Headin' North

After Christmas, as I said in the post before, we headed up to the Osnabrück area to visit my host mom’s family. The trip itself was interesting because I was able to see the changes in architecture and countryside. There are more flat areas in northern Germany, so there’s typically more farm land and the land plots for houses are larger. Houses here are often made from brick, so it kind of reminded me of Pennsylvania. Anyways, we got to Bad Iburg, which was a very pretty, small town, though it has a castle that is about as old as the Dom in Speyer (1000, give or take a few hundred years). We had some fun wandering around it, sehr schön. We also went on a hike in the forest/mountains; at the top was an observation tower, so I could see the landscape all around. It was gorgeous, but VERY windy and VERY cold. It was fun meeting the family; they were all very nice, and one of my host mom’s siblings married an American, so it was fun to talk a bit about America.

When I heard I was going to the Osnabrück area, I contacted an American friend (also here on the CBYX program) there so that we could meet up. Our plans grew into quite an adventure. Firstly, we went into Osnabrück together and wandered around the Fußgängerzone and the Altstadt (old city). The Altstadt was really nice, but the newer areas weren’t so spectacular, just fairly normal. The next day we made a day trip to Bremen (about an hour away with a train). Bremen was AMAZING. Probably one of the best cities I’ve seen thus far, if not the best. The Fußgängerzone was really cool, and the Altstadt was just absolutely and completely and totally gorgeous! We wandered in and around the buildings for awhile (which were also amazing), and then headed through the Böttcherstraße, which is a touristy spot. I’m honestly not sure why, I didn’t really look into it. But it was a cool street with brick buildings, and at one point there were some bells that played a melody. Then we wandered through Schnoor, which is an area of small streets and very interesting shops. I’m surprised we didn’t get lost in there. We then went to the Bremen Kunsthalle (art museum) which was really cool. They had a large Hundertwasser exhibit, an eccentric painter and architect. We looked at the permanent works first, some of which were really impressive. The Hundertwasser exhibit was… interesting, to say the least. “Cow’s Green Digestion of Gold” was the title of one of the paintings there. I’m not a huge fan of his style, but it was cool to see.

I spent New Years with my American friend and her host family. We ate Raclette for dinner, which is really popular here. Each person has a paddle thing that you fill with various foods that you want (vegetables, meat) and cover with cheese, and then set it into this skillet/oven thing until the cheese melts. Yum! We watched “Dinner for One”, which is a really old British short show that somehow became a tradition here, and had the TV on later to know what time it was and when we could celebrate. There was a countdown, but people don’t freak out and scream like we do in America. It was almost weird to quite tamely toast each other with our drinking glasses (I enjoyed me some orange juice :D ) and give hugs. I suppose others don’t celebrate it so tamely… But whatever. So after that, we went outside and set off a lot of fireworks! It’s only legal to buy fireworks a few days before New Years, and set them off on New Years, so a lot of people participate. The atmosphere was rather amazing, the sky was full of fireworks (and I was in an extremely small town!). Lots of fun was to be had, and I even convinced my American friend and her host sister to scream with me because I felt like that was necessary. Happy New Year!

A few days later we went to Hamburg and met up with other CBYX students, and had a great time wandering around the city. Because you have to wander. Hamburg is a big city, and all the seeing-worthy things are rather spread out. So we met at the Hauptbahnhof (which was in and of itself big, impressive, and spread out; we got lost inside it several times) and made a game plan of where we wanted to go. The Rathaus was very impressive and big. There were so many churches that we just walked by them, rather than going in each one. Though, we did find one that was really quite moving. It’s called the St. Nikolaikirche, and only the spire and part of the back wall are still standing after it collapsed from the bombing of Hamburg in World War II. It wasn’t repaired, and is now a memorial to the people who died and suffered in that war. Really, really quite touching. It carried a message that museums just aren’t capable of. Anyways, we then went to the port (because Hamburg is a huge port city, despite it being inland; the Elbe River makes that possible) and looked around some. There honestly wasn’t too much to see (I think), but it was cool nonetheless. The only other interesting thing we did was go to the Mini Wunderland museum thingy. We had heard that it was cool, and figured it was worth looking into. You can “see the world” (or whatever) through these really detailed, tiny models of people, buildings, cars, trains, planes, landscapes, etc. of real places that move and light up and such. It was pretty cool, and fun to look at. Hamburg was a nice city, but I liked Bremen better.

So I’m glad I was able to travel a bit and see some of Northern Germany!