! Apparently he was in cahoots with the parents for weeks to surprise me at the airport, and while I was quite certain he’d be there, it wasn’t appreciated any less.
Being back has been… amazing. At first I MISSED GERMANY SO MUCH. And I still do. But oh 713. These boys, how I missed them. It’s also been great to hang out with Lauren and Natalie and basically everyone with whom I’ve managed to have dinner or lunch or Oscar-viewing dates. Going back is going to SUCK, but this trip has definitely made me realize the things I love about Germany. Leaving permanently (0r at least for a while) in May will be really hard, but there’s plenty of things in Iowa City I’ll be rushing back for.
Tags: Iowa, NPH, Spring Break
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Patience is not my virtue. (Neither is decisiveness, or self control, or a bevy of other attributes one would hope to possess, but that’s for an entirely separate therapy session.) Luckily today has gone by faster than I was dreading it would– I now have less than 12 hours til my alarm goes off to get to the airport and I’m not exactly packed yet. My Elementary German II Final went about as well as one could hope; I now have the language credit requirements completed for my major (the whole reason I’m here.) In eight weeks I’ve learned as much as I would have in a year at Iowa, though feel free to not quiz me on it later.
Since I am writing this from the comfort of my oddly clean apartment and not a hospital bed, it seems my staph infection will not actually be my demise (Is this one of those knock on wood times? Where in five days someone will be eulogizing me: “She jinxed it on the damn blog!” There’s always a plane crash tomorrow to worry about.) While my hand still isn’t back to 100% normal, the swelling has gone down significantly and I should be able to board a plane tomorrow without setting off too many red flags.
D-Bag asked me if I was going to color my hair when I’m back home because even he has grown tired of my near-daily grievances over my faux-gingerness. Sadly, I’ll probably just have to let the color grow out since any more chemicals would quite likely render me bald. My freak amount of hair shedding has warranted being referred to as “The Yeti” a few times from aforementioned friend, to which I then usually grab a hunk of loose locks from my scalp and drape them politely on his lap. If staph or a 35,000 foot plunge into the Atlantic doesn’t kill me, I’m quite certain one day his usually docile demeanor will come unglued and finish the job.
Some of my classmates are quite jealous of my short trip to America coming up. We’ve discussed what things they want me to bring back (butter popcorn, Taco Bell, specific deodorant) and what I’ll make sure to do when I’m there just because I can (be obnoxiously loud in public, wear sweatpants outside of my bed, drive a car, FREE DRINK REFILLS!!) Not gonna lie, pretty nervous about drinking American beer again– I can’t see it tasting any more appetizing than if I peed in a can. Some more seasoned travel veterans have already warned me that my brain might go on English overload the first time I enter a mostly American setting. The strangest thing is that after 12 years of hating few things more than flying, I’m looking forward to the flight. Not just for my destination, but like being on the plane– the in-flight movies, the food (chicken or pasta? For the first time I chose chicken on the last plane, um… not so much.) From Chicago to Frankfurt I sat all eight hours WITHOUT GETTING UP. I, Brittney, DID NOT PEE for eight hours on an aircraft. If you know me in the slightest, you will know what a David Blaine-like feat this was. Not expecting the same tomorrow, but hoping for the best. Obviously my dear minions, I’ll keep you well-informed of all mid-flight bodily evacuations.
Tags: America, drinking, hair, sick
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
I’m watching the “Road to Germany” episode of Family Guy. If you’re wondering what it’s like over here, I’d say Seth got it spot-on (minus the whole Nazi occupation thing. So really my study abroad experience has been nothing like this episode except the European See-and-Say part.) If you’re wondering why I’m watching Family Guy instead of out bowling with my friends or doing Hausaufgaben, I’ll spoil the end of my story and then go back to fill in the details: I am sick. Not just under the weather, oh man sometimes snot runs down my face when I run for the bus in the morning sick, but head-pounding hand-swelling fever-inducing STAPH INFECTION coursing through my body sick.
You may recall me thinking on Sunday I was having an allergic reaction to something which caused my fingers to get red and swollen and hurt and sometimes itch and be hot and generally be annoying, especially when trying to grasp things (brushing my teeth, opening doors– all not fun activities.) Yesterday however I started to feel BLLLLEEEECCCCHH, I had a constant headache and my chest kind of burned and my eyes were kind of seeping. I then found out one of my classmates was just getting over what had finally been diagnosed as a staph infection. Aha! A few Google hits later and I’d convinced myself I was suffering from the same. I decided that if I lived through the night, I’d go to the doctor today. D-Bag tried to keep my mind occupied with list-making, one of my all-time favorite activities: ”Top Five Songs You Want at Your Funeral”, “Five Historical Figures You Want Portrayed by Muppets in a Puppet Show on Top of Your Casket”, and my personal favorite, “Five Names for the Cats to be Adopted in Your Memory” (Snickers, Oliver, Staphy– I was delirious with fever, just go with it.) Kudos to him for putting up with my constant bitching. I bought him a candy bar, don’t worry about it.
SO TODAY, the program director called an English-speaking German doctor for me who was able to squeeze me in by having me meet her at the Orthoklinik. Never having been to this mystery place before, I set off early and got caught in, wait for it… a HAILSTORM. There was HAIL falling from the sky even though the SUN was shining. A more pathetic picture could not be painted of this unshowered, half-dead American wandering unknown streets getting pelted in the face by HAIL (between BB and pea-sized, if you want a visual.) I managed to see through the HAIL and find the Orthoklinik, which is essentially a random building in the middle of a residential area for the over 70-year-old set to come try out their new artificial hips. I sat in the lobby, creating quite the sludge puddle as the hail melted off my coat/ now extremely soaked hair, and tried to keep an eye out for this unknown doctor lady while also trying to look busy enough that no one who worked there would confront me auf Deutsch that this was not, in fact, a homeless shelter. To complete this Seventh Circle of Hell, “Purple Rain” was playing on the overhead speakers. I can’t make this shit up.
Doctor lady came and whisked me off to some, I don’t know, closet or something and took a look at my hands and asked for a timeline of my symptoms. Apparently my original diagnosis of a spider bite was just DUMB because don’t you know Germany doesn’t HAVE spiders that bite? No, lady, I did not. This is not something they included in the orientation manual. Also, I think that’s a bit of an overgeneralization of your country’s arachnid population, but whatever. Since this was not her office, I didn’t so much as get my temperature taken let alone any cultures, so she just kind of agreed with my staph infection hypothesis. She wrote me a prescription for three horse tranquilizer-sized Penicillin a day for ten days and told me to call and give her an update on Thursday. You can be sure that I will keep YOU, my dear blog readers, up to date on all my latest bodily swelling!
So you’re probably wondering how my midterm of death went yesterday. Meh, not too bad. Certainly not great either, but I didn’t head straight to a bar afterward as I had assumed would be necessary. The absolute highlight of my week happened yesterday morning, however, when my MISSING DRIVER’S LICENSE turned up!! Mein Ausweis has been missing since about… my first weekend here. I have no idea when exactly/ where I lost it, but apparently someone found it, figured out where I live, and slid it in our mailbox. I’m thinking I may have dropped it in the snow at some point and it turned up six weeks after the fact since everything’s finally melting. Because a form of i.d. is needed pretty much at all times for booze purchases and on public transit, I’ve been putting my passport in peril on a near daily, and often drunk, basis. Knowing my parents wouldn’t exactly be a fan of this, I decided to keep this info under wraps and just hope I wasn’t pulled over when speeding to Iowa City this weekend. So, thank you Mystery Person who found my i.d. and did the right thing instead of selling it to a minor, as would have surely happened back in the States. And I don’t really need any sort of responsibility talking-to since it turned up, so this is all just water under the bridge, right? Just add this to the list of reasons I can never have children.
Tags: Family Guy, sick
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
Happy Almost Halfway Through my Program Week… WHERE did eight weeks go?!?! This weekend has just been too much fun full of needing to study, wanting to study, thinking about studying, putting together all the materials to study… anytime now hopefully the actual studying will begin. Almost ALL of the snow is gone, the weather is ridiculously nice when it’s not raining (which happens inevitably every day for at least a few minutes.) One thing I have accomplished this weekend is the awesomely elementary school-style poster I made for German class. Apparently we’re starting a unit next week on Glück (luck) but in German it also means happiness. I’ve put a unnecessary amount of time into my “Mein Glück” collage which has lots of prettttty colors and words cut out from magazines and pictures of the 713 loves of my life. I also freehand drew a fairly accurate Tigerhawk and made sure “TAILGATING” had prime real estate in the middle of the whole thing.
While the people in Groningen ride bikes more than another group of people on the planet, the Germans aren’t too shabby about cycling themselves. Just this week I’ve seen a man riding a bike while holding a suitcase in his right hand, and multiple people riding while talking on cell phones.
This week my handle on Deutsch really clicked. Two students who came here already knowing the language commented about how much I’ve improved for only knowing about three words upon arrival. Once (if?) I get through my midterm tomorrow, it’s smooth sailing to Spring Break. If the Air France strikes get in the way of me getting home (I fly Hamburg to Paris to Atlanta to Des Moines) I will fah-REAK out and man my own ship to get across the ocean. NPH and PQ Skyped me yesterday– there aren’t words in any language to describe how excited I am to be at 713 again. When I come back to Germany hopefully Spring will be officially sprung and we can play soccer outside, something I’m also oddly looking forward to. I know May will get here way too fast and I won’t want to leave, but we’ll save that bag of mixed emotions for a later time.
Oh, in other news– that “spider bite” on my hand a few weeks ago definitely isn’t, and now we’re looking at an allergic reaction to something (so going home will be extra good to see if this swollen red fingers thing is exclusive to Deutschland.) So that’s AWESOME. D-Bag, bless his heart, gave me some Benadryl which has been helping and offered ice packs/ ibuprofen if I want to try them later. Until then I’ll try to counteract the drugs with caffeine and finally… start…. studying…?
Tags: bikes, class, weather
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Happy Hump Day to my legions of loyal fans and admirers! (Who has two thumbs and has had way too much caffeine today? THIS GUY! When my laptop prompted me for my password this morning and I typed in “sleep” without thinking, there’s a problem.)
Just when the sidewalks were almost melted of ice and the air smelled just about like Spring (which makes me miss playing soccer something fierce) it snowed last night. I kind of can’t complain because nice weather would only further hinder the massive amounts of studying I need to do, which brings me to announce the postponement of my Wittenberg trip this weekend. We were given the study guide for our Intercultural Communication midterm on Monday and holy shoulda kept up the reading, Batman– looks like it’ll be quite the exam. As a journalism major I rarely even have tests, let alone have to study for them and possibly write short answer/essay responses, so I’m just SUPER looking forward to tackling nine chapters of definitions, a handful of academic articles, in-class discussions, etc. Since this class is the only conceivable roadblock to a 4.0 this semester, I’ve decided studying should come before travel. Ahh, maturity.
Riding this wave of uncharacteristic productivity and motivation, I’ve mapped out my course schedule for my remaining two semesters of college, have been researching summer internship and job opportunities, and giving the possibility of (gasp!) grad school some attention. Right now grad school’s only got about a 5% chance since I’ve decided I will absolutely be attending pastry school within the next ten years. If you sound confused, so am I. My brain is on overload– all I know is I want to be about three different things (I’ll be wildly successful at all of them, natch) and being the most indecisive person on the planet is something I most certainly need to work on. Also, this paragraph had nothing to do with my study abroad adventures. Ooh but I did buy a German/English dictionary today. (If you’re wondering WHY I waited until my program was half over to do this, I don’t know either. I’m sure we could have Amazon-ed it for a fraction of the cost before coming here, but that would have required forethought.) It’s my new favorite thing; I’ve already looked up probably 20 words in the few hours I’ve had it. Also, it doubles quite nicely as a paperweight/ door jamb/ coaster (don’t worry, the cover’s made of pleather) not to mention I looked über studious and academic today at the Mensa table when I was really looking up how to say “naked” auf Deutsch. (If you were wondering, it’s “nackt.” Example: “Ich liebe nackt zu sein.” My parents must be so proud of their firstborn.)
Tags: class, future, soccer, Wittenberg
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
We set off in gorgeous weather Friday morning for Groningen, Holland with a vague outline of the train schedule and no hostel reservation (or map of the town) for when we hopefully arrived. We rode the train for free to Hamburg-Harburg, then to Bremen, then to the border town of Leer, and then finally to Groningen. About 20 minutes into our journey (big shocker ahead for any of you who have traveled with me before:) I had to pee. Unfortunately we had some time to kill in Hamburg-Harburg and I decided I couldn’t wait to go on the train for free. In Europe, one must PAY to go to the bathroom. This to me is a clear violation of my human rights and why the Geneva Convention did not address the Right to Pee Internationally for Free is beyond me. I went into the bathroom knowing I had literally two cents in my pocket, but thinking that the paying thing is more of a strict guideline than rule. Unfortunately, the 70-year-old 300 lb. German woman working the bathroom did not see this as merely a guideline. She was not impressed by my two cent offering and instead barked at me in the huskiest smoker’s voice to e’er barrage my auditory system something about “Bitch gimme my money” (or that’s what I’d like to think she said.) I tried to plead (in German) that this was all I had, and even opened up my wallet and managed to scrounge up 25 more cents. By now she definitely got the “this foreign girl’s bladder is about to explode all over my bathroom resulting in much more than 50 cent mess” memo and let me in. After my business was quickly done, I exited to wash my hands, and Big Bathroom Bertha started going off on me again. I clearly had not desecrated the shoddy hole in the wall she was paid to “keep clean,” and knew my train was coming soon, so wasn’t really in the mood for a quick German lesson. She then pointed to my right where I saw the sign that said it was an extra 20 cents to wash your hands. OH OKAY. That’s not exactly hygienic, Deutschland– if anything YOU should be paying ME to wash my hands. Anyway, I finished and high-tailed it out of there without drying my hands (perhaps an extra 15 cent charge?) with the lovely German woman cursing my existence the entire way to the train. D-Bag and New England were not comforting in the slightest about this traumatizing intercultural experience, and instead thought it quite hilarious that I have the bladder of a toddler.
We had a little over an hour to kill in Bremen, so we walked around their historic center and explored the city. I fell in love with Bremen, possibly because the weather was so nice, but it’s a very clean city with an extensive trolley system and lots of amazing shopping/ restaurants (fun trivia fact: Beck’s is also brewed there.) I also found coffee that lasted me more than 30 seconds– their XL size was roughly what an American medium would be… and in true European fashion cost roughly $2 more. By some miracle we made it to all of our trains on time, although we ran to the last train leaving to Groningen (as such, we didn’t have time to buy tickets and miraculously were never asked for them on the train, thus were FUGITIVES once in the Netherlands. Spring 2010: My life as a bad ass.) As soon as our train crossed the border into the Netherlands, the sunny weather went away and the sky was an ominous storm-on-the-horizon shade of gray straight out of the movie Hostel. Also, the one bathroom on board our last train was OUT OF ORDER (I actually said “I can pee, but it can wait til the next train” on the last one. BIG. MISTAKE) so the last ride was mostly me splayed as comfortably as possible across two seats with my travel companions under strict orders not to make me laugh lest I explode and really put a damper (haha, pun?) on the weekend.
Finally we arrived in Groningen– about six hours after we initially departed– and I paid 50 cents for a NICE bathroom replete with candles and a much nicer Dutch lady who in no way verbally assaulted me. We then decided it was best we find a hostel (only about half an hour of wandering and one stop for directions) where were able to get some of the last beds in the dormitory for the night. The rest of the night was spent exploring the city, hanging out, going to an amazingly cheap sit-down pizza place, going to some bar where the Australian bartender (hel-LO Heath Ledger sound-alike) took a liking to us random Americans in his Australian bar in Holland. Saturday we had the BEST CROISSANT I have ever had– so flaky, so many layers, can’t really talk about it right now without crying– which was cut down the middle then filled with cream (kinda like vanilla pudding) and topped with fruit. No words. D-Bag got another one and said something about living under the bakery counter for the rest of his life– they were THAT GOOD. We decided to go back Saturday afternoon because there wasn’t actually that much to do there, but also because New England and I vowed to never step foot in that hostel again.
I am a very light sleeper. I have never shared a room with 20 people (let alone STRANGERS) before. We went to bed relatively early, so imagine how many times in the night I was woken up by various groups of drunk/high/foreign strangers stumbling into bed. A LOT. Also, we apparently missed the blanket memo and were individually huddled up in one top sheet plus our coats and any other layers we’d stuffed in our bags. I’ve never before had to make a mental pro and con list of Which One of my Travelmates Would Be Less Creeped Out by me Climbing into their Bunk for Warmth? Needless to say, we were the first three out of there in the morning, and if traveling again, I will plunk down many more Euros for a private room or hotel instead of saving a few but getting close to zero sleep.
It is this hostel experience that has me even more excited about my Spring Break plans (as if I weren’t already counting-down-the-days excited before. Most of you know, but for those who don’t (everyone with me in my program), I am going home for Spring Break. To Iowa. I am leaving Europe and voluntarily spending a week in Iowa. Now, when this was first presented to me as an option by my father, my reaction was “GROSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS NO WAY so laaaaaame, who goes HOME during study abroad? Puh-lease. I am so not doing that. I am so worldly and will travel to foreign places and prove to myself I can go without the people I miss for four months.” I would change my mind on going back at least five times a day, usually NPH being the reason to visit home, and traveling to cool places being the reason to stay. In the end though, now that the tickets have been purchased, I am OVER THE MOON about visiting home in 12 days. While traveling over Spring Break would have been great I’m sure, the cons definitely outweighed the pros in terms of money spent, time spent on trains, sketchy hostels, possibly traveling alone/ with people I don’t really care for, etc etc. This is not my first or last time in Europe, and I’d much rather come back and see places like Spain and Norway with people I love instead of for a couple hours on no sleep with people I probably won’t see after May. My week in Iowa City/Adel is already filled with plans, most importantly lots of time at 713, Mesa with Natalie, celebrating Lauren’s 21st birthday a week early, a screening of Shutter Island, perhaps a pedicure with T-Bone, and lots and lots and LOTS of Diet Pepsi and coffee. A very special thanks to my father for making this trip possible, as well as essentially making the best decision for me because, when getting down to it, I was dead-set on staying if only to prove to myself I don’t need home for four months. And then come late March we would have had one verrrrry volatile Brittney on our hands, and who really needs that?
Tags: food, Netherlands, Spring Break, train
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
I took advantage of yesterday’s amazing weather (today: freezing rain. Go figure) and wandered around town with no direction but stopping at the three big churches to check on Ashermittwoch activities. ALL of them were closed let alone having any sort of service, but I did get to explore Luneburg more and ITISSOADORABLE. I couldn’t possible see everything here in four months– narrow cobblestone streets shoot off onto even tinier alleys and old buildings have clandestine courtyard gardens that are all filled with amazing gastronomy and specialty shops. Yesterday I felt very zen with Deutschland (AND when I was walking down Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Straße, the ONE Bach song out of the thousands I have on my iPod came on shuffle. Insert Twilight Zone music here.)
My routine here is well established, I know the checkout people at Edeka and ride the bus with familiar faces every morning. One of my fellow bus riders is a chubby girl of about nine who watches my every move. Homegirl has no problem staring at me for the entire trip, following my hand with her eyes when I change a song on my iPod, watching me push the button for the Rotes Feld stop and get off. Perhaps even she can read the giant FOREIGNER sign on my forehead, but I’d like to think she’s fascinated with me and realizes that one day, she too can grow out of her awkward stirrup pants and become hot and awesome. While Ben has been a fine little brother, I’d like to think I’d be an awesome sibling to a little sister. Perhaps I will silently take chubby bus creeper under my wing and teach her life’s little lessons in the 10 minutes we share each day. So far she’s probably learned how to How to Awkwardly Suavely Lung for the Stop Button When Realizing You’re About to Miss Your Stop, or today’s lesson, How to Cram For a Test on Public Transportation Because You Spent Last Night Watching Shaun White in the Olympics Instead of Study Akkusativ vs. Dativ Verb-Endings.
Speaking of, I will now take this time for a to answer a question posed to me by the two members of 713 without Facebook, WHY do you find Shaun White attractive? Feel free to skip this paragraph if you’re not interested in my Shaun White tangent. (For those of you above a certain age, Shaun White has won a billion medals in snowboarding, skateboarding, maybe surfing– I’m not exactly in it for the sports. Google image him for evidence why.) HOW CUTE is he? It’s also the attitude, plus he got lots of Axl Rose minus being a giant Asshole vibes going on. It is NOT, as pointed out by D-Bag last night because “you have the same hair!” Shut it. In my loft bedroom (RIP) I had a picture of Shaun White on my wall, next to Lil Wayne’s Rolling Stone cover, opposite the wall of shrine de Slash. Apparently I’m late growing out of the J-14 magazine and scissors phase of my life.
In travel news: tomorrow D-Bag, New England and I depart for an overnight trip to the Netherlands. We’re going to Groningen, a college town that could perhaps be called the poor man’s Amsterdam. Yesterday I also booked a train ticket to hang out in Wittenberg next weekend and indulge my inner Lutheran. I’ll be attending a church service in English in Martin Luther’s church on Saturday night and generally wandering about, hopefully vastly improving mein Deutsch.
Tags: bus, Netherlands, Wittenberg
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
German is officially hard. The honeymoon period of present tense verbs and randomly throwing an incorrect article in front of a noun has long passed. We have a test tomorrow and I’ll actually have to like, study? Das ist nicht so gut. I probably should have realized this was coming since many natives have asked why on Earth I picked German to learn since even they don’t get it right most of the time. Ausgezeichnet!
In better news, it may as well be summer– the SUN has been out in full force for a couple days now, and I can finally leave my apartment without gloves. Buses are now only used if I need to be somewhere quickly, otherwise walking is my preferred mode of transportation. Later I should like to walk to one of the three massive ancient churches in town and see what’s up for Ash Wednesday (my teacher has informed me probably not much since 1. To make a blanket statement, Germans aren’t very religious and 2. This is seen as a Catholic tradition to them and well, Martin Luther anyone? All of the churches in town long ago became Protestant.)
Last night we were unable to attend our ritual Tuesday night Cheep Bear Bowling Night due to the local soap opera filming there (it’s called Rote Rosen. Perhaps I’ll tune in some time and try to LEARN GERMAN.) Our alternate activity was something that in theory sounded very similar, but in practice was a very awkward Twilight Zone-ish experience akin to acid tripping with the elderly. The game is called Kegeln and it’s similar to bowling except the pins are attached to strings, there’s less of them, the ball is much smaller, the lane has slight bumpers but is much skinnier… and we had zero idea how to keep score. Here is the Wikipedia page for it (and yeah, it’s in German. Welcome to my life.) The Kegeln place looked and smelled exactly like a church basement, and the median age of all others players was approximately 75. To say that this was their most exciting Tuesday night in a while was an understatement– most of them decided to forgo their own games and instead spectate the slightly inebriated American kids who couldn’t get over the fact they were playing a game with the word “Kegel” in it. Eventually I was KICKED OFF my team in favor of someone who showed up late (my strategy of hurling the ball as hard as possible wasn’t really working well for anyone) and spent the rest of the night attempting to make card houses with beer coasters.
I’m no scientist, but Germany’s water definitely has more iron in it than the grand ol’ U S of A’s. THREE people have now noticed that my hair has gotten, wait for it, MORE RED since coming here, and I haven’t done anything to it color-wise since October (when I admittedly purposely put red in it for Halloween. The box SAID it would come out in 20 washes. I plan to file suit within the month.) Nothing against redheads, but I don’t want to be one of them. Thanks to my Casper-like pigmentation, it doesn’t look totally heinous, but I’ve long forgotten when my natural color even is and I’m only 1/64th Irish so I feel kinda like a phony. Not to mention many people in NPH’s life have taken to referring to me as “The Redhead” and this irks me to no end.
I feel my mother has missed her calling in life and should uproot and move to Deutschland, stat. Not only are they total recyling Nazis (YEP– I said it) but these people love their birds. The grocery stores all sell suet balls (T-Bone makes ‘em homemade) and people hang them all over the place for the damn birds. I’ve seen them in trees, on bushes, on campus, on my walk to school– it’s a bird feeding frenzy up in here.
And finally, for an update on personal breakthroughs: laundry is OFFICIALLY my most hated household chore (I’ve never had one before because they’re all mostly tied for Things I’d Rather Get a Root Canal then Do) but German has made me hate the entire laundry process especially. If I don’t do it soon, I will literally have to wear a bed sheet to class, but I. DON’T. WANNA. Also, not only do I want to attend (nay, will be) both Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza this year, I will be attending pastry school within the next 10 years. These two things have nothing to do with each other, they’re just both things I decided yesterday while waiting for the next episode of 24 to load. It’s good to have goals.
Tags: bowling, sun
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Sunday, February 14th, 2010
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!! (This is my favorite holiday– except for my birthday of course, which might as well be a national holiday.) I will spare you the stomach-churningly sweet details of all my Valentine back home has done for me and just summarize the whole day as a Win. My day has been oddly similar to Lauren’s in that I am one of the few students in my program who did not attend some sort of Karneval celebration (most people here took a trip to Cologne.) I wasn’t really feeling spending the Euros and multiple hours on a train to stand outside and get drunk in costume, call me anti-social if you must. D-Bag and I did have a fun day of activities that included mimosas, an insane amount of guacamole, my first screening of Snatch, his first viewing of Gone Baby Gone, and Maulwurf Kuchen (mole cake)– aptly named because there’s “dirt” on the top and it looks like a mole hill.
You can all breathe a sigh of relief that my freak finger bite appears to be on the road to recovery. There were about 30 minutes yesterday where I WebMD’d myself into think I had rabies with only days left to live, just sure a bat’s been creeping around in the night (did you know you often can’t even tell a bat has bitten you? Until you start FOAMING AT THE MOUTH AND SEIZING?!)
Class is cancelled tomorrow so I have nothing to do until 4 pm. Our Berlin plans have been nixed for the weekend in favor of scoping out all the Netherlands has to offer. It has snowed for about 72 days straight, and methinks I’m only slightly exaggerating that estimate. For Spring Break I will not be attending a Lady Gaga concert (I KNOW, I’m sad too, but I had no one to go with and that woulda just been kinda weird.) I will be attending Bonnaroo in June instead with the Iowa City loves of my life. I refunded all of the Diet Pepsi bottles in my room and got like 2.50 Euro back (yes, a lot of bottles, but they also refund much more for each.) Trying to think of something to give up for Lent– if you’re thinking caffeine you’re absolutely high, alcohol worked well last year but my current location makes that one impossible, I could try to do swearing but would fail miserably 20 minutes into Ash Wednesday. I wanna go somewhere really cool for Easter, like Spain or Norway, we get quite the extended weekend off for it.
Tags: food, Lady Gaga, Lent, spiders, Valentine's Day
Posted in Brittney | 2 Comments »
Friday, February 12th, 2010
ATTENTION, PLEASE: I woke up yesterday with what we’ve only been able to deduce as…. A SPIDER BITE. On my right ring finger. Can I get a collective What. The. F<censored>?! Pretty sure I’ve never had one before, and now it’s all red and swollen and it HURTS and D-Bag told me there’s probably now thousands of tiny spider eggs in my finger getting ready to explode and rain tiny spiders all over my room. (I’m not even sure how this German devil spider managed to survive the Arctic temps of my room, clearly they breed ‘em hardy over here.) Since there is no type of student health on campus and seeking actual medical treatment would require 1. An appointment/ getting on a bus/ generally way more work than I’m willing to put into it; 2. A much better handle on the language than I currently have 3. Something more than a slight red bump on my finger, I will suffer in silence (well, beyond complaining about it every five minutes to everyone within earshot.) So if I drop dead tonight, blame it on the arachnid, not the amount I plan on drinking after my test today.
Two days until my favorite day of the year, and yesterday’s Valentine Party was perhaps the most adorable show of hearts and red and pink and ribbons and The Notebook and weird German love songs and balloons and croissants and glitter I have ever had the privilege of getting caught up in. I made four homemade valentines that clearly rival Hallmark, yet don’t really have anyone to give them to. Germans see V-Day as a purely American commercial holiday and hardly acknowledge it. The Deutsch don’t mess around, so if I were to give them to my flatmates, they would take my “Ich liebe dich” und “Sei mein” literally and think I wanted to film them in the shower. Perhaps I’ll decorate my room with them or give them prime real estate space in my carry-on upon my return home– Mom will definitely be displaying these for years to come.
In some other, possibly life-altering news, the Internet has only been able to provide me with half of Season 5 of “Weeds.” Nancy just had the baby of a drug kingpin/ mayor Tijuana, it is IMPERATIVE I find out if he kidnaps the baby and kills her for ratting out his illegal sex and arms trafficking tunnel to a DEA agent (who has long been killed off, don’t worry. I didn’t like him. I find myself cheering for the drug lords in this show– Showtime is one giant anti-D.A.R.E. commerical.) If you could be of any assistance in this, my most pressing dilemma, perhaps you will be a recipient of one of these four faboosh valentines (which weren’t exactly easy to make with a giant red handicap on my dominant hand. So really, it would be a collector’s item… or tainted with spider poison. If I soon develop the ability to shoot webs out of my wrists, you are SO gonna wish you had something with my autograph on it.)
Tags: spiders, TV, Valentine's Day
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, February 8th, 2010
I’ve been in Germany for one month, but it feels like I left home YEAAAARS ago . Do you know what I need but can’t be found? Giant amounts of coffee. Ein Tasse Kaffee ist sehr klein, I need my caffeine in more than three swallows. Good coffee here is like BUTTER, oh my sweet Moses it’s tasty, but generally the good stuff’s not found in the dusty prison-esque machine I visit in the basement of my school building every morning.
Saturday D-Bag introduced me a to a magical, magical treat that will reverse my slight weight loss more than any German beer or Schnitzel could: it’s called marzipan, and I haven’t yet decided if it’s sent directly from heaven or hell. If you have any backstory on my love for all things almond-flavored, you get why this amazing almond-paste sugar butter awesomeness will be my inevitable undoing. When he suggested I try this dark-chocolate covered (!!!) marzipan bar for only 70 cents in the checkout line at Edeka, I had what I can only imagine is the same internal debate a first-time heroin user ruminates over before tying one off. It’s textbook bad, but oh baby it’s so, so good.
This weekend was relatively quiet– I caught up on some more episodes of “Weeds” (when it becomes tolerable to be outside for any period of time, I promise I’ll have better stories to share.) Friday night we went to Jekyll & Hyde and the bartender was fascinated by our blatant foreign status (it’s a good thing I hang out with people from the coasts, the Germans are half-tempted to ask for D-Bag’s autograph when he tells ‘em he hails from California. They usually just politely smile and nod when I mention Iowa, so for the first and hopefully only time in my life– I never thought I’d be one of those people– I name drop Chicago and that usually elicits some sort of response.)
I’m glad I didn’t go to the one bar in town playing the Super Bowl (at 11:30 pm our time) last night because there were NO COMMERCIALS. Due to, I’m not sure, international advertising laws (there’s no ads here after 8:30 pm? I need to investigate this further) there was apparently just extremely proper German commentary during all breaks. Congrats to the Saints, I’m glad they finally got theirs (Super Bowl win + Mardi Gras? It’d be pretty fun to visit New Orleans this week, to say the least.) On a slightly related note, many YouTube videos are also blocked due to copyright laws. I can’t see most official music videos (for example, “Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon. Sometimes I miss Bryce, so sue me) AND NBC.com’s clips of Saturday Night Live are “unavailable in your area” as well.
If it sounds like I’m chained to my laptop, well kinda. I’m certainly not letting my time in Europe pass by, but even during foreign study there’s downtime (ALL DAY SUNDAY, anyone?! Still getting used to that one…) I was spoiled last week with two lovely Skype dates– my future roomie Lauren and fellow PRSSA hottie Natalie. Kudos to students who studied abroad pre-Internet, though sometimes having “home” right in front of you but oops not really, just on a screen, almost makes it more difficult. I actually just had to prepare a chapter on culture shock for my class tonight, and overall I think the whole transition has gone oddly smooth. Instead of something here making me miss everyone, it’s usually something from home that triggers feelings of less-than-cheerfulness (Furry Raptor tweets, for example. 99% of you have no idea what I’m talking about, but to the one person who does, I LOVED it and thank you.)
GUESS WHAT– we’re having a VALENTINE’S DAY PARTY in class on Thursday. I can’t produce a squeal of excitement loud enough. Clearly I will be going way over the top with this, I’m thinking cupcakes and handmade valentines and appropriately colored clothing. Then perhaps actual Valentine’s Day will be a dawn to dusk drunkfest due to everyone in the program either being utterly alone or miles away from their freund/freunde (fun fact: there is no German word for boyfriend/girlfriend. They just use “friend” and context clues are needed to figure out how close of “friends” they really are.)
Oh and sorry if you’ve clicked on the Photos tab above only to be met with a blank page– we’re working on it.
Tags: food, TV, Valentine's Day
Posted in Brittney | 3 Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
“Here’s the mail it never fails, it makes me wanna wag my tail– when it comes I wanna wail, ‘MAAAAAIILL!!’” (Thanks to years of baby-sitting, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my freak Blue’s Clues’ knowledge. It is both my blessing and my curse.) I got THREE pieces of mail yesterday– one from my parents I’d been expecting for about a month, one musical Disney Princess Valentine from my Grandma, and one Step Brothers t-shirt courtesy of my valentine in IC. Overall, a pretty great way to wake up after an equally great nap.
This morning was my first final (piece o’ caaaaake, or auf Deutsch: eine Stück Kuchen.) Then it was BROCCOLI DAY in the Mensa; cooked broccoli might just be one of my top five favorite things of all time. Raw broccoli involuntarily makes me puke up my lungs. Germany’s cooked vegetables aren’t so much steamed as they are soaked in butter with enough sodium to swell a moose ox, but it makes me feel slightly better than eating the mystery battered meat drowned in mystery booger sauce. I also got some Hot Roomie one-on-one time when I saw him sitting with his friends and had to be all, “Oh hey, favor? I locked my keys in the apt, can I borrow yours for two minutes?” If only this were a lame flirting attempt (at least I no longer lock them IN my room, just forget em on the table.)
Do you know what’s different (okay, one of about 3,000 things) over here? Germans never hang out in their living rooms. Everyone spends free time in their bedrooms, even when people come over. This is something Sebas noticed to be totally different when living in the US– he wasn’t allowed to have girls alone in his room for long periods of time, whereas in Regensberg that’s where he’s expected to take his friends. It’s sehr weird, as most mothers I know would assume we were up there devouring each other between meals. In many apartments over here there isn’t even a common room– just a kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms.
I’ve finally decided to embrace television auf Deutsch, though Family Guy just isn’t Family Guy without the exact voices (and the jokes are so tailored to American culture that most Germans don’t bother watching.) The voices for Die Simpsons and Spongebob are actually pretty accurate, and they’re pretty helpful to watch because I’ve seen a lot of the episodes/ generally know what’s going on. OH and some Sex and the City episodes were on last night, so I learned some new Deutsch phrases, though not really useful unless currently sleeping with a Russian man almost twice my age. (Slightly humorous side note: In Regensberg last weekend one of my drinks came in a martini glass, and numerous people in the bar ooohed “SexandtheCity!!!” in the unison. I have no problem being these people’s laptop-pounding, cigarette-puffing late-90s sex goddess. Especially if a German Mr. Big comes with the gig.)
I’m off to enjoy the Am Sande nightlife with my main amigos New England and D-Bag. Zero plans for this weekend, though next weekend might be a quick jaunt across the border to the Netherlands!
Tags: food, mail, TV, Valentine's Day
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
After the excitement of this weekend, the last few days have been nothing to bother writing about. I’m officially done with my first four credits of German, the final exam is tomorrow. We can’t really wrap our heads around the fact that the past four weeks of Deutsch would have been spread over an entire semester back home. Granted we wouldn’t meet for 3.5 hours a day and there would be at least five times the amount of people, but still– even our teacher said she’s impressed with how far we’ve come.
Last night, Ich kochte mit meiner Lieblings-Jungs and we had another family dinner. Apparently the theme was pie because we had two kinds– pizza and pumpkin. D-Bag’s mom sent him all the fixin’s for a pumpkin pie before the holidays so he figured it was probably time to get going on it. Being the baker extraordinaire I am, I fixed a semi-passable pie crust (did you know the conversion from cups to grams is different depending on what you’re measuring? SO CONFUSING) but the filling was Thanksgiving-grade awesome (quite the feat considered I just used guesstimates for the amount of each spice.) Pie is pretty non-existent in Germany, especially of the pumpkin variety, so we shared with my flatmates and a few of the droves of people Hot Roomie had over last night. When we told them it was pumpkin, they said their only knowledge of this word was the “orange thing with a face.” They thought it was super delicious! Before we pumpkin pie-d ourselves into a coma, we made homemade pizzas. Apparently D-Bag is quite the chef and made homemade dough (yeast, garlic and all!) and homemade sauce and they turned out pretty tasty as well.
Afterward I hung around in our kitchen packed full of people and did some more intercultural intermingling (two cheers for the awkward American!) The first person I talked to was an Albanian student who has been studying in Germany for two years. He knows like five languages and said that he’s here because German degrees are very rare in Albania and are pretty much a guaranteed ticket to success. He spoke some Albania to me, which is pretty unique and kind of dying out, and then asked me what I think of the Germans. He thinks they’re a bit cold, and then went off about how much they drink. He said the amount Germans drink is “disgusting” and that the drinking culture in Albania is far different. In his first three weeks here, his friends went out 12 nights whereas back home he drinks maybe once or twice a month. In Albania they also go out to a bar first and then perhaps to someone’s home instead of the opposite way we do it in America and Germany. I told him that Germans and Americans drink/ party about equally when we’re at our age, but the adults here drink much more than adults back home.
A girl from the first night I ventured into the kitchen came up and asked how I was, then we talked a lot because she spent six months in America when she was in high school. She (and every other German who’s visited America) LOVES Taco Bell. They think it’s just the greatest thing in the world. She also asked if I lived near a Six Flags because they don’t really have amusement parks like that here, but she wishes there were. Overall, she said she absolutely loved America and asked why in the world I’d want to come to Germany. She thinks English sounds much prettier than Deutsch and said America is “like it’s own world” because of the size/ how many different cultures/ regions we have in one country. We then talked about the difference between American and German boys but couldn’t really think of many, except the overall consensus that American boys are “bigger douchebags.” She was also not a fan how American boys don’t ask before they kiss you– apparently the German ones do? Lame.
Last, but certainly not least, I met two German guys who were also fluent in Spanish. They had each spent their year of civil service in South America working with kids or something adorable like that. One of them lived in Colombia and when I said I only know one thing about Colombia, he entered into a diatribe about how the country is so much more than cocaine and how great the people are and yes, there is cocaine but COLOMBIA DOES NOT EQUAL COCAINE, OK?! But he was much nicer about it than this. Then I made the mistake of telling him I actually have only begun studying German, to which he decided he would no longer speak to me in English because I will never learn Deutsch if people continue coddling me with English. Um, ok. I tried– I really did, and I got some words (the other stuff was communicated much more clearly in Spanish.) They just talk so FAST! After my weekend in Munich, my German has improved exponentially, especially if I’m reading it, but when speaking my mind still goes completely blank. He then told me I had to go out with them (which I’m quite certain they never did) but I politely declined due to my still uncompleted Hausaufgaben and early wake-up call for class.
Three friends and I have booked a trip for Berlin in two weekends, our next three-day weekend. I’m much more confident about my ability to figure out the train system, and am pretty excited to see the wall and Checkpoint Charlie. I’m mulling over a trip to Spain over our long Easter Break, though cooking Easter dinner here for everyone would be cool, too. No big plans for the weekend, should probably do laundry and go grocery shopping but the likelihood of either of these things happening is slim to none.
Tags: boys, food
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Unfortunately no blog post could do my current feelings justice—there are no words for how much I loved Bavaria and how amazingly fantastic my weekend was. (Also, just to set the scene: I’ve just embarked on the train ride back, and my exchange with the ticket man went flawlessly—huge win.)
Arriving in Munich on Thursday night, I was NERVOUS. I didn’t know if I’d even recognize Sebas or if it’d be super awkward or if he’d decided he had better things to do than pick me up at the station. <Note to the readers who’ve come into my life post-high school: Sebas (Sebastian) was a foreign exchange student my junior year of high school. I was his best friend in America—we went to prom together and he was unrequitedly enamored with me. We haven’t exactly kept good contact in the last four years, but I got in touch when I knew I was coming here and he graciously offered to let me hang with him in Munich.> Finding him in the station wasn’t a problem; he looks the same only WAY MORE jacked. He’s in the German Air Force and could easily kill someone with his bare hands. I suppose one could say Sebas got hot. It was after midnight so we did some catching up and then went to bed.
Friday morning we set out to explore Munich, a city that at first sight isn’t much to look at, but is now my FAVORITE (and yes, I’m including Vegas in this ranking.) We went to some giant, old, gorgeous cathedral with a Glockenspiel that plays twice a day and little mechanical characters up that top move around and dance. We did a ton of walking around and then we needed lunch (awesome perk of keeping company whose biceps are bigger than my head is that he constantly requires sustenance.) Two words for you: Bavarian food. Out of this world. Unbelievable. Died and gone to heaven. We went to some adorable restaurant with long tables and benches (come to think of it, that was the seating everywhere we ate this weekend. LOVE IT) and had Weisswurst and hot soft pretzels. With the wurst comes a sweet senf (mustard) that is exclusive to this region and so delicious. Sebas showed me how to properly eat it and we drank and ate and talked and I had a HUGE SMILE on my face because I LOVE BAVARIA. Unfortunately, the whole time I was thinking of my parents and Neil back home who I wanted so desperately to be there because I seriously can’t put into words how awesome it was.
After lunch we did some more walking then went to a mall to buy me shoes. I don’t know what kind of drugs I was on when deciding I didn’t need to wear boots, cloth clogs would suffice as my only footwear for the weekend. Luckily Sebas is a self-proclaimed metrosexual and has more ex-girlfriends than 713 combined so was more than happy to shop with me. After getting some flats and a shirt more suitable for our evening plan of going out on the town, we went to the Hofbrauhaus. I’ve been to the one in Vegas so was pretty excited to visit the original.
MY FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD IS THE HOFBRAUHAUS IN MUNCHEN, GERMANY.
I died. Life does not get any better. My wedding reception will be at the Hofbrauhaus (this is only if they don’t let me just have the ceremony there as well.) If for some horrible reason I procreate, my child will be named Hofbrauhaus. Upon my death (possibly from choking on a pretzel in the Hofbrauhaus) please bury me at the Hofbrauhaus.
The place was PACKED on a Friday night around 9 pm, but ol’ Sebas fired up his perfect Deutsch and asked a group of four if we could join their benches. He ordered us each a liter of beer and giant pretzels. Now when I say giant pretzel, I don’t think you understand: this pretzel was the size of a tire. Beer and bread? I just went from six to midnight. We each had another liter of beer (if you’re asking how my stomach fit two liters of heavy German beer AND a pretzel that could crush a toddler, I don’t know either. It didn’t feel awesome.) At a long table kinda near us was a group of four or five old Bavarian men, dressed in their traditional lederhosen and hats. Sebas was in the bathroom or something, and one of them saw me with my beer so raised his giant mug to me and tipped his hat. ARE YOU KIDDING ME—adorable. I “Prost”-ed him back and continued making eyes at this fifty-something overweight bespectacled mustachioed rosy-cheeked Bavarian (who will now on be referred to as my German boyfriend.) When Sebas returned he asked my boyfriend if I could take a picture with him and to my absolute delight he said of course. After our adorable engagement photo was taken, he pointed to his cheek for a kiss and then planted a wet one on mine and then we hugged and it was THE CUTEST THING YOU’VE EVER SEEN IN YOUR LIFE. He then told Sebas it’d been 30 years since he’d kissed a pretty girl, then one of his drunk lederhosen-wearing friends said he was jealous. That man totally made my night. After ze Hofbrauhaus we went to bar/ nightclub thing and drank lots and danced to American 90s music and German techno.
Saturday we drove (AUTOBAHN!!!) to Regensberg, a city about an hour from Munich where Sebas grew up. His mom made schnitzel and pommes for lunch and his sister made some delicious cake especially for my arrival. We went into town and saw another super old cathedral then walked along the Danube River. And then, something wonderful happened:
I ATE AT THE BIRTHPLACE OF BRATWURST.
Wurstkuchl is a teeeeny tiny wooden restaurant that was producing some smoky scents akin to what I imagine Heaven smells like. The bratwursts are much smaller than American ones (and about a million times even better tasting) and you can order them in 6, 12, 18, so on. They come with sauerkraut and homemade spicy mustard and there are baskets of rolls on each table should you wish to make a mini-bratwurst sandwich. The walls of the miniscule, low-ceiling dining room (there were maybe four tables in there) are covered with old photographs of generations of Germans with their bratwurst. I may have lied when I said the Hofbrauhaus is my favorite place ever—this place was that great. It unfortunately made me a bit sad because there is only ONE PERSON who I should’ve been eating at the birthplace of bratwurst with. Luckily there is no way I’m not going back there multiple times in my life, so NPH and I can make this pilgrimage to bratwurst mecca together.
Later that evening we had an AMAZING dinner of Leberkasen (something about liver? I was apprehensive, it’s essentially a giant pink log with crusty brown casing but deeelicious), pretzels (which his mom bought because he told her how much I like them, I love this family) and Kartoffelnsalat (German potato salad.) This meal was amazing, perhaps my favorite of the whole weekend (and yes, I realize we ate like 20 times in three days. Bavarian food is hands down the best in the world.) SO FULL, but we had socializing to do, so got ready and met some more of his super cute friends in town at the Hookah bar. After that we did some bar hopping, and I DRANK FIRE. We had flaming B-52 shots and I only slightly burned my tongue because well, I DRANK FIRE. If I had a bucket list, this would be crossed off.
Today was the last of my indescribably amazing homemade Bavarian meals, this time it was Knudeln. Knudeln are the size of a tennis ball and made with potatoes and flour and I’m not sure what, then boiled and they come out a very strange consistency. Squishy, almost gummy? It’s super hard to explain. They’re pretty bland, but not too bad served with a pork roast and lots of sauce (like a very thin brown gravy.) After lots of talking and playing with their dog Ansel it was time to return to Munich for me to catch my train.
Pictures of me with my middle-aged German boyfriend to come!
Tags: drinking, food, Munich, NPH, Sebas, train
Posted in Brittney | 4 Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
At about 4:30 I departed the comfort of my frigid, bockwurst- stocked apartment and set about on my epic trip to Munich. Bus ride from campus to the Luneburg train station, train to Hamburg, world’s longest train ride to Munich. With my student i.d., Metronome trains from Luneburg to Hamburg are free. Upon arriving at the Luneburg train station, I discovered the Metronome (read: slow) trains only leave on the half of each hour, not EVERY half hour (come to think of it, Deutsch AND English can both go to hell.) Luckily, there was an IC (read: fast) train leaving for Hamburg much sooner, though I technically didn’t have a ticket.
In case you weren’t aware, Germans like rules. So much so in fact, public transportation tickets are purchased on an honor system—very rarely do passengers get stopped by some undercover ticket checker whose job is probably heinously boring because GOD FORBID someone get on a bus/subway/train and try to cheat the system.
Since the slower train would get me to Hamburg one minute AFTER my train to Munich was supposed to leave, I playing well the role of obnoxious American, threw the rule book out the window and hopped on the fast train. The ride takes 15 minutes maximum—while I’ve never been good at math, statistically I figured the chance that someone discovered my stowaway status in that small window of time was quite insignificant. Looking back, there is a reason I copied most of my stats final from the kid sitting next to me. Just when I was settling into my stolen seat, heart rate returning to normal, ridiculous amounts of perspiration finally drying: the ticket man showed up. Oh fuck.
My fellow American students, who have obviously cheated the system hundreds of times before, had told me that in this situation it is best to play the “But I thought my student i.d. let me ride for free?” card and hope the ticket man wasn’t harboring anymore anti-US sentiments than are to be expected (this must have been near impossible during the Bush administration.) When in any sort of confrontation, my automatic response is a deer in headlights stammering clusterfuck of an exchange in which any helpful German words I’ve learned completely escape my mind, rendering me either heinously American or mute. In this situation it was both. The ticket man spoke maybe three words of English, and he used them over and over as he was telling me over and over in German that my ticket was from HAMBURG to MUNICH, WHY was I on a train TO Hamburg? He was not pleased with me. My fellow passengers didn’t even attempt to hide their gawking. At least the man legitimately thought I was a dumbass and didn’t realize my error “You have to BUY a ticket! To Hamburg!” when in reality I was fully aware of my near-fugitive status. He punched a bunch of things into his little handheld ticket-checker thing and I was quite certain I’d be given a ticket or death sentence by tribunal. After a few minutes he said something about “Well at least you bought the ticket from Hamburg to Munich” and left. So… win?
The whole goal of today was to GET ON the correct train to Munich. Once settled, I could certainly entertain myself for six hours before trying to find a kid I haven’t seen for four years in a foreign city at midnight. Well, I got on… now where to sit? For an extra four Euro, I could have reserved a seat on the train. But do you know how much beer you can buy with four Euro? Surely I could find an open seat that didn’t have the word “Reserviat” above it (put there, I am now convinced, by the Devil himself.) Wrong again, self—today really isn’t your day. I walked through each car, “November Rain” and Slash’s beyond perfect solos distracting my brain from certain implosion. I got to the end of the line with no luck, but was resolute in that I would not be standing in an aisle with my kindergartner-sized backpack on for six hours. Car 1, Seat 43 is where you now find me. The little light above it said it belongs to someone going to Nurnberg (we have a few stops, at least I’m technically allowed to sit here for the final leg or so.)
By some freak miracle, the person who was supposed to be sitting here never showed—we’re now far enough into the ride that I can make this statement with some confidence (though with how this trip has gone so far, I am a fool for doing so.) Upon choosing this seat, I didn’t exactly get comfortable. In fact, I was far less nervous when giving the graduation speech in front of hundreds in my high school. My right leg was rapidly bouncing up and down, most likely convincing those around me that I was either strapped down with bombs or still awake after a three-day meth binge. While other passengers shed their coats and unwrapped over-priced train station sandwiches for dinner, I sat rigidly upright, giant backpack at my feet (in retrospect, only adding to the jihadist-vibes I had going on.) Each stone-faced German coming down the aisle was surely the rightful sitter in Seat 43, though I figured the worst they could do was send me back down the aisle, tail between my legs, to hide out in the bathroom while trying to gauge exactly how upset my father would be if I made an international cell phone call (read: meltdown) to NPH.
Once it was obvious to me (and those around me who could TOTALLY tell I was seat-stealing) that I was in the clear, I ate the stale brotchen I packed for dinner and fired up my laptop (no, T-Mobile, I will NOT pay eight Euro for wireless.) When the ticket man came into our car, I took mine out and gave it to him with only a small amount of visible hand tremors. But no, Houston had another problem. This time he asked for my Bahn Card, which I technically own, it’s just not in my possession yet. This baby gives me discounts on train tickets and will be sent to me in the mail. Since I’d only recently purchased it, I was to use my Visa as i.d. when showing the ticket. APPARENTLY there was a SEPARATE SCREEN I was supposed to print from some EMAIL IN GERMAN and just using my Visa didn’t fly. Thank Jesus in Heaven for the lovely twenty-something frauline next to me who volunteered as translator for this whole ordeal. Ticket man charged 70 Euro (the amount I saved by using said questionably existing Bahn Card) to my credit card which should be refunded to me at a later time at some magic refund counter. After each stop when the ticket man passes through, he just kind of smiles at me like some poor wounded animal— a poor wounded animal he can’t wait to get off his train. Immediately afterward, I cranked “Party in the USA” because isn’t that EVERYONE’S go-to pick me up tune?
Sudafed doesn’t lie when they say 12-hour decongestant—at exactly 7:15 pm the force of a frying pan slammed my sinuses, so I excused myself to the WC (which by the way, smells like they wash it down with rancid urine) and took another one by sticking my head under the faucet and lapping at the pathetic stream like above mentioned wounded animal. Since the pseudoephedrine is stronger than the Death Cab that was lolling me to sleep, I’ve fired up Season 4 of Weeds so long as my laptop battery lasts. Ooh Nancy just admitted to setting her house on fire—this deserves my undivided attention. If you’re reading this, I’ve made it to Munich. Go me.
Tags: Munich, Sebas, train
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Although it snowed last night, it’s ridiculously warm out today (YEAAAA!!!), yet it’s currently raining while the sun is shining. If Mother Nature were a pop star, she’d probably shave her head this weekend then check into rehab.
Let’s talk food: the Germans know what’s up with meals. Their largest meal is at lunch, which we usually eat in the Mensa. It’s about two Euro for a main dish and side; I usually get some sort of wurst and vegetables. This meal will leave me ridiculously full for hours. I’ve never before had the urge to go out and harvest crops by hand for hours, but after lunch in Germany, I always feel fueled enough for hours of slave labor without getting hungry angry until well after dinnertime. Dinner (supper?) is always lighter, lots of households just have Abendbrot (night bread). The biggest difference, at least for me, is the lack of focus on low-fat this and no sodium that. You’re eating real food, not giant portions, but not restricting yourself from bread/ sauces/ real flavor. They’re not the healthiest eaters (we’re much more concerned about getting our 5 fruits & veggies a day) but as a culture they’re not as obsessed with food as America is, and you can tell by the general look of people. While many older Germans are overweight, very few of my peers are, and I’ve seen maybe two “obese” people in my almost month of being here.
I don’t really miss any foods from home (kettle corn from the movie theater is an exception, but I miss that even when I’m in Iowa City.) Not to jinx myself, but my clothes fit better and my belts can go tighter since arriving. This is thanks to:
1. I try to spend as little money as possible on food. Also, with the ridiculous filling capacity of the cafeteria food (which isn’t great, but isn’t horrible– I’ve pretty much gotten to the point where I’ll eat anything put in front of me) I only need to buy a box of cereal and some pasta and/or sandwich stuff for my week.
2. The constant state of “Today just might be the day I actually die of hypothermia” has probably revved my metabolism, and constant shaking has to burn calories, right? Actually, I walk a million more steps each day here, and it’s like a freakin’ Nordic Track whenever I step outside thanks to Luneburg’s inability to PLOW THE STREETS.
3. I drink less in Germany. (Shout out to my little brother would responded to this revelation with “Well that’s not hard to do.”) Yes, in the land of beer halls, ales by the liter, and the setting of Beerfest, I consume less alcohol than in the months leading up to my trip. This is in direct opposition to apparently every other person in my program– one kid said “I’ve drank more in the last two weeks than I did all last year.” Before you start planning my intervention, may I remind you of where I go to school, with whom I spend my time (Seven “Today ends in Y so I bought a case of beer” Thirteen), and my sparkling academic record. Also, it’s physically impossible to drink as much German beer as our piss water back home because it’s sooooooo filling, and it has higher alcohol content so it gets the job done quicker. It’s also incredibly less socially acceptable to be inebriated here, whereas in Iowa City if you haven’t broken a bone or wet your pants while drunk at least three times before graduation, they might not give you a diploma.
Speaking of food and alcohol, I’m off this evening to Munich to visit our foreign exchange student from high school, my junior prom date, the one and only Sebas. Say a quick one to the Man Upstairs that I get on the right train and survive the SIX HOUR TRIP from essentially the very north of the country to the very south. I’m pretty excited because Bavaria (the region I’ll be in) is what we stereotype as German– liederhosen, ze Hofbrauhaus, giant pretzels, and apparently better beer. Not sure if I’ll be blogging on my journey, but expect a full recap come Monday.
Tags: drinking, food, Munich, Sebas, train, weather
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Holy hot wurst, Batman– she’s getting it.
Today the sun has decided to hang out so I walked the 15-20 minutes back to main campus from my morning class instead of taking the bus. On the way, a German girl who was obviously in a hurry asked me (auf Deutsch) for directions to Rotes Feld. I UNDERSTOOD HER QUERY, told her I could help her, asked if she spoke English (hey, it’s only been three weeks) then gave her correct directions to her desired destination (which, for the record, is in HER country, not mine, I’m awesome.) I also got an A on my first unit exam. I always knew I liked Tuesdays.
As all of you know, or have figured out by now, I’m painfully awkward in most all even mildly social situations. Unfortunately, this doesn’t jive well with being a foreigner, and last night these two very obvious traits came to a clash.
Scene: Kitchen.
Time: Around… 9:30 pm.
Feeling: Kinda hungry. I had cooked up a bockwurst (essentially a giant hot dog) when I got home from class, but after much voracious Facebook chatting with NPH, mild hunger pangs struck again. Normally I would go to the kitchen, get a small bowl of cereal or piece of toast BUT– on Monday nights my super cute roommate has lots of people over and they cook together or something. All I ever knew of it was a lot of doorbell-ringing, passionate kicken playing, music, laughter, lots of food– so I’ve hid out in my room every Monday thus far. Now, due to my social anxiety for which I’m sure I’ll one day need intensive therapy, I planned on ignoring my need for sustenance instead of venturing into the common area where I would surely be seen by these German strangers who would only know me as That Homeless American Girl.But I think you all know… This (Previously) Homeless American Girl sure loves food. The thought of waking up not only frozen to my bedsheets but ALSO starving was too much for me, so I threw caution to the wind and LEFT MY BEDROOM for the kitchen.
The entire room saw my entrance; there had to be at least 10 girls talking in a circle, looking chic and European and drinking wine, while adorable roomie and his two friends manned the stove. (Note: his friends have always been super nice to me. Saying hi, asking me how I am, speaking English, helping me when I lost my keys. So really, the question here is: WTF, Brittney. My mental issues will obviously have to be saved for another post.) Then, the very worst thing happened. A girl (who kinda looked familiar, but since I generally look at the floor unless in the presence of friends I have high amounts of comfortability with, so couldn’t really be sure) CAME UP TO ME and said something like, “Brittney, <something in German> essen?” She was asking me to eat with them. I understood her question, but still said “Huh?” She repeated it in English. I said no. Adorable roomie’s possibly even more adorable friend turned from the stove and said, “Are you sure? We’ve made far too much food.”
“No, that’s okay. Thank you, though.”
“Well maybe you can join us just for the company?”
“Uhhhh yeah, maybe. I have like um…. homework, that I’ll uh…. finish. And come back.” Then I grabbed a random bag of bread since I didn’t want to look like I just went into the kitchen to be a total creep, and went back into my room. It is at about this point, standing alone in my freezing room, bag of carbs in hand that didn’t hold a candle to how great whatever they were cooking in the kitchen smelled, ridiculously easy amount of homework obviously not even attempted, that I realized the ridiculousness of the situation. I brought the random hostage food bag back into the kitchen, and JOINED THEM.
Apparently, this group of 3 boys and 11-ish girls, get together after class every Monday and cook a delicious meal together and talk and have the time of their lives (kinda like 713 only with way more culinary expertise and way less delivery pizza and Keystone Light.) They had cooked literally pounds of spaghetti noodles, then made HOMEMADE tomato cream sauce and salmon cream sauce (I had the tomato, it was divine.) All the while the girl who invited me to join them sat next to me, asked me questions, translated the jist of their rapid-fire German conversations, etc. I ate my noodles with a fork after twirling them on a spoon, didn’t slurp, didn’t burp, didn’t sit like you could drive a boat show through my legs, added to conversation when needed, listen to the Deutsch and actually understood some of it– overall, the evening was a rousing success. As if that weren’t enough, then we had dessert. One of the guys (AHEM, American boys, take notes) made this ohmygod diiiiivine chocolate mousse, which tasted like the inside of a French silk pie but kinda more solid and it was DARK chocolate. Super rich. Super amazing. We sat and talked until after midnight, then played kicken for who had to do the dishes, then cleaned up, then I actually did excuse myself to finish my homework. Next Monday night: thai food, I’ve already been invited
Tags: flatmates, food
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Once upon a time there lived a very responsible first-born child who, while she could never be considered neat, always knew the location of her belongings and wasn’t prone to losing much except her mind on occasion. This child was me, but folks, we don’t know where she went. In the last six-ish months, my list of broken/stolen/ just plain lost items include: jewelry, a laptop, my glasses, multiple apartment keys, my debit card, three cell phones, a digital camera, my wallet (temporarily, though only found after I’d cancelled my credit cards), and probably countless other trivial to moderately important things. Can I just say first: I do not do this on purpose. I do not know when this mental shift happened, when the cosmos aligned and I began leaving my cell phone in my car overnight. I don’t like it, yet no matter how hard I try (and AHEM, Mom and Dad– I DO try, and let’s just NOT BRING this up lest you want to see my hereditarily low blood pressure go through the roof) I just plain forget/ lose stuff.
Now, onto why I did not go to Hamburg to watch my first European soccer game this weekend (which apparently was a-okay since “Below Mind-Numbingly Freezing” doesn’t begin to describe how miserable standing outside for the duration of said game apparently was.) On campus, there is this place called Vamos Kulturhalle where concerts are held, barn dances, I’m not really sure– but it’s also mostly what one could call a “nightclub.” It’s one happening place. Friday night was the end of the semester party, since Germans are on a way different class schedule and are gearing up for final exams then high-tailing it off campus for at least a month. Some of my amigos and I decided to go to said party, where long story short: I lost my keys.
AHA! — you’re thinking– she obviously is a LUSH and had too much to drink and wasn’t paying attention. Well, maybe, but not really. Shallow pockets + bulky sets of keys + shakin’ my groove thang = floor. After lots of searching and really embarrassing “I don’t speak your language so am going to mime at you like an idiot” exchanges, I went home with one of my roommates who were luckily also all out enjoying the nightlife. Here’s the issue: my bedroom door was locked. My hypersensitivity to being abroad has me lock my bedroom every time I leave my apartment. No one else has a key to it. In America, this would not be a problem because we have spare keys for everything. During orientation here, however, the housing lady explained how NO ONE has a copy of your key and Germans like to charge INSANE AMOUNTS to change locks around here. Oh shiza.
Friday night I slept on the couch in our kitchen/ living room. No big deal except I nearly froze to death, but that’s really just become a common theme around here. After doing all my roommates’ dishes (because literally, there was nothing else for me to do) I went over to my neighbor D-Bag’s place to share with him my dilemma. He called Vamos for me (since, you know, Mein Deutsch is slecht) but no one answered. He was off to the soccer game, which I could now no longer attend due to not having enough money, clothes, bus pass, etc with me. He did graciously give me a large hoodie to wear so I could make the trek across campus to see if anyone was hanging at Vamos (which they weren’t.) It is at this point I called another friend from the program who lives only about a block away and gave him the heads up that a hoodrat was on her way to be entertained.
A giant THANK YOU goes up to this friend and his two roommates for letting me shoot the shit with them, follow them around, watch their TV, go to the grocery store with them, etc. At this point I was expecting to be able to get into my room sometime before the end of the night. This was only wishful thinking. I went back to my apartment (ringing the bell each time, hoping one of my flatmates would be around to open the door) and had a bologna and barbecue sauce sandwich, and no I am not joking– that’s what I had for dinner every night this week. And then I just sat there. I doodled on some scratch paper. I explored drawers and shelves I hadn’t really noticed before. I did some more dishes. Then, thankfully, D-Bag came home; he said I could come over if I was bored (two days later, he may now be regretting said invitation.) I spent most of the evening there watching Forrest Gump auf Deutsch, eating some garlic bread he made me, doing some more doodling/ paper tearing/ since when do I have this weird thing where I can’t sit still? ALSO he had a giantly-warm comforter since he’s some sort of freak outdoorsman and goes cycling into the mountains for days at a time that he gave me to sleep with. Night number two: couch in the kitchen again (though much warmer.)
Sunday morning: more roommates’ dishes. Eat the last of my cereal– officially left with only the makings for one or two more bologna/BBQ sandwiches. D-Bag wakes up, I spend the next TWELVE HOURS in his apartment– watching TV, making and eating cornbread his mom sent him, talking with two of our friends who also come over, wearing more borrowed clothing to walk to the gas station, tearing up more paper, taking Internet quizzes, probably making him absolutely want to MURDER ME or himself. Words cannot express how thankful I am (maybe I’ll give a more flattering blog alias) to D-Bag for everything he did for me this weekend. If I were him, I would have kicked me out about two hours in. Not that I was being horrendously annoying (or not anymore than usual) but he probably hadn’t envisioned his peaceful weekend being invaded by this unshowered dumbass hoodlum who couldn’t do something so simple as to keep her keys with her at all times.
Night number three: couch in the kitchen. While I had explained the situation to my flatmates, I’m quite certain they were laughing at me being closed doors. At least they were quite polite to my face. I had already e-mailed my teacher about my situation, that I’d probably be late to class since the Vamos Lost and Found doesn’t open til 9. Since I was the only one in class Thursday, this actually worked out quite well for everyone else’s catching up purposes I should think. At 9 am I walked to where I THOUGHT this lost and found was, but it WASN’T, and it’s at this point I got reallyfrustratedandwantedtocry but that wouldn’t have solved anything, so tried calling their office ONE MORE TIME, and by God they answered. Mish-mash of German and English + we’ll call you at noon and you can come look at what we found over the weekend (apparently this happens ALL the time) = me not going to class, possibly going certifiably insane.
Lunch. Bought for me by a friend who owed me anyway. Phone call shortly after 12 pm. They had my keys. I got into my room. It was quite cold. I opened my laptop. I’m doing my homework. Thank you to everyone who helped me this weekend. Overall, I was remarkably unconcerned– I knew they’d show up and I didn’t have anything pressing to do in the interim. Obviously I missed my bed and being able to go grocery shopping– not being able to Skype NPH was absolutely the worst part of the whole dilemma, but it’s over. Giant sigh.
Tags: boys, drinking, keys, NPH
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
The SUN has made another appearance– this time it’s hanging out for a while, providing light in the kitchen for New England and I to study for our first unit exam tomorrow (he has since retreated to the hall to play kicken with D-Bag.)
Today has been a fabulous day. Besides showering last night, thus saving me time and a lot of rushing around this morning, I woke up to some great correspondence from friends AND had a banana with my morning muesli (which is the SHIT and gets me out of bed before 8 am. Brittney’s motivated by food– you’re shocked, I know.) My Elementary German class only has four people in it and today I was the only one who showed up. This was actually pretty great because not only did my teacher let me out super early, I definitely learn better in the one-on-one setting. It was of course a little awkward to be the only one reading aloud, butchering the pronunciation of words and being the only person there to write on the board (blackboard, apparently Deutschland hasn’t caught on to the whole erasable marker thing yet.)
Lunch today was ahhhhsoooogood. Wurst. I love wurst. This was fabulous wurst. Tomorrow is our first exam, at least it’s on the main campus about two minutes from my apartment instead of 20 minutes across town like regular class is. Besides my horrible pronunciation (note to self: JUST FORGET Spanish for now. Not even similar) I’m pretty excited about how well I’m learning German. I’ve now obnoxiously started interjecting random German words in otherwise English sentences. A girl at the bus stop this morning was talking to me about how the bus was late, and I just smiled and nodded and threw in a few “Ja”s instead of telling her “Mein Deutsch is slecht” or more realistically, “Ich spreche kein Deutsch.” She could have been telling me how she hoped to get hit by the 5012 bus, they talk way too fast for me to really catch anything except numbers, but I knew from her fervent watch-checking the general gist of her diatribe.
Sharing a bathroom with two guys has not presented any problems, though today I opened the door and one of them was standing at the sink (fully clothed, don’t worry) I don’t know, washing his hands or something and it FREAKED me out. Mostly just scared the piss outta me. He felt bad and I kept saying “Sorry! Sorry!” I’ve imagined all sorts of horrible scenarios in which I forget to the lock the door and have to move out due to embarrassment, but so far so good.
Last night I got a freak craving for chocolate, which never really happens because I’m not a huge chocolate fan. More specifically, I decided I wanted a brownie. Since I generally like to share my random thoughts, needs, and wants with anyone around me, I told my neighbor D-Bag via Facebook chat and he just so HAPPENED to have brownie mix. They didn’t turn out so well. I’m not sure if the whole Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion got off, or if the fact that we didn’t have a measuring cup so kinda just guessed at 1/4 cup each of oil and water was the real nail in the coffin. Either way, the top and bottom were hella burnt (we also didn’t have the correct sized pan so improvised with a loaf pan. Nicht so gut.) The kitchen didn’t smell great. I was able to form burn victim surgery on them, though, and we salvaged the inside enough to satiate my brownie craving, which had long since passed. I also got introduced to D-Bag’s adorable German roommate, who was polite and tried a brownie even though it was certain tastebud death.
After the great baking debacle (and a few minutes of viewing Deutschland Superstar, aka American Idol) I watched the movie How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (thanks, New England, for the illegal movies. Next up: Blow, love that movie. Oh, SPEAKING OF, have you seen Johnny’s Depp’s GQ cover?! Google it RIGHT NOW. No wait, continue reading my riveting tales, and THEN Google it. You’re welcome.) It was okay, I was mostly annoyed at everyone in it (apparently this is the point. There’s a reason the main character loses friends and alienates people.) Megan Fox’s character was an uber dumb actress, but since I only see Megan Fox as an uber dumb actress, it just made me wanna punch my laptop.
New England has returned. He is telling me the difference between Star Trek, Star Wars, and Star Craft the video game. I’m going to go slam my head in the door.
Tags: boys, class, food, movies, sun
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Scratch that whole “sun” thing… it’s currently snowing like a she-devil. Big fat flakes keep coming down faster and faster, almost as if someone upstairs is trying to tell me not to go out tonight. But this simply cannot be.
Yesterday I FINALLY figured out the train Web site (and yes, that is the AP correct way to spell it, not “website”) and bought my ticket for Munich next weekend. I was incorrect in thinking this would be an easy process, and doubly incorrect in thinking rail travel is relatively inexpensive. However, I have been informed that Munich is the only place you can buy a real glass boot (a la Beerfest) so this is not just a weekend trip so much as it is a pilgrimage to mecca.
Things I miss: wearing t-shirts. Apparently German girls only wear them to bed, and I’m trying to not scream FOREIGNER anymore than I already heinously do, so have been rocking nice shirts and generally dressier stuff than I wear back home. Last night we went bowling (or spectated others while bowling) and got a bit betrunken, so the fact that I could even find my t-shirt drawer this morning is a Win. I’m currently rocking my new Slash shirt that Little Brother got me for Christmas (a way more awesome gift than what I got him, which has still yet to be determined) and it. feels. awesome. Maybe I’ll get married in jeans and a t-shirt…
Speaking of things my mother and/or grandmother will e-mail me about (“I will NOT let you get married in a t-shirt, Brittney”) everyone in our program is dropping like flies with sickness. Perhaps there’s a reason someone from last semester coined the term “USAC Nasties” (it obviously has nothing to do with what you might think would happen when you put together a bunch of like-minded young 20-somethings in a faraway place for months at a time with only beer and each other to keep warm.) Apparently it’s mostly a sore throat combined with a general I Just Got Hit By a Van feeling (aw, that makes me miss Bryce!) Seeing as I am doing absolutely nothing to bolster my immune system, I can only hope my turn with the Yuck will come around after Saturday, when we’re going to Hamburg to watch a soccer game and, uh, sightsee on the Raper Barn Reeperbahn.
Lauren is finally in Spain so will be adding more panache to what has essentially become Brittney’s Forum for Random Thoughts Whilst in Deutschland. Classes started at UI yesterday so I no longer get to Skype NPH 17 times a day. Usually it’s both of us being on but separately surfing the Web and occasionally telling the other what we’re reading. So EXACTLY like the couch at 713, just thousands more miles between us. A new favorite activity is looking up flights from Chicago to Frankfurt and seeing who can find the cheapest airfare (I think the lowest I found was $604, unfortunately still a bit steep.) Take THAT, seven-hour time difference, even you can’t stop these freak codependency issues.
Good news: contrary to what I believed for a few hours yesterday, my parents are not dead and just apparently don’t like replying to my e-mails. Dad’s not sure my Gaga-licious Spring Break dreams are the best use of my very limited discretionary income (has he HEARD “Poker Face”?!) and also inquired as to when’s a good time for them to pop over and hang in ze Fatherland. I suppose this will be good, though weird because they’d be heavily reliant on me to get around– mostly language wise, but also train schedules, major cultural differences, which beer tastes the most like Bud Light (none of them.) Also, if they could bring an NPH-sized suitcase (yeah, yeah I know– SHUT UP about Neil. It’s only been two weeks Folks, I imagine most of you will stop reading around the middle of February.) Overall methinks I’d very much enjoy my parents coming, well I’d enjoy it if EVERYONE I knew could come because it’s so awesome, but mostly because if my dad were here, he would probably spring for more than one soda at dinner. If you are in America, get on your knees right now and THANK GOD for FREE REFILLS. (But seriously, I think the longest I’ve gone without seeing my parents is a month, so by March I’ll definitely be ready to see them.)
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a nap I need to take.
Tags: Munich, Neil, parents, sick, snow, train
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Ladies and gents, hold on to your hats. I’ve decided what I want to do for Spring Break, and it’s a doozy. Lady Gaga is playing in Nottingham, England on Monday, March 8th and I will be attending. (Okay, so I haven’t actually bought the tickets, but I’ve slept on it, and you only live once, and she’s FABULOUS and it will be the show of a lifetime. Besides the time I saw Slash. She’s like my female Slash.) The most expensive thing will be the ticket, but that money would have probably just gone to German beer anyway…. apparently a LOT of German beer.
We’ve just returned from lunch and four of the guys in my program are here at my apartment playing kicken. Apparently you’re not just supposed to spin the handles to hell and hope one hits the ball. I’m definitely acquiring some mad foozball skills, though I’m quite certain these people have only befriended me for my ballin’ apartment and Hulk-like ability to hold my liquor. In all actuality, the boys here having discovered what most at home did a while ago, that I am essentially one of them. We were window shopping in Hamburg the other day and I squealed “BOOTS!!!” when walking past well, some really cute boots, and my friend from New England (hereafter referred to as New England) looked at me as if I had sprouted a third arm. Today at lunch we were discussing putting on a classy formal Valentine’s Day party, and I mentioned it’d be a perfect occasion to wear one of the dresses I brought. Apparently this is just NOT conceivable and one of them actually said, “You don’t own dresses.” Contrary to popular belief, I in fact do, and enjoy wearing them. The word “tomboy” doesn’t really describe me, I’m just a girl who happens to sit like a guy and make friends with guys and contributes to mealtime conversations in which we all give euphemisms for Choking the Chicken. If you’re into astrology, I’m your classic dual personality-ed Gemini, because OH BABY do I love Valentine’s Day, doing my hair, and Taylor Lautner. Perhaps I was supposed to be twins but just came out as one and that’s why I’m twice as awesome.
Random thought of the day: I should have brought lotion. My skin is flaking off a la Goldmember in Austin Powers 3. Yeah, you liked that movie.
I suppose you’re all wondering how the basement/laundry shenanigans of yesterday went. My lovely neighbor and friend (hereafter referred to as D-Bag because his name starts with a D and he is completely okay with this nickname) came over and gave me a quick tour of the basement, incuding where the light is, and how to use the washing machine. ALSO he showed me the super secret far right machine which is FREE! If I had to play favorites, which I don’t but it’s what I do in my spare time, he is my favorite person here. This may be because he was here last semester also so already knows everything and doesn’t mind me following him like a dog to learn the ropes. When ordering things in German, I generally just push him in front of the cashier and let him deal with it, or ask a million times before I go up to the bar exactly how to say what I want. He’s also extremely handy to have around in the Getrankmart because he’s tried most all the beers and gives great advice on which taste like what. I’m fairly certain that if the kids from last semester all had debilitating herion addictions, I would just start shooting up, too. I wonder how they feel about having a whole new semester of students as their minions, or at least about this incresingly red-haired girl (WHAT is in the water over here?!) who apparently has issues with doing her own thing.
Oh, my test last week? Got an A. Duh.
Tags: boys, drinking, Lady Gaga, Spring Break
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Monday, January 18th, 2010
It is downright freaky how much mood is affected by the weather. The SUN came out today– for only like two minutes during lunch, but STILL! It’s warming up, I didn’t have to wear my scarf and gloves today when going to the grocery store. I was oddly content going by myself and was able to ask the checkout lady before I started shopping if they took Visa (they do not, only American Express– explain THAT one to me, Germany.) One giant difference between here and home: 95% of all transactions are cash or have to be, credit cards are rarely taken and debit cards are pretty much non-existent. I had 25 Euro in cash on me and figured I could spend 20 of it at most. It was fun in a weird grown-up way to go around the store picking out only the most essential things or the largest quantity of stuff for the smallest price. Thanks to my mother, I’m pretty damn good at this, and picked enough random things to feed me for at least a week, as well as laundry detergent AND three liters of Diet Pepsi all for 12 Euro. Mama’s got booze money this week, kiddies.
I’ve never NEEDED to do laundry as badly as I do now, yet the basement is a dark and scary place and I can’t find the light. Now I’m generally screwed until one of my flatmates and/or American neighbor friend who I often Facebook chat from not even 100 feet away comes home so they can explain it to me.
The warm weather excites me to no end because 1.) It is my firm belief that most of the country is suffering from possible year-round Seasonal Affective Disorder and perhaps warmer temps might at least raise morale around here 2.) Our 20-30 min walk home from the bars after the buses stop running at 8:45 pm will no longer pose threat of hypothermia 3.) I will literally have zero excuse to not run outside because Lord knows I certainly have the time and German beer isn’t exactly calorie-free 4.) I SUPPOSE I will make the trek into Hamburg one of these afternoons and appease my mother by going to (are you reading this, Mom– make sure you’re sitting down) the IMMIGRANT MUSEUM where they have on record 5 MILLION NAMES of people who left Hamburg for America (not just our German relatives, but probably a lot of the Norwegian ones, too.) Happy Mother’s Day.
Our first three-day weekend is the last weekend in January, and I’ll be traveling to Munchen (or Munich, to you Yanks) to visit Sebas, our foreign exchange student from high school/ my junior prom date. I’ll be taking the train (wayyy more expensive than I thought, maybe I’ll plan one “big” trip each month) Thursday afternoon, arriving Thursday night, and staying through Sunday. I’m pretty excited because he lives in Bavaria, and the food and beer there are what the typical American thinks of when they hear German– giant pretzels, the original Hofbrau Beerhaus, leiderhosen, etc.
My parents are in Vegas, lucky dogs (said the girl in Germany…) and I suppose I miss them, or at least the convenience of talking to them. Skyping Lauren last night was fantastic, I’ve figured out how to call people’s cell phones via Skype so I got to talk to Kayla and Sav, too. I miss my 713′ers like nobody’s business– I received some very nice sentiments from the least expected ones and I’m very touched/ happy/ makes me miss them more. It feels like I’ve been here much longer than a week, and the next 15 weeks will FLY BY, but May seems soooo far away. If any of you have a spare travel voucher lying around, don’t be selfish– give it to Neil so he can visit me over Spring Break
Off to figure out the big, scary basement.
Tags: 713, food, laundry, money, Munich, NPH, Sebas, weather
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
I had planned on sleeping ’til 3 today, I guess 11:00′s good enough. Drumroll, please… IT’S SNOWING again! Thankfully I literally have nothing to do except laundry, and one probably needs laundry detergent for that. While I had planned to put it off until the last possible moment (or as one of the guys here calls it, The Three Deep Rule: no need to wash your clothes until someone can smell you three people away) only having two towels and wearing all of my pajamas at once in order not to wake up myself shivering means I’m looking forward to at least one load per week.
My first week of class, which included my first test in German, went well. One might say I even enjoyed them, save for the fact I have to catch a very unreliable bus to another campus every morning to get there. After class everyday, we meet at the Mensa (“we” being the other Americans in my program and occasionally some of their German friends. I usually see and WAVE at some of my flatmates, too– we’re making progress!) The food is not great, but it’s not terrible, and it’s more of a high school lunch line than the seemingly endless options we had at the cafeteria in college. They have really great salads, or you can always choose some sort of meat in some sort of sauce and potatoes. Peas are also always on hand, usually noodles, two different meats (chicken or schnitzel, fish or meatloaf sticks– not their actual name, but apparently very similar in taste.)
My Wohngemeinschaft (shared living: not really a dorm, but not quite an apartment) is the biggest and quite frankly more awesome than anyone else’s in my program. Thus I have hosted visitors on occasion, which is nice, but kind of new since in Iowa City I was always the person who went to other people’s places. Thursday night, my two “best” I guess you could say, friends here so far came over and we COOKED DINNER. We were just gonna get some beers and a frozen pizza and maybe watch a movie. While in the store, though, an air of domesticity must have breezed through and we picked up Weisswurst (white sausage, tasted like a bratwurst only WAY BETTER because we’re in Germany and they know what’s up with wurst) broccoli, and a baguette to split because I really can’t pretend to hate their whole “bread with every meal” philosophy. One of the guys is also my neighbor, so brought over some potatoes he had and whipped out some chopped potatoes/ olive oil/ onions/seasoning foil bag that was mondo-impressive. We watched Step Brothers (because the other guy brought his external harddrive and has lots of fantastic movies and I will ne’er be bored here again) and had our delicious family dinner and it ALMOST didn’t need the barbecue sauce I bought, but I used a bit anyway as a big Eff You to the country as a whole because my teacher told me, “We don’t like barbecue sauce.” The Germans do this a lot.
I mentioned buying beer above, and would like to take this paragraph to try and explain the differences between walking into the Getrinktmart (I just butchered that spelling) here, and ol’ Liquor House back home (besides the obvious legality of me doing it.) The store here is MASSIVE. Entire walls are lined with every kind of beer (except the “piss water” we have back home) imaginable. These beers are not in cardboard cases, they are in individual bottles (usually .3L) lining the shelves, with plastic pallets full underneath, if you so choose to buy a specific kind in bulk. You just walk down an aisle, find one that looks good, take it. Usually it’s between .80-2 Euro, depending on the type and quality (also, you can see the lines on the bottles where there used to be a label, but they’ve been recycled and used again.) Either you get a basket or just walk to the front with an armload of bottles, and then hopefully you remembered your backpack or a sturdy sack because they don’t give you any. Most kids from Iowa City would not fare well here– there’s no grabbing a 30 before you head to a party and splitting it with a friend before you go out. If we’re pregaming at a friend’s house here, everyone shows up with 3-5 glass bottles for themselves. German beer is SO HEAVY, in the stomach-sense. You have one or two, it’s like a meal and you need a nap afterward. A nice beer here is like a glass of wine back home– not weird to have one by yourself, maybe while reading or doing homework. The whole mentality is different (not like we’re not having fun here) and each has it’s pros/cons that I internally debate on occasion.
Friday afternoon, I went with three others into Hamburg, only about a 20 minute free (with our student id’s) train ride away. FELL IN LOVE. It’s the second largest city in Germany, SO much fabulous shopping, a million times more energy than Luneburg. We mostly just wandered around their main shopping district, then took the subway to Reeperbahn street and the surrounding area– basically their Red Light District. Prostitution is legal in some areas of Germany, and apparently this is where you’d go to get it. On the other side of the street are some great bars and restaurants and LIGHTS and perhaps reminded me of Vegas a teeny bit (sigh.) We did some more walking/exploring/stopped in a restaurant that was playing FAMILY GUY for a beer. We went back to Luneburg for a quick dinner, then went to a bar called Jekyll and Hyde. FELL IN LOVE, again. It’s a dark/ dungeon-y kinda place with an open fire and plays metal music (Ozzy, Metallica) and is just very different from anything back home.
Yesterday was our mandatory Hamburg orientation with the group, so spent all day FREEZING around the city, having much less fun than the night before. The first stop was the Hamburg Museum, the largest museum dedicated to any single city in all of Germany (possibly Europe?) If I had to make a list of my Top Five Least Favorite Things, museums are probably on it. Our guide spent over an hour on just the Middle Ages, then skipped way ahead to the early Modern Age, and concluded with a giant fire in Hamburg in 1842. We then had some time to explore the museum ourselves, so I found the WWII stuff, which was (ironically? purposely?) in the basement. We then walked to the harbor (and I mean TREKKED in below freezing, lots of wind, might possibly one of the most miserable times of my life) where we had a quick lunch then went on a ferry tour for an hour. Obviously lunch was my favorite part– my two friends and I went to this tiny place where they served fresh fish sandwiches and wursts and I got a giant essentially bratwurst, they don’t do buns here, with mustard. The ferry tour of the harbor was fine– at least we got to sit inside with the warmth and talk while looking at… shipping freighters? And floating ice on water? The time of my life, let me tell you.
We than WALKED (along the river= wind, setting sun= even colder, we taught our German director the phrase “happy camper” and how I was definitely not one) over an hour back towards a restaurant near the train station. Along the way, we stopped at this olllllllllllllldddd church from the 1600s that previously had the highest steeple in all of Germany (Europe?) Part of the church burned down in the Hamburg Fire, but was rebuilt pretty well. Apparently we bombed the shit outta Hamburg in WWII however, and now all that remains is the giant steeple and some partial walls. It’s now a museum/ memorial for peace. This place was actually really cool– we took an elevator to the top of the steeple and saw all of Hamburg lit up at night. Looking at the pictures in the museum, I was like wow that sucks, but it took a while for me to register that “we” were the ones who did this (I guess I’m so used to being like Damn Nazis ruining everything, but this time it was us. It was a weird feeling, kind of getting a lot of those.)
FINALLY we went to dinner (after a quick stop in the Rathaus.) We had pre-ordered and I got my first Weinerschnitzel. Um, YUM. A nice culmination to a not-always nice day. Our train to Luneburg got us back… an hour after the last bus ran, so we stopped at Jekyll & Hyde for some beer jackets before making the 1/2 hour trek back to campus. After a good 11 hours of sleep, I now have about five minutes of homework to do and the rest of the day in which to do it.
GOOD LUCK to Lauren, who’s finally flying to Spain today!!
Tags: class, drinking, food, Hamburg, laundry
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
The peak of enchantment with my surroundings has passed, and I’m finding myself on somewhat of a downhill slope (here’s what this beast supposedly looks like):
Don’t get me wrong, this is all still FABULOUS, but now that classes have started and routines have been established, the novelty is wearing off. We have our first test tomorrow in Elementary German (Ich bin studentin. Mein vorname ist Brittney.) I’m not really concerned about it, though the waking up at 7 every morning STILL BLOWS, in case you were wondering. Today was absolutely “I’ll jump on the next bus that comes, I don’t care if it takes me around town for two hours before getting to campus as long as the heat’s cranked” cold. The constant state of uncontrollable shivering will pass.
I miss driving (perhaps because my butt/thighs are so sore from walking on epicly unevenly plowed streets.) On most sinks in public restrooms, there’s only one knob on the faucet, and it’s– you guessed it– COLD! The stores only sell 1.5% and 3% fat milk, no skim; it’s hard getting used to the richness, especially for breakfast. For the life of me I can’t figure out if we have no-stick spray in my apartment or where it’s hiding, and I keep forgetting to ask my roomies. I made scrambled eggs for dinner and used the teeeeeeeniest drop of olive oil so they wouldn’t stick. (And yes, I realize there was an earthquake in Haiti and my life is a million times better than 95% of the planet’s– I’m not complaining, just airing some grievances. You know you love it.)
I’ve been searching flights on Ryan Air for someplace to go during my first three (I could even leave Thursday afternoon, so almost four) day weekend at the end of January. A round-trip ticket to Stockholm, Sweden is TWO EUROS. It’d only be for like 48 hours and it’d be even COLDER there, but for two Euros I am highly tempted to just do it. There are cheap flights (15-30 Euro range) to other places as well, but the weather at even the southernmost point of the boot of Italy is only 50 something degrees Fahrenheit. (Reason #263 I’m moving to Grand Cayman after graduation.) Nicer weather will be much more compatible with all the free time I seem to have– Bergen Belsen isn’t far from here and there’s plenty of old churches/buildings/ small towns around to explore for free.
Random side note: I am huge on smells. I smell everything– food before I eat it (sorry), books, my hair. Grocery stores here smell horrendous. The bakeries smell as I imagine Heaven might. Peoples’ scents on the bus every morning remind me of various people back home. If for some horrible reason I was e’er withchild, I can’t imagine what kind of frenzy my nose would be in.
I’m so tired I could puke (my own fault, too much post-bowling Skyping.) Guten nacht.
P.S. Tomorrow is a month from Valentine’s Day– better get those packages in the mail. I’m not sure how well In-n-Out Burger ships, but you may inquire to my mother for my address should you having a sudden yearning to shower me with gifts. For my favorite holiday. For which I won’t be in a country that actually celebrates it. One that’s actually quite far away from any semblence of a Valentine I could pretend to have. You know, alone. Freezing to death.
Tags: class, cold, Skype, Valentine's Day
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
German beer may have cracked my list of Top Five Favorite Smells. Being able to go into the grocery story on a random Tuesday afternoon and pick individual bottles of delicious beer for less than a Euro has most certainly trumped anything else on my list of Top Five Reasons I’m Glad to be Alive.
A few observations of my time spent in Germany (all of what, five days?)
– German children are at least 100 times cuter than American children. I’m not sure if it’s something in the delicious tap water, but these children are the most cherubic, chubby-cheeked, I just wanna steal one and hang out with it for a while group of kids you will ever find. The fact that most of them get pulled along by their parents on old wood sleds everywhere they go might have something to do with it.
–Americans are loud. Read: I’m loud. In public places, at least. I never thought it out of the ordinary until someone pointed it out to me, and then I thought of how inappropriate it would be here if I did as much shouting at people across campus as I do at home (maybe it’s equally inappropriate there and I just haven’t gotten the memo.)
–Bars universally smell about the same.. Also, an intense Pancheros craving will hit no matter if the nearest location is two steps away or halfway across the world. Bar + some ambiguous time after midnight = yo quiero un burrito de Pancheros AHORA, usually always ordered in drunken Spanglish. Lo siento.
–On a difficulty scale, getting by around here without knowing any German is remarkably easy. 99% of the people I’ve interacted with know at least some English, and if there’s ever a problem, nonverbal communication usually gets the job done. Being born in a country where the primary language happens to also be a universally important one has been a huge blessing. I’m also getting to a comfortability level where I can go into a shop alone and make transactions/ have conversations with my flatmates in Deutsch-ish with a good amount of understanding (they might secretly think I’m a complete dumbass, but at least I get what I want, and that’s really all that matters.)
I woke up at FOUR-THIRTY THIS MORNING. Shiza. Methinks it was a mix of going to bed earlier than normal/ being freaked out about my alarm not going off again/ FREEZING and my lower back and not be able to sleep in a curled ball position anymore/ I keep having weeeeeeird dreams. Not the refrigerator one again, thank goodness, but they always have to do with my past/ Adel. At least from what I can remember each morning, I haven’t dreamt about Iowa City/ Germany once. They’re also always extremely vivid, and never happy dreams. Luckily this gave me plenty of time to eat a decent breakfast, shower, and talk to friends online who were just going to bed back home.
Class was, ugh I don’t know, class. It’s great that we’re learning so much already but it’s over THREE HOURS long. We start at 8:30 am, so by the time 10 rolls around I’m either starving again or would slaughter a goat to be back in bed. Today we got out an hour early though because no one– besides Brittney the nerd– had bought the books. After a lovely meal in the mensa con mis amigos nuevos, I went to Am Sande with two of them and toured the dollar store, got my visa photos taken (when a large German man is posing you on a stool then tells you not to laugh, not laughing is the hardest thing in the world), some other errands (including said Hefeweizen in the title, LOVE LOVE LOVE.) I now have a Skype date with my Facebook husband and then it’s off to pregame (vorspiel, haha) bowling.
Guten abend!
P.S. Lauren. WTF. This is not Brittney’s blog. Get on it haha.
Tags: bowling, class, drinking, NPH
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
My first day of classes went surprisingly well, considering my alarm never went off and I woke at 8 to get to my 8:30 class (which is held on a different campus not exactly near the one I live on.) Thankfully I’d met everyone in the class previously so they weren’t horribly offended by my “Oh hey, I semi-brushed my teeth and threw on pants and my glasses and yes, that’d be me that smells so just DEAL WITH IT” look I had going on.
It could really stop snowing anytime now. Apparently this is record snowfall for Luneburg and they’ve essentially reached the “Eff this noise, it’ll melt eventually” point of plowing the streets. I’ve never been so thankful for Christmas gifts in my life (shout out to Grandma for the boots and circle scarf.) Being cold, wet, and hungry is a permanent state of being around here, I can now kind of empathize with abused dogs and/or that guy with the beard in the Ped Mall. I’ve gotten used to the numb extremeties and rumbling stomach, but wet socks is one of life’s most unpleasant feelings.
I FOUND DIET PEPSI AT THE GROCERY STORE TODAY. I was forced volunteered to take some friends who had never been, and boy howdy it was a rewarding trip. It’s actually called Pepsi Light and is more like Pepsi One, but because of my insane brand loyalty to them, it’ll more than suffice. Since it had been about 24 hours since my last time of nourishment, I coughed up the .19 Eur0 for a fresh roll from the bakery and was in soda/carb heaven– perhaps the best meal I’ve had since coming here. Sometime after this divine gastronomical intervention, I met a Spanish boy who I should like to marry. So really, the whole not waking up for class/sprinting through town with zero idea of where I was actually going/ falling on the ice/ going to the wrong building shenanigans that transpired this morning were more than made up for.
The soap in our bathroom smells like peaches and I wash my hands about ten times a day just to smell them after.
My first German lesson went very well and I’m already much farther ahead in learning the language because of it, along with things I’ve picked up/ been taught over the weekend (though the kids from last semester seem to only teach me the words for diseases and/or things one could only find in a sex dictionary.) Unfortunately, the language part of my brain that’s been sitting dormant for about three years is all excited and fired up again… to speak Spanish. I can whip out conversational Spanish/ random words like never before– I’m a walking mix of Spernglish (the English part of that usually being many F-bombs when I realize I’m speaking Spanish/ can’t pronounce things in Deutsch to save my life.)
Whilst composing this, I have learned that one of my roommates plays the clarinet. At least he’s good. And it’s not quite as loud as the tablekicken.
Since coming here, I’ve had a recurring dream about cleaning out old/bad food from the refrigerator with my family, and it’s never a pleasant exchange. I have no idea what this means– if you had some insight, I’m all ears. As far as my family goes, homesickness has not been a factor at all. I’m sure the whole living on my own in college for multiple years thing isn’t much different– perhaps I’ll start longing after a couple months. I do miss 713, though not to the point where I’m dwelling on it. More like an Oh hey, this is cool, <insert name here> would enjoy this. Honestly, I’m usually having too good of a time to think of people, and then I feel kind of guilty after the fact. Whenever my Google Reader shows that Bryce has updated his blog I get really excited because he writes exactly how he talks and then I miss him a lot. Neil sends me the world’s best e-mails, usually when Step Brothers or The Departed is on. He should definitely just take out a loan and come visit me over Spring Break, or maybe I’ll go to France and get kidnapped and he’ll have to use a particular set of skills he’s acquired to rescue me (oh sorry, just a little Taken tangent. Blogs aren’t the place for inside jokes? Well TOO BAD.) I miss people most when my peers here don’t get me, if that makes sense. While we’ve all bonded quite well, obviously we haven’t really had the choice not to, and there’s still a lot of adjusting/ people haven’t yet realized that I take my self seriously zero percent of the time and my biggest pet peeve is when others do.
Yesterday I finally tried doner (can someone PLEASE tell me how to get the two dots over the “o”?) and it was delicious, though huge. The Turkish guy behind the counter stared at us for most of the meal and we got to watch awesome Turkish music videos/informmercials, I couldn’t really discern which. Apparently we’re going bowling tomorrow night because that’s what Americans do.
I definitely need to drink more water here, it’s good, I just don’t. Valentine’s Day is just over a month away, and while I’m expecting a flood of gifts from all of you, be aware that I have to pay to get it out of Customs, and the more food in it/ valuable it is, the more I have to pay and the longer it takes. So cards with medium to large amounts of Euros in it are always appreciated. (Semi-joking.) Maybe I’ll go shower now (completely joking.)
Tags: boys, class, Diet Pepsi, food, friends, Germany, snow, Valentine's Day
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Everything in Germany is cold. The weather. My room. The water. The people (haha I kid. Kind of.)
My flatmates are awesome, just kinda shy and aren’t sure how to get around the language barrier– just like me! Julian, who speaks the best English, asked me how my day was today and we haven’t really stopped talking since. We started playing tablekicken (my new favorite word, it’s foozball) and added more people inluding our neighbor from LA who’s here in my program– so the homefront’s good.
Friday night we went to go bowling but there were no lanes open so we went to a bar. Apparently I found the Iowa City of Europe (there’s more bars in this small town per capita than anywhere else on the continent except for Madrid, Spain) so we just kind of hopped around. First we went to an Irish pub and ITS’ STILL NOT LOST on me that I can order alcohol without fear of fake i.d.-bustage/ arrest/ generally elevated anxiety levels. Also, there’s no open container laws here. I’ve also been introduced to sambuca shots, black licorice (anise, for those of you higher class readers) flavored liquor (or as the Americans introduced it to me: It tastes like Jager but fruitier, kinda.) There’s coffee beans in them for no reason at all and you have to remove them before you take the shot and then your hand is all sticky with sugar. We then went to this underground bar/club thing where they had couches and played really loud techno (NEEEEIIIILLLL!!) A very drunk fat middle-aged German asked me where I was from and I said America and he said I know, where so I said Iowa and then he walked away.
Orientation is mostly over THANK HEAVENS, at least the administrative stuff. We filled out our visas yesterday and got a serious talking to about how to properly air out our rooms. Because these buildings are so freakin’ old and have no ventilation, we MUST turn off the heater and open the window for at least five minutes at least once a day to dry out the moisture that our bodies produce (because our bodies are 70% water, as they reminded us …) so mold doesn’t grow and cause major cleaning issues/ certain lung cancer and death. Also, when we wake up we MUST pull back our blankets from the bedding and air it out because DON’T YOU KNOW you sweat during the night?! It will be a miracle if I do either of these things even a handful of times during my time here.
Last night we went to a bar/club place that looks like a barn/the Val-Air Ballroom/ ski lodge called Vamos that’s the kind of on campus place but anyone can go there? Apparently they throw shindigs from time to time. Mas sumbuca? Of course. Mostly we awkward Americans hung around and watched the Germans dance because they don’t touch each other. Girls have zero problem just standing in the middle of the floor, dancing alone. When a guy or their friends join them, they just kind of make the motions with a good amount of space around them– none of this bumpin’ and grindin’ stuff we American hooligans are into. Also, they have a coat check (or robegarde, if I remember correctly) for one Euro.
Although Sundays are completely dead around here, the doner place (with the two dots over the “o” but I can’t figure out how to do it on my computer yet) is still open and we never did try them the other night. People mostly go into Hamburg on Sundays (for burritos when they’re hungover– apparently the German version is quite hilarious) but the train’s not running today because of all the snow. And then we’re going to my neighbor’s to watch movies and maybe have an excellent German beer because we have ZERO else better to do and because we’re all super best friends already haha. But seriously.
Tags: cold, drinking, food, Hamburg
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Friday, January 8th, 2010
We learned today during day one of orientation that what I am currently experiencing is the “honeymoon phase” of study abroad and the fact that I LOVE everything and feel like I was meant to be here my whole life and love everyone I meet (HA ok, it is me we’re talking about, but most people) will eventually give way to culture shock and a very “I hate Germany attitude.” Then I’m supposed to find myself in a happy medium until I get back the States and become a raging bitch for a little while when I experience reverse culture shock. SO GET EXCITED FOR THAT.
If I am to meet my demise here, it will not be from kidnap, alcohol poisoning, or choking on a baked good (change your bets now.) I will most likely ignite either my room or head on fire with my blow dryer and/or straightener. In addition to the prongs being different, there is also apparently a lot more voltage being pumped through over here (thank God for the surge protector) and not only did my hair dryer sound like a wind tunnel when I turned it on, the coils immediately turned orange and began smoking. GO ME! Also, there’s a small chance I’ll go to bed and never wake up due to the German’s OBSESSION with CO2 posioning. The radiator in my room is on full-blast (my own freezing American doing) and if I don’t open my window every now and again everyone has warned me I am facing certain death. There are actually CO2 monitors in every classroom and when they go from green to yellow someone opens the window.
Something else kinda different is how green they are, most specifically their recyling regimes. Their everyday recycling, on campus and as individuals, rivals my mother’s (and for those of you who know her, you think this can’t be, IT’S THAT INTENSE.) We were given little plastic cups for orientation today and told to SAVE THEM and rinse them out for tomorrow because we won’t be given another. These are the super flimsy ones not even the red SOLO brand ones. When you buy a bottle of water or soda in the mensa, you pay a bottle deposit, then the cashier pays it back to you if you bring it back and put it in the recyling.
I had my first vurst today (not bratwurst, sorry Neilio) in the mensa. It was actually called curryvurst because it came with an optional curry sauce, no thanks, so it was actually just a sausage thing that was pretty good. There are bakeries E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E. Good thing I have better things to spend my limited Euros on or I wouldn’t fit on the plane back home. All of the kids in the program met today and we’re already very good friends, mostly because we have to be– the German students are on a different schedule and will have their exams in a few weeks and then clear out for up to a month. OH AND GUESS WHAT. We do get a Spring Break, we were all under the impression that the only time we had off was the Friday before Easter. So we’re planning on traveling any/everywhere. If you are reading this and thinking this means you should visit/ I’m going to visit you (ahem, Molly hehe) NO PROMISES yet. Just don’t even ask me about it. Pretend I never even said anything (except don’t because I”m SO EXCITED for it.)
Tonight we’re going to eat dunner (quite certain I’m spelling this wrong, but I’ve never seen it written out. It’s pronounced like doo-ner and at first I thought they were just saying we’d have dinner together but it’s actually the word for some amazing German gyro type thing.) Then we’re going bowling because the American kids who stayed from fall semester made it some tradition, and then (or during) I’ll get to experience my first real German bier. Living on campus will be good for classes, but not really convenient for everything else– Am Sande is too far of a walk and the buses stop running before 9 pm. Luckily there are other (more fluent) students who live close by who I can share a taxi with on nights I’m downtown.
I have German class M-Th from 8:30- noon and then my only other class meets Mondays from 4-8 pm. Fridays are reserved for exams (not every Friday and only for two hours in the morning) so my weekends (and most of my weekdays, really) will be quite free. EVERYTHING here is closed on Sundays. Our student i.d. lets us on any bus in the state for free, and one of the places it goes is Celle which is the nearest town to Bergen Belsen. There is a girl here who’s goal is to get her PhD in WWII so she’s very excited to go with me.
There are 15 new kids in the program with me, most from the midwest, and a couple who stayed through from the fall semester. One guy is from Iowa and is happy to have another Hawkeye, he’s quite sad he picked last season to not be in IC for football games. I’m making guy AND girl friends (oh, Brittney– we’re so proud) and many look like people from home/ remind me of them, it’s weird/ funny. One of the guys is from California and we’ve already discovered our mutual love of all things In-n-Out. While Valentine’s Day isn’t celebrated in Germany, I did find a small window display of VALENTINE’S DAY STUFF in a shop this morning to capitalize on Americans here who celebrate it. Swoon. A girl from fall who has a German boyfriend said don’t be offended if your German boyfriend doesn’t give you anything, and I asked her where the list was to sign up for one. Apparently hers was from before she came here anyway, dammit, but the campus isn’t exactly crawling with lepers. Now if I could only actually learn the language, we’d be in business.
Tags: boys, food, recycling
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
I could be unpacking, but OF COURSE I made getting Internet a top priority so I could share my journey thus far with those of you on the edge of your seats. Bear with me that I’m forcing myself to stay up and acclamate to the time change, so this will probably just a boring rundown of the day’s events.
Germany = awesome. The autobahn wasn’t as exciting as I was building it up to be. Lueneburg is hands down the most adorable town you will ever see. I was literally SQUEALING when I saw my apartment (or apparently as I’m supposed to call it, flat hehehe). IT IS MASSIVE. I have the room right across from the bathroom and has a huge chest of drawers, bed, desk, sofa, TV, phone, iron, stereo, more storage compartment thingys… My roommates: two German guys Tim and Julian, one Italian guy Gianluca, and a German girl Janina– they’ve all been super helpful, asked if I prefer them to speak German or English to me and I got to whip out my one phrase “Ich spreche kein Deutsch.” They mostly just kind of awkwardly smile at me and move on, Gianluca was quite confused that I was not Kevin, the guy who apparently lived here last semester and never really said anything about moving out. On Mondays we each put in some Euros then take turns shopping and we all cook dinner together.
The cafeteria (mensa) is about ten steps from my building. I got a card that I can load Euros onto and eat there for any meal. My language buddy Melanie took me on a quick tour of campus and a I got to meet a girl in my program from Idaho who also doesn’t speak English. Being here I WISH WISH WISH I knew German already, but they speak it so freakishly fast I’m not sure I could understand if I had a few years under my belt. Everyone’s been very kind in speaking English to me and teaching me new words for things. We went to the supermarket and how ’bout I just tell you what I bought since I’m SURE YOU’RE SO INTERESTED. Sandwich bread (bad move– there’s a reason there’s so many fresh loaves of bread around, this stuff ain’t great) peanut butter, strawberry jam, milk, cereal, bananas, clementines, eggs, and a giant bag of frozen broccoli. How ’bout them apples?! I also need to bring my own bags to the store, oops.
It is FREEZING here. Around noon I was like Oh yeah, this is awesome, so much warmer than Iowa! But the sun sets before 5 pm so walking home from the store my legs about froze off. Apparently this is out of the ordinary and the snow we’re expecting this weekend (joy!) should be the last of it. We have orientations tomorrow and Saturday, I’ll ride the free bus (wish me luck!) to the city square since campus is kind of far from it.
I think that’s about it. I would upload some pics but WordPress isn’t letting me choose anything but Full Size which would take up well over the entire page. Harumph. Here’s a link to my Facebook album of them, with captions that pretty much sum up everything from above: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032936&id=1172310090&saved#/album.php?aid=2032936&id=1172310090 Wow. I should get a life.
Tags: Autobahn, bus, flat, flatmates, groceries
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Holy schmoligans. I am HERE. Sitting in the Des Moines International (ha!) Airport, nary a relative in sight, passport and Euros tucked securely in my backpack at my feet– I really never thought I’d feel so liberated. I’m like, an ADULT. But before we get into how I have so much energy I feel I could sprint to Germany faster than my four flights will take me, let me wind the clock back for you…
Yesterday and this morning I was surprisingly calm– sleep came easily, I didn’t wake up in a cold sweat sure that I’d overslept (in fact I woke to two good luck texts, how quaint.) Then I went to go turn on the light in the bathroom… AND IT DIDN’T WORK. I flipped the switch in my bedroom, NO SUCH LUCK. The power was out. The ELECTRICITY to my HOUSE did not WORK. In all the freak what-if scenarios I’d concocted over the last month or so, THIS WASN’T ONE OF THEM. My parents were remarkably unconcerned about this. Thankfully Mom hasn’t tackled dismantling the Christmas wonderland that is our living room, so I grabbed a candle and set about getting ready. You may think showering by candlelight is romantic or relaxing. WRONG. Have you tried to pop a zit in only the faint flicker of a flame? NOT THAT EASY (but completely necessary, I’m like a three-eyed freak– the Germans will think whatever is growing between my eyes is some sort of disease and the Obama administration hand-picked me to unleash biological warfare on ze fatherland.) Sure, the inability to take any appliance to my hair cut down on getting ready time, but I really didn’t expect to make my first impression on Europe with a bush on my head.
ANYWAY, I suppose the whole throwback to Colonial times wasn’t so bad, and the ‘rents took me to Panera for caffeine, carbs, and free wireless. We stopped off at a bank to buy some Euros, and over an hour and about three new bank accounts later we emerged (free Snuggie in hand! Stop at your local Wells Fargo today!) and sped to the SPRAWLING HUB that I find myself in now. My flight’s been delayed 20 minutes, I’ve been assigned a short piece I can hopefully pound out while over the Atlantic, the lady behind the desk told me I’m getting out just in time before a snowstorm. Wish me luck!!
Tags: airport
Posted in Brittney | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Bienvenido to my official first post… from the Miami International Airport. Please don’t put a bounty on my head when I tell you that before I leave for Germany (48 hours and counting– oh, so this is what a heart attack feels like) my family went on a cruise to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands over the New Year’s holidays. As Lauren correctly speculated, there were numerous daiquiris and pool boys involved (and margaritas, busboys, bellhops…)
I suppose this would be a good time to inform you of my deep-seeded pure straight hate for all things have to do with aiports, airplanes, and flying. So you can imagine how THRILLED I am at how much collective time I’ll be spending in the air before Friday. I’ve already made peace with the fact that I will get zero sleep tomorrow night, the night before Deutschland. I’m quite certain I will wear the wrong things, say the wrong things, eat too many of the wrong things (my language buddy e-mailed me that their primary food group is BREAD and I can buy over 100 kinds. OH OKAY. I didn’t need to be able to see my feet when I get back to the States.)
I don’t speak German– wait, that’s kind of a half-truth. My German vocabulary has expanded to the numbers 1-3 and 7 (SIEBEN!!), I miss you, sandwich, I love you, and the present tense of “they are swimming.” So really I should just breeze through the 14 credits of German I’m taking over there (I’ll be taking the equivalent of two years of German at UI in one semester in Germany. Pretty boss.) The worst part will be not being able to text every thought to my best friends back home– well, that and the fact that everyone who’s studied abroad and imparted their wisdom has told me I’ll spend heinously larger amounts of money than I’m already planning to. Which is just awesome because those wads of hundreds have really been burning holes from under my mattress.
Tags: airport, food, Germany, Miami, texting
Posted in Brittney | Comments Off
Friday, December 25th, 2009
We’re leaving soon. It’s not guaranteed we’ll be back.
(Oh and sorry the font’s so small. Get glasses. Or magnify your screen. We’re not blog geniuses. We haven’t even figured out how to get Brittney’s creepy family Christmas photos off the top left yet.)
Posted in Brittney, Lauren | Comments Off
