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!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
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!
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!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
'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!
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!
Monday, August 10, 2009
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...)
Friday, August 7, 2009
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.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
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^^)
Monday, August 3, 2009
"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^^
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