Rain Needs to DIE.

This post is actually about my Pfingstferien. But rain needing to die was a thought I repeatedly had during it. Pfingsferien was a two week break from school for Baden-Württemberg, so I did a bit of travelling. My host mom was in China, my host sister in America, and my host dad is too sick/weak to really take care of himself, so we went to visit his sister in Regensburg for a week. To be honest, they are old. So it wasn’t exactly very exciting, but I enjoyed myself and saw Regensburg, which was really pretty. The Donau river and all the other rivers that flow through the area were beautiful. It rained on a number of the days that I was there during that first week, but on one of the nice days I went on a bike ride with my host dad’s sister through the countryside. It was gorgeous, until it suddenly got cloudy and started to rain, but whatever. I got cake at a small, local Biergarten before that happened, so I can’t complain. On another day we also went to a traditional Bayrisch (Bavarian? I don’t know the English words for stuff anymore) Biergarten thingy that served Bayrisch food. I got a Schweinebraten with a Kartoffelknödel. Um, just Google it. Then I was in Nürnberg (Nuremberg) for a day or two. It was a cool city to see with a lot of history. Practically everything in the inner city was leveled or severely damaged in World War II, which is a shame. It never ceases to amaze me when I go to cities and learn about how much they were affected by both World Wars, and how much was destroyed. That’s just not something you really understand from history class until you see it. But I’m glad I went, I enjoyed it. Plus, I went to this place that serves original Nürnberger Würstchen with fresh baked pretzels, and it was SO GOOD. I have never had such a good pretzel and I swear I’m going to figure out how to bake them before I die.

 

           

  

 

That was the first week of break. Not very exciting. Kind of like me second week, where we were in Stuttgart. Though I did go to the Wilhelma Zoo! That brought out my inner child. I still think the zoo in Omaha is better, but I may just be biased. Though, the Wilhelma was really prettily landscaped and they had a lot of cool monkeys. And I got ice cream.

On Friday at the very end of the break, I headed to Prague, in the Czech Republic. It is trips like this when I wish the weather channel would not lie to me. When I packed, it said it would be partly cloudy in the 60’s. It’s good it was raining it Stuttgart when I left or else I wouldn’t have brought an umbrella. But I was still woefully unprepared for 40-50 degrees and NONSTOP RAIN. NONSTOP.  Well, okay. I arrived around 5pm and had three hours to wander around until I could meet up with Valerie, my friend on this venture. In those three hours the weather was nice enough that I actually could take off my jacket. 3 hours. I didn’t want to sit around in those three hours, so I went to find the middle of the city. Which I did without getting lost, which I consider quite a feat, because Czech is a crazy language! I have no idea how to pronounce anything I saw on a map (I won’t even say read on a map because that isn’t possible). I have heard that Prague is like a fairytale city, and I can understand why. There are so many towers and churches that look like they were either built by Dracula or Cinderella (take your pick). The architecture there was just really, really cool. I think there are buildings built in the style of every era since 1000AD (or some such ridiculously ancient date). And some have multiple styles on the same building. For example, the cathedral on the castle grounds has a Gothic front and back, I think the side is Baroque or Renaissance, with a tower top made out of copper and there’s a clock. And some of the statues on the Gothic front have dudes in tuxedos, but whatever, right?! That happened because that church took 600 years to build. The famous church in the Old Town Square took 100-200 years to build, and that’s why the towers look funny in comparison to each other and the bottom part of the building. There has just been a lot of stopping/starting of construction, or reconstruction to fix buildings, so there are some weird things. Like a random Greek styled entrance on the side of a Baroque building, or facades that cover an ancient archway, but which you can still see through a window of said façade. …

Anyways, on Friday we met up and went to our hostel, and we began on Saturday. Unfortunately, that’s when the rain started and didn’t stop ALL DAY. Luckily I had my rain jacket and an umbrella, but I don’t think my feet have ever been so wet for so long in my whole life. By the end of the day, my lower six inches were soaked. And I promise I wasn’t jumping in puddles. It was crazy. But going beyond the miserably wet state of my feet, I had an interesting day. We did a free walking tour around the Old Town area and the Jewish District and learned a lot of very interesting things. For instance: the astronomical clock was the first of its kind, which made Prague unique, and only the creator knew how to make it, but then the government at that time got scared that he would build one for another city, so they blinded him. In revenge, he committed suicide by jumping into the clockwork and it was broken for the next 100 years until they figured out how to fix it. And there is a tradition of throwing people out of windows when they are very angry about the government or some issue, like early clashes between Catholics and Protestants (there may or may not be pointed stakes at the bottom). The Jewish District of today (which is now the more wealthy and desirable area of town for shops) was a Jewish Ghetto for a very long time because it was the undesirable land. It was several meters lower than the rest of the city and when the Moldau River flooded, the area basically became a swamp. So naturally anti-Semitists forced the very high Jewish population to live very cramped there. For hundreds of years there was a large Jewish community, but after the Holocaust, not many survived, and of the ones who did, not many returned, so the Jewish community today is very small. In my opinion, the most interesting surviving part of the original Jewish Ghetto is the Jewish Cemetery. They were forced to use only a small piece of land to bury people, and with such a high concentration of people, they naturally ran out of space very fast. So they just kept layering more dirt on top when they ran out of space and moved the tombstones to the top layer. They estimate that in the 9-12 layers, there are around 100,000 people buried, and the earliest (that they can read, many tombstones are illegible) is from the 1400s. Crazy stuff. Later we were told about the “most haunted” church in Prague. The legend goes that a long time ago, a thief wanted to steal some of the treasures in the church, so he snuck in during the day and hid, so that when everyone was gone he could take what he wanted. In the act of taking a necklace off of a Mary statue, the statue came to life and grabbed his arm, preventing him from getting away. In the morning, the priests “rescued” him from the statue’s grasp by cutting off his arm, and after they had cut it off, the statue let it go and went back to its normal position. So you know what they did?!  They kept the arm and hung it from the ceiling as a warning to all thieves. I don’t think that story is true, but what is gross is there is a skeletal arm hanging from the ceiling! Who does that, seriously? Probably the same people who decorate the interior of a church entirely with human bones! (I didn’t go there; I just heard that that church was an hour outside of Prague). Honestly. For dinner that night, we went to a place that served Czech food, which was a lot like German, I thought. We went back to the hostel a bit earlier because the weather was just too miserable to withstand much longer.

 

Sunday we got going a little later because we slept awhile. But that’s the day we went around the Jewish district and saw all the synagogues (we didn’t on Saturday because that’s their Sabbath and everything was closed). Cool stuff. Then we did a tour of the castle area at 2. We learned some more history and stories, but not as many “interesting” ones as Saturday’s. The most interesting thing that I learned was that J.K. Rowling used to live in Prague and taught English there and led some tours in the castle area. One of those areas was the Golden Lane (I think that’s what it’s called), which is a street of adorable, tiny houses/shops. This was pretty much (part of?) her inspiration for Hogsmeade/Diagon Alley. There’s even a legend from that street that there’s a house that only certain people can see (Leaky Cauldron, anyone?). I’ll stop being a silly Harry Potter fan after I mention that Norbert the dragon came from a person. We got a really nice view of the city from the castle area, and the area itself was really beautiful. I already mentioned the cathedral, which we unfortunately couldn’t go inside. There was an armor exhibit with all shapes and sizes, which brought great amusement. The weather that day was tolerable; there were long periods without rain (YEEEEEEEEEEES) but then it would randomly start to pour really hard. It had been raining so much that the river was flooding a TON. Enough to call in the army, which we saw. A bajillion cars with flashy lights and trucks with soldiers peering out the back passed by. At that point we didn’t know the river was dangerously rising, so we were getting all sorts of wild ideas. After dinner (Mexican tacos… in the Czech Republic… pretty good… and there were refried beans! Which I was thoroughly excited about) we were tired of being wet and went back to the hostel.

Valerie had to leave extremely early in the morning, which was further complicated by a number of metros and trams being shut down due to flooding (the worst flooding in about 10 years). After she got on her way, I went back to bed. I had planned to go to a museum, because I had lots of time till I had to go, but the still-miserable weather made me too lethargic. I really liked Prague, it reminded me of Vienna a lot, but it was really hard to enjoy because of the rain. I’m still glad I went. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I did and learned this break. I only have about two weeks left till I go back to America and that thought is weirding me out beyond all reason. I don’t know if I should rejoice or cry. But I still have a bunch of things to do till then, so I’ll decide later.

Being Epic

The past few days have been really great. Another CBYXer (Xinyi, the American friend from “Headin’ North” that I already did lots of epic things with) had some school-free days, so she visited me and we packed our days with epic-ness and train rides. Our adventures began on Thursday, when we went to Heidelberg. (To all those Heidelbergers: Yes, I went without saying anything. Please don’t send hate mail or kill me. I promise I won’t do it again. Thanks.) … (If it makes it any better, I’ll go back in June. You have been forewarned.) It was really weird to go back to the area I lived in for the majority of my exchange; it was almost as if I had never left. It brought up some mixed feelings, but that soon went away as we enjoyed ourselves walking along the Neckar River to the Alte Brücke. From there we saw the Heilige Geist Kirche, then took the Bergbahn up to the castle. Cool stuff and beautiful views. Even though I have been to Heidelberg before, I really enjoyed the beauty of the place. Definitely one of the prettiest cities I have been to. I knew of Xinyi’s minor major Christmas obsession, so we naturally went to the Käthe Wohlfahrt store, which sells Christmas stuff all year round. It was a great day and it made me happy to see it all again. (If you’re still mad at me, maybe it helps to know that we were in that Christmas store for almost 2 hours, and were in Heidelberg before anyone would reasonably want to wake up on a holiday). Also on Thursday we went to the Frühlingsfest in Stuttgart with my host sister. It was basically a carnival/fair with rides and such, as well as lots of food, beer, and people running around in Dirndls and Lederhosen. It was highly amusing, and I got a chocolate covered apple, which instantly makes everything better.

On Friday we went to Strasbourg, which is actually FRANCE, directly on the border with Germany. Parlez-vous français? Me neither. Which made everything extremely difficult. Because the French are very proud of their language, which means that everything is in French, with no other options. So we had to figure out how to get to the city center, without a map, mind you. Because really, who wants to buy a map for 1 Euro?! … We figured it out. It took some wandering around and asking, but we eventually found the cathedral, which was rather cool. It reminded me a lot of the one in Köln. We admitted defeat and bought a map at that point, and ate at a café to make a game-plan. So we went into the cathedral, which had really nice stain glass windows. Then we got ice cream. Then climbed to the top of the cathedral to burn the calories we just ate. And burn it did. In my legs, specifically. But the climb up the 300+ stairs (the kid behind me was counting) was well worth it, because the view was amazing. Very, very amazing. We did a little “culture/environment-soaking-in” by stopping to listen to a random group of singers outside of the cathedral, and then some street musicians (at which point I thought “oh-my-goodness-I-am-SO-in-France”, even though that happens in Germany too). We walked along a river to the Petite France section of the city. Honestly, I’m not sure of the significance of that area; I just know it had some really cute houses and streets that reminded me of Quedlinburg. A little more wandering around ensued, just to soak it all in. Strasbourg reminded me of Vienna a lot, but Vienna was more ornate, and Strasbourg had more of a French/German-town feeling. I’m definitely glad we went there, it was really nice (and now I get to say I’ve been to France).

On Saturday we went to Triberg, which is a little town in the Schwarzwald, but gets a lot of tourist attention because it has Germany’s highest waterfall. Getting there didn’t require very much walking, which surprised me. It was well worth it, the waterfall was lovely, as well as the forest surrounding it. Back in the center of Triberg, we looked at cuckoo clocks (because while you’re in the Schwarzwald, you HAVE to do that), and a nice old man complimented my German skills and explained how the clocks work. It was rather fascinating. Afterwards, we got onto the train again to go to Freiburg. The train ride was beautiful because we got to see some of the Schwarzwald and some of the traditional style houses/farms there. We weren’t able to stay in Freiburg too long, but we saw most of the important stuff. I was very impressed with the cathedral there, mainly because they seemed to have really made an effort to make it look like it had when it was first built. There was minimal electric lighting, and in some areas there was still paint on the walls (I don’t know if it was original or renovated, it was rather faded so it was hard to tell). We saw a really interesting aerial picture that was taken from a bomber plane in WWII, which showed that all the buildings around the cathedral were practically leveled, but the cathedral wasn’t damaged at all. Also famous to Freiburg are the Bächle, which are small canals that run through the streets and provided water and helped fight fires in the early history of Freiburg (you did NOT use it as a toilet). We saw some kids playing with toy boats in them, and I nearly died from the cuteness. So even though we weren’t there very long, it was definitely worth it to go. Plus we got ice cream, which is always worth it.

 

 

On Sunday we went to see the Neuschwanstein Castle. Yeah, that one. The really famous one that everyone associates with Disney. Up until Sunday, we had had no problems with the trains. I knew our luck wouldn’t last. We had 4 minutes to get to our next train, and naturally the train we were on had a SIX MINUTE delay. And naturally the next train to Füssen was in an hour. So we entertained ourselves with vending machine food, 20 Questions, and reading. The train ride was great because the countryside was soooooo gorgeous. That day was the coldest day yet, especially because it was up in the mountains, and it was rainy, and we ended up having to pay for our bus tickets (we thought our train ticket covered it), and we were an hour later than we wanted to be. But. It. Was. AWESOME. Visiting Neuschwanstein should be a mandate for every person on this planet in order to continue existing. If anyone ever dares try to destroy anything within a 1000 mile radius of Neuschwanstein, I shall have to become most severe. We got our tickets and time slot, walked up to the castle, and took a bazillion pictures. There’s a bridge at a higher point on the mountain than the castle where you can get a GORGEOUS view of the castle and countryside. Despite the cold wind, we stayed up there and took a bunch of pictures for awhile. Inside the castle was rather cool, it’s a shame it wasn’t finished (due to King Ludwig II dying). Getting back to Füssen was harder than we thought, because not many buses were running… So that caused us to miss the train we wanted, and we had to take one 30 minutes later. That 30 minutes resulted in us arriving in Stuttgart around 11:30pm, rather than 9pm. Oh wells. But while we were waiting we saw a rainbow!!! Two rainbows, in fact. The bottom one was the most clear I have ever seen. It just seemed to fit so perfectly after having just seen the castle the spawned the epitome of all fantasy castles.

 

 

 

Monday we just went around Stuttgart. We had planned to go to a museum, but we discovered they are all closed on Mondays. Ooops. So we were mainly in the city center, just looking at stuff until Xinyi had to leave. Overall, it was GREAT to have her come and do fun stuff together. I’m so glad we got to see all the places we did, it was really EPIC!! :)

Oh yeah, I have a Blog

It has been awhile, so I guess I should update this. Not too much has been going on, but it all has accumulated into something sort of blog-worthy.

First and foremost, SPRING HAS FINALLY COME! (Sort of, it comes and goes). But the fact remains, I have seen the SUN!! And so with that comes spring activities. There was an International Trick Filmfest (film festival) in Stuttgart, which was pretty cool. There was this huge screen set up at the Schlossplatz where you could just sit on the grass and watch lots of short films. It was pretty cool, though I didn’t see too much from it, partly due to rainy weather. There was/is also a Frühlingsfest (spring festival), which is like Oktoberfest, but… in the spring. So I have seen a lot of people running around in Lederhosen and Dirndls. Which is highly amusing.

I actually went jogging! That was cool… though it made me realize how out of shape I am and how much weight I have gained (I still blame the bread). But the sun has done wonderful things for me, I feel so much more active and happy when the sun shines in comparison to the days when the sky is a solid block of gray clouds.

However, what is NOT helping my productivity is that I found out how to watch stuff on Hulu and Netflix (which you normally can’t do in Germany due to some copyright law). And it’s LEGAL, mind you. So I may have been spending a little too much time watching stuff and procrastinating the homework that I usually don’t do anyways.

That does not mean that I have been entirely unproductive. Example #1: I did most of my math homework once and gave some correct answers in class (which I think totally surprised everyone). The bad news is now the teacher expects me to have done my homework (which I admit I hadn’t been doing). But in other classes I really do pay attention! Even if it is German class and they’re talking about Goethe’s Faust (which is like the German Shakespeare) and I have no idea what is going on, or English class talking about grammar that I have known since elementary school, or ethics class talking about what some philosopher/scholar said. Example #2: I’m in the school’s orchestra, which is playing the music for the school play. It’s not a musical; (speaking of Shakespeare…) it’s actually Romeo and Juliet. So that’s cool, and I have been enjoying participating and doing all the rehearsals. Considering the school is so small, the theater program is rather good. Funny stories: there’s a fighting scene between Mercutio and Tybalt (Mercutio dies) and they have everything all choreographed. At one point, Tybalt is on the ground and vaults Mercutio over his head in a roll sort of thing. Mercutio unfortunately ran into the wall during this rehearsal, but continued trying to go through the scene while limping/hopping around. What makes this funny is that the guys are wearing Elizabethan style tights, and his were unfortunately not tight enough. So as he is hopping around, fighting for his life against Tybalt, his pants are sagging and his underwear is showing. The director had pity and told them to skip to the part where he dies. Another amusing moment was went Romeo and Benvolio bonked heads really hard.  And another was when the protective cup thing Benvolio was wearing was hit and made a very loud crack sound. Rehearsals are so amusing.

Ah, and while we are speaking about theater. I have done some thinking about the job I want to have. Before, I only had this general idea of something art related, so I figured I would be an art major. But I have decided I want to do set designing for theater or films, and that’s a theater major! So… basically I have told everyone the wrong thing about what I’m going to do with my life and I’m actually going to be a very artsy theatre major. Until further notice.

So yeah… That’s basically all that’s going on. It’s weird to think I only have about a month and a half left. In some ways, I feel like I’ve been here long enough. Experienced a lot, learned a lot, met good people, etc., but I’ve had enough and am ready to go back to America (and lose the weight I’ve gained, because I’ll go back to my usual eating habits and my body can stop freaking out about how much German food I consume). But in other ways, I’m thinking, “WHAT?! Only a month and a half?! But there’s so much I haven’t done or seen yet!” Even though some things have really sucked (pardon my French…), I don’t want to go. But I do… But I don’t. Ha. In any case, I’m trying to enjoy the rest of my exchange as much as possible.