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!!
