Finally in my favorite spot to write, the previously mentioned HADAG #62 Ferry on the Elbe. (One of the perks of an unlimited transit pass, the ferry becomes a floating café! If only they had wi-fi here…) Not only do you get that fun feeling of being on the water, but you get to watch all the tourists enjoying their first views of the truly awesome port of Hamburg. Right now, the ferry is rich with the unmistakable sounds of Austrian accents, as the Rapid Wien is playing the Hamburger SV in the big Europa-League game tonight. Your faithful correspondent will be in attendance tonight, and is rather excited, as it will be his first European soccer game! (A full report will, of course, follow)

As the last post was supposed to be a highlights reel, and turned into a rather lengthly work of prose, I am going to endeavor to keep this post relatively short, but talk a bit about what I have been up to at school, something which hasn't come up in this blog too much.
Things have been changing around a lot recently at school, as we perennially find ourselves a few teachers short… the unfortunate death of one of our colleagues, the pregnancy of the teacher with whom I worked most closely, and the wave of illness, including the swine-flu (PC: "New Flu") that hit the school, as if to announce for all of those who were unaware the arrival of old man Winter. The indications have been legion: the cold, the ever shorter days, the impenetrable fog, the sudden disappearance of all the tables and chairs from the sidewalks, or at least the stacking up and/or chaining together thereof, and last but certainly not least, the appearance of scarves around the neck of every passer-by. (See the picture of the HSV fans above!)
I spent the vast majority of my time at school working with the 7d and 8d, as their teacher CO**, knew she would be leaving sometime around Christmas break, and it would convenient for me to take over the class when she was ill, and make the transition easier when new teachers had to be found for the class. This point came a lot earlier than we though, i.e. last week, so I have recently been taking over a lot of classes. I've had some fun lessons with both of these classes, and we get along pretty well. The 8d has recently adopted a terrarium of "stick bugs" (there apparently is no better translation of Stabheuschrecke) as their class pets, and are always happy when I stay after class to help them feed their little friends. I also help out my mentor, Sel, with some of her classes, her 12b and 9e. With the 12th graders, we have been covering various aspects of the history and culture of India, as this is one of the possible themes for the Zentralabitur, the recently centralized mother of all final exams, required for acceptance at all German universities. I have also done a series of lessons on Media, both the MSM and the so-called "New Media" blogs, podcasts, and various forms of social media with Bo's 10 graders, an analysis of two poems with Tz's 13th graders, and am working with Htm on an ongoing series of lessons centering around the film "Erin Brockovich." This series will end with a mock trial-like discussion, which I think the kids will enjoy a lot.

** N.B. Out of respect for the privacy of the teachers I work with, I will be referring to them by their Kürzel, an abbreviation that every teacher at a German school gets. My Kürzel, in case you were wondering, is Smi.

Oh golly, a smörgåsbord!

My goodness, it has been quite a while since I updated this puppy! Needless to say, a lot has happened since then, much of which will covered only superficially (if at all) in this strange mishmash of unfinished posts from the past two months...

I'll start with the coolest (and most expensive) stories first. A few weeks ago I went to a concert of the british rock band MUSE with my friend and fellow Fulbrighter, Lucy. I had been meaning to look into tickets for this show months ago, but by the time I got around to it, the place was sold out. Luckily enough, I came across 2 tickets last minute over CouchSurfing.com's Hamburg Forum! While there, we looked through the brochures of upcoming concerts and I realized that both the Norwegian band "a-ha" (of the truly 80's song "Take on Me" fame) and the world's most well known syth-pop band, Depeche Mode were playing that weekend. At first I though, "Gee, it's a shame that I am going to miss both of these concerts..." but then I started to realize that with some luck and some good budgeting, I might actually be able to pull it off! As soon as I got home from MUSE, I started dredging the internet, looking for any remaining tickets to both of these sold out performances. I was especially desperate to find a ticket for a-ha, because this was to be one of their last performances in Germany, and the band is planning on going their separate ways come next year. After a bit of searching, I found a reasonably priced ticket on e-bay. It was a floor ticket in about the 10th row. When I got to the ColorLine Arena and met the guy selling me the ticket, there a was another woman there practically in hysterics, complaining about how she had won her auction fair and square, and how could he be out of tickets already? I was quite surprised to hear this myself, but it soon turned out that there had been a mix up as to the number of tickets available in each section. We ended up working it out so that hysterical woman got my ticket, and for a 15Euro reduction of the ticket price, I got a ticket one section further back. I didn't realize that this meant I would be in the very last row of the floor section, but it was too late, and I decided it was water under the bridge and proceeded to enjoy this great band.
So excited to have actually seen a-ha before they disbanded, I figured I would try and score a hat trick on concerts that weekend and try to get Depeche Mode tickets too. Hardly believing my luck, I found another auction on e-bay. This time, rather than someone who obviously bought extra tickets in order to scalp them, it was from a guy who really wanted to go to the concert but had to cancel due to unforeseen circumstances. After chatting with him for a while (he was very surprised to find out that I was an American) I went about the task of finding someone to come with me. I eventually managed to rope my roommate Adrian into coming along, but it took almost a whole day. He was a bit worried about transportation, and how long it would take to get there and back. Oh, right, I forgot the mention the concert was in Bremen, about an hour's train ride to the southwest. Ordinarily it would cost about 20Euros to get there, but because we both have full HVV passes, our tickets only cost 7Euros. I finally managed to convince him to come along, though it turns out he was right to worry... more about that in a minute! Anyway, the concert was really great! Depeche Mode is really impressive live. Unfortunately, the audience was not terribly impressive. These folks had obviously not been to a standing-room only concert in the past decade. People are going to be moving around, trying to get further forward, going to get a drink or relieve themselves. This point seemed to have been lost on the majority of the audience, which evidenced itself in the aggravated looks and occasional physical abuse of our fellow audience members every time Adrian and I attempted to move further than 3 inches. After the concert, we hurried to the train station, only to confirm that we had indeed missed the last train back to Hamburg by more than an hour. We were effectively stranded in Bremen until the next morning at 5:50am. This was simply to long for us to wake, so we did the only thing there was to do in this situation: we started asking every single person at the concert hall if they were heading to Hamburg. We struck out completely after asking what seemed like several thousand people. Giving up, we starting hanging out with some nice folks Adrian had met while trying to find a ride home. We must have spent at least an hour chatting about the concert and swapping stories about festivals we had been to, when they announced it was time for them to head home to Berlin and we were welcome to join them. Adrian and I decided that rather than sit idly around in the rainy and cold Bremen weather, we might as well have some fun, so we all climbed into their car and hit the Autobahn. A few hours later we arrived in Berlin, bought the boys a real Berliner currywurst and a Kindl, and made our way to the train station. Taking the first train back to Hamburg, we arrived a full 20minutes earlier than we would have, had we waited in Bremen all night!
N.B. It was not my intent at the time, but one of my friends later mentioned to me that while she was proud of herself for having been to all of the German city-states in one week, I had achieved it in one night, a record which someone would have to try pretty hard, and spent a lot of unnecessary money to beat!
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I love getting things that are actually important in my box at school. If there is anything in there at all, it is normally something that just gets distributed to all the teachers: how to instruct your pupils to avoid Swine Flu, new rules on how many tests students in the new "Profile Upperclass" system as compared to old major/minor system, etc. So it was much to my surprise the other day when I saw a letter addressed to me from the Ministry of Education inviting me to a conference in Kiel the next week. It was a chance for all of the Teaching Assistants (i.e. not just Amis and Brits, but our French and Spanish colleagues as well) to meet up and chat about how things have been going at our schools and to share our experiences, concerns, and suggestions with the Ministry. On top of that, we got a free lunch and a tour of the Landtag (state parliament) and of Kiel itself. Unfortunately the weather was truly miserable, so we spent most of our tour in the bus, peering through the rain and fog to marvel at the barely discernible outlines of whatever particular sight our tour guide was babbling on about. We managed to amuse ourselves nonetheless. It was nice to see the other Americans I had met in Altenberg again. It seems most of us followed the same logic, preferring to live in larger cities rather than our small towns, so there are a few in Kiel and Lübeck with similar commutes to Katie and me. I stayed in Kiel for a little while afterwards to hang out with some other Fulbrighters, and ended up traveling with them from Kiel to Neumünster. It irked me that Neumünster is 2 dinky stations outside of the area in which my train pass is valid on both the Nordbahn regional trains and the AKN light rail. I did a little research and found out that there is a bus I can ride from the last stop on the Nordbahn all the way to Neumünster, so I decided to try it out one Thursday afternoon. The bus was waiting at the station when the train pulled in, almost like it knew I was coming. My friend Amy was pretty surprised then when I called her and mentioned that I just happened to be in town! My impromptu visit conveniently coincided with the first meeting of the English Club at Amy's school, so the kids got treated to two Americans in the classroom for their first meeting! The timing between bus and train is unfortunately not as convenient on the return trip, a fact which lead to my getting to know the VERY provincial town of Rickling far better than I had ever imagined! It was freezing cold that evening and the "train station" was just a hunk of concrete with a roof near the train tracks, so I decided to check out the area on foot to keep warm. I set out in each of the three directions possible, walking 5 minutes out and 5 minutes back, only to discover than there really is NOTHING in Rickling! Apparently if I had gotten off the bus a few stops earlier there was a neighborhood bar/pizza joint that I could have checked out to pass the time, although the point of this exercise was not paying anything to get to and from Neumünster... we'll just have to figure that out the next time I'm in town.
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Other things I have been up to:
** Re-wiring our entire entire apartment for internet (LAN & Wi-Fi) + Telephone
** Trying to figure out what I want to do with my hair...
** Occasionally battling with a cold/the flu, but so far reigning supreme!
** Attempting to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and failing miserably.
** Getting strangely used to waking up at 6am...
** Catching flak for not updating my blog often enough, which is why this post is going to end...... now.

Kaos, Chaos!

Our apartment is once again a total chaos! When I left this morning, not only were all the bottles and jars still piled up in the hallway, but all of our new roomate Caro's stuff is strewn throughout the apartment. She was supposed to move in fully yesterday, but painting her room took much longer than they expected. (Amazingly enough, you need more than one coat of white paint to cover a dark green wall..) So we have boxes, dressers, backpacks, a desk, i.e. the complete contents of a furnished room, crammed into our already somewhat cramped common room. I'm really excited to get home from work today though, as by then it should all be gone, including the recycling! Should be fun.
In other news, I got an email a few days ago from the other Foreign Language Assistant here in Bad Oldesloe. "What's this, Another FSA in Oldesloe? Shouldn't Dustin have known about this already?" you may be asking yourself. Well, if she was teaching English, I would know about it! Paula, on the other hand is from Spain, and is therefore, naturally teaching Spanish to the students of the Theodor-Storm-Gesamtschule next door. So we're going to get lunch after school today. I'll be very interested to get her impressions of the school next door, to ask what it's like to live here in Oldesloe, and to finally meet someone around my own age here in town!

Comin' down the pike...

Hey folks,
Last week and this weekend were, honestly, pretty uneventful. We spent a lot of time this weekend at home, re-arranging the house somewhat, getting ready for the new roommate to move in on Tuesday. We used Henrike moving out as an excuse to get rid of some of the junk that has piling up in the apartment, including lots of things from people who don't even live in Hamburg anymore, much less in our WG! We also have been experiment with re-arranging the kitchen, trying to improve the breakfast area, and keep the hallway less cluttered. We used to have one of the refrigerators in the hallway, along with two cupboards where we all keep our food, but when we got the hardwood floors partially redone in the hallway, we moved the other fridge into the kitchen. So things have been pretty fluid recently, the apartment seems to change daily! It will be even more extreme when Stephan borrows the company car tomorrow so we can finally get rid of all the junk, and the recycling that has piled up in the apartment. Germans, as you may or may not know, are somewhat crazy when it comes to trash (just look at the trash cans to the right for an idea...) and recycling. You would think, then, that it would be easy to recycle here, but no, you have to collect all of your old glass and plastic bottles, and take them to the recycling yourself. Well, at least all of the glass that doesn't have Pfand on it, i.e. you get money back when you take it back to the store to be cleaned, refilled, and resold. So the old saying, "You don't buy beer, you only rent it" is true in Germany for the bottles too! In a large apartment like ours, that happens to be located relatively far away from the recyling, it tends to pile up for a while, usually until the piles collapse, or they are so large that they hinder access to the apartment^^ Well, it will all be gone by Wednesday morning, so we won't have to worry about it any more... for a while at least.
Speaking of junk, the old computer monitor I found, and promptly named "Hoss II" in memory of my old CRT, has decided it wants to leave the apartment on the Junkyard Express as well. After lugging it up the stairs, cleaning it up and testing it out, it worked great. When I tried to turn it on again the next morning... nothing. Makes a faint clicking sound when I plug it in, but there is absolutely no reaction from the power switch. Oh well, I guess I really don't NEED two monitors^^
Saturday was actually pretty fun. There was a gigantic fleamarket in Tostedt, Niedersachsen. (Click on the link for pictures from previous fleamarkets.) The entire downtown area was lined with tables and stands selling everything from old junk to new junk, and fish sandwiches to Glühwein! I found myself a charger for my cell phone (so I don't have to leave my laptop on all night to charge my phone) and a super heavy-duty bike lock, for a grand total of 12€. OH, I guess I haven't mentioned my bike yet! But that is a story for itself, and will be handled in another post. Maybe even tonight if you are lucky!
So, I'm signing off for now, but here's a look at what I will be up to this week (hence the title of this post...)
Tuesday:
1.Stammtisch with Hamburg Fulbright Alumni at Roxies
2. Our new roommate Caro is moving in!
Wednesday
1. All the junk and trash in the apartment disappears!
Thursday
1. Lehrerausflug! We teachers are going on a field trip! A bunch of the teachers here in Oldesloe are going hiking, and then boßeln which is a somewhat strange, yet typically north German combination of shot-put and bocce. Afterwards, we are all going out to dinner together, so it should be quite a fun outing!
OK, I've been sitting at this keyboard way too long, I'm out!

Einleben/Settling In

This is the question I have been getting the most recently on this side of the Atlantic, "Und? Hast du dich in Hamburg schon gut eingelebt?" (So, how have you been settling in in Hamburg) I imagine if the people I see everyday at work are asking me about this, then you all are probably desperate for information^^
As far as Hamburg is concerned, things are working out really well. I have been getting to know the other people in my WG, continuing the recent trend of cooking dinner with Adrian and Caro, except now we always watch an episode of Firefly while we are eating. (My job as cultural ambassador has its perks, like getting to re-watch some of my favorite TV shows^^) Actually, one of the really cool things we have in the WG is that we always watch Tatort* together on Sunday nights. Not just the current members of the WG (which apparently the british refer to as a "flat-share" because that is what every German insists on calling it when they speak English.) but lots of former roommates, and friends of the WG. It's like a little mini homecoming when people who haven't lived there for a few years show up, and it's also a nice way to keep in touch with the people who eventually move out. In this case, it's Henrike and Stefan who are moving out, both of whom I have enjoyed spending time with the past 2 weeks, and I'm sad they are moving out so soon.
We had a nice litte Going Away party for those two on Thursday night. We made Flammkuchen, the Alsatian "pizzas" that I may have cooked for some of you already, but this time with the appropriate wine called Federweiser. It was a bittersweet evening, but somehow we managed to keep from crying, though it often came up in conversation.
While we're on the subject of parties, Friday and Saturday night were both part of the yearly Reeperbahn Festival here in Hamburg. Like Bourbon St. in New Orleans, most of the bars and clubs along the Reeperbahn** have live bands. During the Reeperbahn festival though, more well known bands are booked, and you get entrance to every concert with a festival or day-ticket. I went out both nights, but since there weren't any bands playing I felt particularly inclined to see, I decided not to pay the 25€ per day. On Friday night, I met up with some people I met on couchsurfing.com, a German girl, and her two Australian guests. We went to one of the bars that was hosting free concerts as part of the Reeperbahn Festival and listened to a few interesting acts, including one guy, Dan Costello, from New York. At the same bar I happened to run into Jessamyn and Lucy, two of the other American ETAs here in Hamburg, and we spent the rest of the night with them touring the Reeperbahn. I guess you could call it bar-hopping, but most of the places were so full that we couldn't have gotten to the bar even if we had wanted to...
When they say there's no rest for the weary, they are serious. This was especially the case for me the next day, as I somehow woke up at exactly the same time as Adrian and Caro, and we decided that it was time to make pancakes. Despite my protestations, Adrian decided we had no need of a recipe, and that just throwing eggs, flour, milk, and sugar in a bowl would suffice. It did, but the pancakes were far too flat for my taste. By German standards, however, they were relatively thick, so it looks like we got the best of both worlds. Having fortified ourselves with a hearty breakfast, we were ready then when Henrike asked us to help her with moving out. So, relatively tired upon Henrike's departure, I was considering taking a nap when I realized I had a voicemail from Suzanne (another American ETA). She explained that a fellow ETA, Andrew, was visiting from Bad Segeberg that night and was looking for a place to stay. Ever eager to help, I of course offered to host him, and asked what they were planning on doing (knowing full well what the answer would be...) "Oh, I guess we'll tour the Reeperbahn a bit, see what's going on ... we'll meet at midnight at the S-bahn station." Knowing that this was going to be a long night, I treated myself to that nap, and after navigating the perils of Schienenersatzverkehr** I made it to Central Station in time to meet Andrew and head off to join Suzanne and Katie. As it was the night before, everything was really jam-packed due to the Reeperbahn Festival, but we eventually found our way to a place that wasn't too crowded and had a decent live band. As the night (or rather the morning) dragged on, we soon realized that it was time to end the adventures in true Hamburg style, by going to the St. Pauli/Altonaer Fischmarkt (unfortunately only in German, but be sure to check out the WikiCommons album at the bottom of the page) when it opens around 5:30am. This we did, despite the fact that the temperature had dropped to about 40°F. We didn't stay terribly long, but it was neat to see all the different stands, the fisherman unloading their catches, all getting ready for the flood of people who would soon creep out of bed, or stagger out of bars to experience this weekly ritual.
As you might imagine, the next day was rather uneventful for Andrew and me, but we did make an amazing discovery, a restaurant near my apartment called "Qrito". It's what would happen if California Tortilla and Chipotlé had a son, and sent him off to Hamburg to make his fortune. As the only Americans in the restaurant, we were of course the only ones who endeavoured to eat our gargantuan burritos with our hands, which I am happy to say we were quite succesful at, despite the stares of silverware-wielding German customers. So now none of you have an excuse not to visit me here in Hamburg; even here you can get your Chipotlé fix whenever you need it^^
There's plenty more to say, but I want to get this post out there before I start getting nasty-grams from y'all exhorting me to update my blog! So I'll leave you now with a quote from the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel, "More to come, more to come! I said 'brief', not infinitesimal'!!"

* Tatort has always been one of my favorite German shows (although it's something more like "Masterpiece Theatre" or "Mystery!", than a TV-show really) and with well over 700 episodes it's something you can pretty much always watch. I actually wrote one of my final papers in German about Tatort, which I would be happy to share with anyone willing to take on the challenge of reading it^^
** I hesitate to post links to other people's descriptions of St. Pauli and the Reeperbahn, because they invariably make it out to be much worse than it really is. If you have questions, concerns, etc. please comment on this post, and maybe we can start up a good discussion about it.
*** 25c. word for "Trains aren't running, you have to take the bus"

New Album, "Hamburg By Boat"

For those of you without Facebook accounts, here is a link to my album of pictures taken from the #62 Ferry.
Hamburg by Boat

Teufelskreis

I don't update this blog as often as I would like to. When I don't update in a while, I feel like I need to write about everything that has happened since the last time I post. It takes me a really long time to write about everything, usually resulting in new stuff having happened before I finish writing about older stuff. This only ends in two ways: incredibly long posts that try to make up for lost time, or me not posting about things as they come, because I haven't yet written about older stuff. These all lead back to me not posting the way I would like to. A vicious circle, or Teufelskreis in German, hence the title of this post.
Because of this, dear readers, I am going to apologize now, and only now, for the periods in which there will be relatively few posts, as I know they will come. There will be gaps in this record of my life here, gaps that will be filled with both exciting and mundane things, but gaps that I will make no attempt to fill. I do this not to hide things from you, but merely to free myself from the responsibility I feel to constantly and completely report on my life here and the guilt, which comes from not doing so and, in turn, fuels my inability to report even incompletely. This may not make much sense to anyone but me, but that sort of comes with the territory with blogs, doesn't it?
So, time for me to say auf Wiedersehen, and for you all to look forward to new, guilt-free blog posts coming down the pike!

New City, New Title^^

Hi all, sorry for the long silence, but things have been really busy around here recently. As you read in the last post, I found a place to live in Hamburg, and through some pretty interesting coincidences! A few weeks ago I had several appointments in Hamburg, looking at various apartments. The night before a particularly busy day, I got an email from one particularly interesting group of roommates, informing me I had been selected as one of the top 10 on their list, and should come over the next evening to introduce myself. I hadn't even remembered writing this particular group, but I added them to my calendar. I was a bit skeptical as I looked over at the bright orange house right on the train-tracks, but as I walked in and was greeted by all the roommates, offered a spot on the comfy couch, and was handed a beer, my doubts started to melt away. To make a long story short, despite having a nice night with this group, I wasn't offered the room that was becoming available. I was saddened by this, as I had enjoyed the company of these folks a lot, but continued my search, as I had been doing after every disappointing appointment (diss-appointment??).
After our orientation conference in Altenberg (near Cologne)I returned to Bad Oldesloe growing increasingly desperate for a place to live, not because things were bad in Oldesloe, but because I didn't want to get into a comfortable routine at school, only to have this interrupted by moving once I finally found a place. Anywho, on the very same night I got back from Altenberg, I got a call from Maria, the main renter of the apartment. She explained to me that she and her husband were moving to New York for 6 months, and the girl who was going to sub-let their apartment had just canceled on them, just three days before they were going to leave! They asked me if I would be interested in the big, fully furnished room with the group that I had wanted to live with anyway. I jumped at the chance, and moved in last week, fully half a month earlier than I would have been able to had I been chosen to take the smaller, non-furnished room! Pictures are on Facebook, here (viewable even w/o a Facebook account)
The first night in the new place was a great start, got my stuff all unpacked and set the room up a bit. Went shopping with two of my new roommates, Adrian and Caro, getting the blitzkrieg tour of the neighborhood while we were at it. Afterwards we cooked dinner (spaghetti bolognese!) and, thanks to the internet, watched the new film "District 9." I decided to make it an early night, knowing that 6am would be coming along very soon, and having never done the HH-OD** commute during business hours before. The commute really isn't bad at all, I never have to wait more than 4 minutes for the S-bahn at Dammtor, and when I get to the Central Station, it's just up and over 1-2 tracks. The travel goes by even faster when you happen to have a good book along, in my case Tom Clancy's Without Remorse which I highly recommend, even to people who don't usually like Clancy and his penchant for lengthy and highly-detailed descriptions.

** HH=Hamburg, OD=Bad Oldesloe (KH=Bad Kreuznach) These are the abbreviations used on German license plates, but have become common in daily speech as well. I will probably use them from time to time here on the blog or in emails, so consider yourselves warned!

Success!!

I have a room in Hamburg! Details to come!

Ej, Kreiznach, du Schadt an de Noh, hosch misch als Gäßje groß gezoo...

Unlike most of the entry titles in German, Google won't even begin to help you translate this one! It's a quote from a Fashing/Karneval song in the Bad Kreuznach dialect. Roughly translated it means, "Hey Kreuznach, you city on the Nahe (River) you raised me as a 'Gäßje'". The term Gäßje is used only in Kreuznach to describe people born and raised in the city, and is also the name of the dialect spoken in the medieval "downtown" area. It comes from the word "Gaße" meaning small street or alleyway, of which there are many here in Kreuznach.
It's interesting being back here after so long. OK, 2 years isn't really that long I guess, but it feels like much longer. Yannik told me that nothing changes in Kreuznach,, which is one of the many reasons he doesn't like it there, but when you don't see the place for 2 years, it does have a new and different vibe. For one thing, most of the people I know are no longer here. It used to be impossible for me to walk from my house to the bridge without seeing someone I knew, but in the past few days I've walked from one end of the city to the other and not seen anyone I even recognized, much less ever had contact with. Even though the people are no longer here, the memories remain. Everywhere I go in this town has some memory attached to it, just a mental image, an emotion, a sound-byte, a litle scene that gets played out in the back of my head as soon as I lay eyes on a familar building, park, or street corner. Just as I haunted Kreuznach when I lived here, spending countless hours wandering her streets and walkways, either avoiding my host family, or just pondering the mysteries of life, memories of Kreuznach have haunted me over the years. I spent sleepless nights at William and Mary wondering why things turned out the way they did with my host family, what I could have done to improve the situation, how much was really my fault. I wish I could tell you that I have found the answers to any of these questions, but that would be a lie. The questions never go away, they are always there in the back of your mind, just waiting for an idle moement to spring up in which they once again can plague your mind. The trick then is not to answer them, but to come to terms with the fact that what's done is done, and time spent worrying about it is time ill spent. Reflection is one thing, without looking back on the past we cannot learn from it, but harping on it, worrying about it is just a refusal to come to terms with the fact that it cannot be changed.
Anyway, I think I have waxed poetic (or perhaps philosophic) long enough here, and besides, my bag of "Erdnußflips" is empty! I think I can honestly say Erdnußflips are one of the reasons I love Germany so much. The ultimate snack food, they are essentially peanut flavored cheese curls!! (I know you are thinking "Ewwww, gross me out" right now, Mom, but you have to admit the idea is pretty awesome!) Anyway, with that I am going to sign off for now!

Summer Breeze and Round 2 of the apartment hunt

Yup, from the title you might have guessed it, but here is the bad news first: I have heard back from all of the rooms I was interested in in Hamburg and Lübeck and struck out with all three of them. So I will be starting my whole search routine over again immediately. I am going to change a few things in my profile and my little introductory letter, and am going to concentrate on ads with telephone numbers, as it is harder to ignore a phone call than an email or text message. That has been the most frustrating aspect of my time in Germany so far, the fact that I send out scores of Emails and never get responses. I must have written at least 50 emails in the past few weeks, and I think I got maybe 3 responses!! Anyway, I just hope that all this craziness and stress will lead to me finding the perfect place to live!

Anyway, on to fun stuff, like Summer Breeze! After getting an unexpected message from my friend Flo, saying that there was a seat left in his car and he knew of a a guy in Kreuznach who wanted to sell his ticket (Festival was already sold out). As I was already looking for an excuse to head south to familiar territory, I jumped at the chance, and jumped on a train to Kreuznach the very next morning. I didn't have much time to prepare for this little adventure as Flo and co. were leaving on Wednesday morning, and I didn't hear from him until Monday night, and didn't really have a chance to get filled in on all the details until I got to Kreuznach. Not even knowing where I was going to sleep, I got off the train at the ugliest train station in Germany (I'm serious, Kreuznach won this distinct honor several times from TV-Personality Stefan Raab) only to run into none other than my old friend Jan Seidel, who not only happened to also be going to Summer Breeze, but offered to put me up for the night and take me shopping for the festival! It was as if perfectly planned, but Jan didn't even know I was coming, and I didn't even have his cell number, so there is no way we could have planned it! Guess someone was looking out for me^^

I had been trying to get in contact with Flo for a while now to straighten things out with the ticket, so we went to go visit Flo at work at the gas station. Between him waiting on customers, I found out that the ticket he essentially promised me was from some guy that his his ex-girlfriend knew. Luckily enough, I know the girl, so I called her up, only to find out that she didn't even know the guy personally, she just heard over some internet community that he had a ticket he wanted to sell. In disbelief, I hung up the phone and immediately began to scour the internet looking for a ticket. At around 22:30, after several hours of searching, I managed to find a guy in Bavaria who was selling his ticket because he couldn't make it to the festival. We worked it out so that he would send the ticket to Dinkelsbühl with his buddy, who would meet me there and sell it to me. I was kind of worried that ti wouldn't work out, but it actually came off without a hitch, and I was able to get a ticket for the same price as if I had bought it 6 months ago!

Our 11 man team set out for Dinkelsbühl the next day in 2 very German cars, a Ford station wagon (Degen, Christina, Schum, Jan, Laura) and a Ford Transit bus (moi, Flo, Andy, Maria, Mandy, Toby) both stuffed to the gills with groceries (i.e. meat and beer), tents, combat boots, and T-shirts from various metal bands. A guy Flo knew from last year saved us a nice spot next to his. Little did we know, though, that he (23-24) was travelling with his 17yr old girlfriend and her entire possie of teeny-boppers. They definitely grated on our nerves, constantly making a racket and often using/abusing our grill and camping chairs, but we managed to make it through the whole Festival without killing them, so they can't have been that bad!

On Wednesday, there were a few bands that played in the party tent, but nothing I was interested in, so I stayed back at the campground unpacking and setting up. On Thursday the Festival really got started. Waking up to the sound of hundreds of car stereos blaring various types of metal, we sat around and complained about how poorly we slept. This would become a habit throughout the festival, as we were rarely able to sleep past 9am due to the noise and the bands we were interested in seeing rarely starting before 2pm. So after sitting around and complaining for a while, someone would get hungry and we would set off to eat brunch. We hit all the major food groups such as steaks, pork steaks, turkey steaks, sausages, and ground beef Frikadellen, with canned ravioli, spaghetti, and various types of soup. All this was washed down with "5,0" beer in cans, because glass was verboten on the campground. Don't bother trying to find 5,0 on the internet, their whole schtick is that they have a really simple logo and don't advertise and use the money they save to deliver a quality product for cheap. Well, quality is not exactly the first word I would use to describe the taste of 5,0, but I have definitely had worse!

All throughout Thursday more and more people arrived. I'm not sure exactly how many, but it was somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000!! As the day went on, more and more of the festival-goers showed up at the concerts, until you really had the feeling that EVERYONE was there for the headlining bands. On Thursday I ended up seeing a bunch of bands, starting with Deadlock and Vader in the early afternoon, later J.B.O and a few songs by Walls of Jericho. We took a break for dinner, and I went to go check out Cantus Buranus, though I was not impressed, so I left early and got a decent spot for Katatonia on the other stage. A few songs in, I caught of a glimpse of Flo, but I couldn't be sure until I caught a glimpse of Mandy's red hair, and Toby's black arm (as one of maybe 4 black guys at the Festival, Toby made our group relatively easy to find^^). I tried to make my way over to them, but there were just too many people between us. I knew I only had one possibility to make it over there: I would have to wait for a mosh pit to break out and "ride" it over to them! Sure enough about 5 minutes later my opportunity arose, and within seconds I was standing with my friends! Friday was much more relaxed. I only went to see The Haunted, Schandmaul, Sabaton, and Amon Amarth, though seeing Amon alone was enough to tire me out to the point where I couldn't even stay awake during Firewind's concert afterwards! There must have been at least 25,000 people watching Amon Amarth, and when that many people are at a concert just standing up is feat. Add random mosh pits and tons of crowdsurfers to the mix, and it feels more like you are at the gym than at a concert!

Saturday came along and it was time for us to carry out our carefully crafted plan to be in the front row for Opeth, the biggest band playing the festival that year. We decided to head out during Moonspell, fight our way forward while people either left or moved over to the other stage for Legion of the Damned. We knew there would be a lot of Volbeat fans there, but figured if we were as far forward as possible during Volbeat, we could slip through to the front when they finished.We started off strong with Maria, Mandy, Andy, Jan, and Laura, but as the hours dragged on we began losing people to hunger, thirst, and nicotine addiction. In the end only Maria and I made it to the front row, with Andy close behind. Due to technical problems with one of the guitar amps, we got to see an Opeth jam session while the problems were being resolved. At first just noodling around, the various members took turns steering the song in certain directions, until it suddenly became a cover version of Deep Purple's "Soldier of Fortune." In the middle of the song, the other guitar was fixed and he jumped right in with a sweet solo. It's always cool to see a band do something that is not really characteristic of them, and despite the fact that almost 20minutes of their playing time was spent ironing out technical problems, it was highly enjoyable. An added bonus was the lack of crowdsurfing, which had reached truly aggravating heights during Volbeat.

Sunday came along and after quickly packing up the rest of our things, we hit the road towards Maria and Mandy's parents place near Abstgmünd/Schwäbisch Hall. There we were treated to an ungodly amount of food and we rejoiced at the return of amenities like running water and real toilets into our lives! 5 days of Porta-Potties is really too much... even though things did improve a bit when we discovered 3 of them that had an extremely strong and distinct smell of .... cinnamon! No matter how long it had been since they had been pumped out (which with several thousand people using each block of them was relatively often) they smelled only of cinnamon, which was a truly pleasant alternative. After climbing back into the Transit with our beltbuckles just a bit looser than before, we hit the Autobahn and were back in Kreuznach with in 3 hours. Well, that's a wrap on Summer Breeze 2009, I think. I'm happy to answer any and all questions people have; the comments here on Blogspot and on Facebbok have sparse recently though... If you are interested, reviews of the bands are up on www.summer-breeze.de in German, but haven't yet been translated.

Fiesen Crowdsurfer, eh!

Hello again!
Well, I survived Summer Breeze! I'll post all sorts of stories about it soon, just wanted to let everybody know^^ We stopped by Flo's girlfriends parents' house for lunch on the way home, and had way, way too much to eat^^ I still haven't heard anything from either of the apartments in Hamburg, so I am hoping no news is good news... I heard from Lars in Lübeck on Friday that he had chosen another guy, one who wanted to stay in the room for 2 years. I would have made the same decision in his shoes, so I can't be angry with him, but I had hoped to hear from at least one of the possibilites in Hamburg by now. Who knows, maybe they will call on the way home!
More to come, more to come!

'sch bin widder in Kreiznach!

Hey all, quick update!
I'm in Bad Kreuznach with the old crew^^ Heading off to Summer Breeze tomorrow, and we won't be back until Sunday. I'll write then and tell you all about those 3 days of heavy metal!

Ich will ein Hamburger (werden)!!! (I want (to be) a Hamburger!)

So at long last, the promised post on my search for an apartment/room in the greater Hamburg/Lübeck area! But first things first, I am happy to say that I got a call from the Deutsche Bank today, telling me that my account has been opened and is ready to go! Now all I need to do is put money in it... and wait for my EC card and PIN to show up^^
Anyway, I started my search in earnest before I left the States, trying desperately to find a place on the internet. Had a few contacts, but it soon became very clear that I would need to be in the area and come by before anything was really going to happen. Upon arriving here, I visited one apartment in Lübeck, which I would be sharing with a nice guy named Lars who was studying in Lübeck as well. He and I got along great, and I'm pretty sure he will offer me the room at the end of the week when he makes his decision. Although this place is not furnished, there have been quite a few listings in the local papers for free furniture if you come pick it up, so I'm not too worried about that.

The thing is, I'm not sure I want to live in Lübeck. It is a nice town and all, but there isn't that much going on there. Hamburg is really the center of everything around here, so much so that even the trains from Deutsche Bahn, become trains of the Hamburg Transit Authority (HVV) for the time that they are in the greater metropolitan Hamburg area. (Bad Oldesloe included!) So I started to look around in Hamburg, and after a multitude of e-mails and phone calls, finally got two appointments to look at rooms. I spent all day yesterday in Hamburg, figuring out the HVV, getting lost, and visiting these apartments. The first one is in the typical student district of Eppendorf. The apartment is in a very old building, but itself is pretty nice. There are actually two rooms being rented out for the period that one roommate is studying abroad in Spain. One is really tiny, only big enough for a bed and nightstand, the other is set up as a living room/office. She is leaving all of here furniture, and (upon request) would leave her whole library on the bookshelf too! The other roommate, Helian is a nice guy, works at IKEA, studies Geography, seems like he would be pretty easy to get along with. So had a nice chat with those two for about 30mins, then it was off to a) find something to eat and b) figure out how in the world to get to my next appointment.
Wandering about in Eppendorf, I stumbled upon my favorite German supermarket, LIDL, so I popped in and bought some dinner. While there, I noticed they were selling Astra, one of the local beers, so I figured I'd try that out too. It's pretty good!
I found my way to the S-bahn and headed out to my next appointment in Wilhelmsburg. (Wouldn't that be funny, moving from Williamsburg, to Wilhelmsburg?) I thought for sure I was at the wrong house when I saw it, as there was scaffolding all around it, but I was indeed at the right place. (They're just getting the place repainted.) Another guy who was looking at the place was there at the same time, so we all ended up sitting in the backyard talking about...well for most of the time, anything but the rooms! It felt like a really great fit, not only with the couple who would be living upstairs, but with the other guy looking for a room. As there would be two rooms opening up, there wasn't any kind of competitive feeling, and it made for an enjoyable conversation for all. I think we must have sat there for at least an hour! Afterwards, as I was about to buy a ticket back to Oldesloe, a guy came up to me and asked if I wanted travel on his group ticket. This is one of my favorite ways to travel, because you always meet interesting folks and you almost always save money off the the regular ticket price. Even though it was only a .70c bargain this time, the trip to Oldesloe went by surprisingly fast with a fun group and a bottle of Astra!

So, I feel like I have made a pretty good start, and I will know by Friday whether any of the places panned out. I am trying to find out if I need to be around here after the decision is made, to sign a contract or whatever. If I don't I will be switching Bads tomorrow, heading to Kreuznach to start my vacation off with a bang, namely the Summer Breeze Festival in Dinkelsbühl, with my friends Jan, Andy and Flo. I am already getting antsy about it, because I hate making plans that depend on other people's schedules, especially people I a) barely know, and b) who I am trying to rent an apartment from/with. So keep your fingers crossed!
Until then,
Seacrest, Out!
(sorry, I just always wanted to say that...)

picture supplement to last post

The Holstentor in Lübeck


Bad Oldesloe Logo + Picture

A Tale of Three Bads: Bad Information, Bad Blister, and Bad Oldesloe

Luckily, only two of those were actually bad^^ After our little excursion through Frankfurt (kicked off by our epic quest to find a Deutsche Bank, in the financial center of Germany), Yannik and I returned to the apartment to cook some truly excellent chili with a buddy of his. Both of them looked like they hadn't slept in days, but with the Staatsexamen (imagine if you had 2 comprehensive final exams for your major, independent of individual classes) coming up, that isn't surprising. We tried to watch a movie afterwards, but neither of us was able to stay awake^^
The next morning it began... the staring. If any of you have ever been to Germany, you will know what I mean. ANYONE who does ANYTHING even slightly out of the ordinary, will be greeted by bone-chilling teutonic stares. Don't believe me? Try riding even 5 stops on the Frankfurt subway with 2 suitcases and a backpack! Add a slight limp due to an inconveniently placed blister on my right foot, and you are a sitting duck. (or a limping duck, i suppose) This staring would continue to follow me all day, more to come of course.

I was on my way to Nieder-Eschbach, where I was to meet up with the folks I was riding along with to Lübeck. We had worked everything out beforehand in an email conversation, but as the time sped closer and closer to 8am, and no one was there, I realized there must have been some mistake. So I pull out my trusty German cell phone, (thanks again Will^^) and find out I was told the wrong U-bahn station, and they were waiting for me in Heddernheim (approx 4. stops in the other direction)!! So, I buy another ticket, deal with some more staring, finally reach Heddernheim, and then we have to pack the car...
All I can say is, thanks to years of experience putting too much stuff into too small cars, we made it work, though there was literally no more room to put anything in that car when we were finished! Sandy, our driver with truly epic 80's hair metal Friseur, was pretty worried about his poor little Ford Mondeo with all that weight, and 5 people, but we eventually proved that even the American cars are better in Germany, and 180+ km/h on the Autobahn was no problem^^
Well, except for the construction zones that is... That's right folks, the Autobahn is not all fun and games, and there are even places with speed limits! In fact, it's only on the wider, more remote parts of the Autobahn that the 80, 100, 120, or 130 signs disappear. Anyway, after stops in Göttingen (Burger King!) and Hamburg, we arrived in Lübeck around 14:30.

After Sandy sped off to his seminar on "Systematic Coaching", a concept which was explained several times in the car, but proceeded to only confuse the passengers further, I set off to see a bit of Lübeck on my way to the Bahnhof. I started off in the general direction of the old town, realizing along the way just how far out of town I actually was, and not realizing how much my foot was going to hurt afterwards. I could have taken the bus, but at this point I was starting to take some kind of perverse pleasure in the staring, loudly talking in Pfälzisch on the cell-phone, pretending there was somebody on the line. The kinds of looks I got were so confused that I wish I had some way to share them with you all^^
Anyway to make a long story short, (not that I have tried to do that at all up until now) I got to the train station, made it to Bad Oldesloe and am staying with the assistant director of the school and his American wife, both of whom have been exceptionally nice to me. I already feel somewhat at home here, despite the fact that I am still homeless! Hopefully that will change soon, as my efforts to find a place to live have stepped up considerably in the past two days.

I have arrived!!

Arrived safe and sound, just without peanut butter! There is a story there, but that is a story for later. Hanging out with my buddy Yannik in Frankfurt.  German cellphone is a go! (not that any of you will use it^^)

"Leaving on a Jetplane"

Well folks, it's just about that time again. Soon I will be heading off to the airport to embark upon my journey. I actually have a lot to say... but need to pack up my computer now, so stay tuned, this could get interesting^^

Shhhh... sei mal still! Ich glaube...ich glaube es wird wieder gearbeitet!!!!

This post is to announce the resurrection of the dustinloflandsmith.blogspot.com blog! Yours truly is heading off to Germany again, this time with a Fulbright scholarship, and you, meine Damen und Herren, get to have the occasional peek as to what is going on throughout my teutonic adventures. More details to come in further posts, so stay tuned!
(Don't worry, my Lagniappe Blog "Learn to Love the Heat" is still around! You can read those posts at http://learntolovetheheat.blogspot.com)