Gone

Hello family and friends, I am now officially moved to Tübingen (although I haven't gotten my dorm room yet so am staying with a friend). I was sad to leave my host family and friends in Schwäbisch Hall, but am looking forward to living here! Tomorrow I fly to Rome for 6 days, then Spain for another  5, and finally Portugal until I fly back to Deutschland on April 13th. I am very excited and will hopefully have many adventures to share once I get back! xoxo -Jen

Brown paper packages tied up with strings...

Since I've been in Germany for a while now, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite things (mostly food-related), and what I know I will miss once I go back to America!

1: Döner Kebab. This gyro-like sandwich is actually Turkish, but super popular and prevalent all over Germany. At only 3 or so euro a sandwich, it is seriously the most delicious and perfect lunch or snack! There really isn't anything like it (that I've seen) in America, which is honestly such a shame.

2. Laugenbrötchen. While Germany is well-known for soft pretzels, I much rather prefer the Laugenbrötchen, or pretzel roll auf Englisch. They are soft and a little salty, and go perfectly with honey, nutella, salami, cheese, jam, butter, and everything else.

3. Electric towel racks. Is there anything better than a warm towel after the freezing cold air hits you after a shower? I think not. Why don't we have these in the USA??

4. Kaffee und Kuchen. Seriously my favorite tradition here. Pretty much every afternoon after my host dad gets home from work (Monika is already home because Kindergarten only lasts until 1), we sit and drink coffee and tea and eat cake or cupcakes or muffins. It's even better on birthdays, when there is usually a selection of at least 6 cakes for 15 or so people!

5. Dunkel Bier. I was pretty surprised myself to find that I prefer most dark beers to white, but I find them sweeter and easier to drink than weiss bier, although they are both 100x better than American beers.

These are all my brain can come up with right now, but I will think of more and add to this list later! Today I went to a Osternmarkt with my host family since Easter is only a week away. It was in the Freilandmuseum, a little village of houses from the 1800s turned into a museum, which was quite cool, but it was scheisskalt! There was traditional egg-dying with natural colors made from wood and onions and also a market selling Zuckerhasen, or sugar rabbits, a lot like the christmas candy we make but poured into rabbit molds when it is boiling hot. It's hard to believe, but a week from today, I will be in the Vatican City and at Easter Mass given by the new Pope!!

Nele and her natural wood-dyed egg

The making of the Zuckerhasen

St. Patty's Day in Deutschland

It feels quite strange that today is one of the biggest holidays in college terms, and yet most Germans don't know what Saint Patricks Day is! I might have forgotten myself if not for Facebook... Thank god it always reminds you what you're missing out on! Regardless, my lazy Sunday has been really nice, and I was very grateful to catch up on some much needed sleep. Yesterday we took a day trip to Heidelberg, which I think was definitely the most beautiful city I've seen in Germany, or anywhere else really, thus far. It hosts the oldest University in Germany and I certainly wouldn't mind studying there! We spent the day doing a walking tour of the city and University museum, then we had a break for lunch and shopping along what is said to be the longest shopping street in all of Europe. Afterwards we met up with our guide for a tour of the castle overlooking the city--- ganz schön!

My week was quite normal... Friday I went back to Schenkenseebad with friends and went out that night with Ines and her friends to celebrate her birthday this past Tuesday. Thursday was Kaffee and Kuchen at Goethe Institut and I got to see our sweet friend, Uli, again. Wednesday was Stammtisch, and Tuesday I went to a ballet class with some friends. We took a day trip to Tübingen on Monday to sort out details on our quickly approaching move into the dorms there... It's still hard for me to believe that I only have 10 days left of school at Goethe Institut and in Schwäbisch Hall! I am excited to move to Tübingen and be a university student again, but I will be sad to leave my host family and my easy life here behind.

Gemütlich

The title of this post describes my life in Hall perfectly; gemütlich translates to cozy, comfortable, homey, and leisurely in English. Not having much to do besides class every morning really allows you to enjoy the little things, and take time to do things I wouldn't normally in Ann Arbor or East Lansing. For instance, on Thursday I went to the Solbad with two friends and spent over three hours just relaxing in the saltwater pools. Friday I spent the entire afternoon bowling with a group from Goethe, then this Tuesday, I'm going to a beginning ballet class with friends! Like I said, not having much to do lets me do interesting things and appreciate them more.

Bowling with three new friends from Japan,
one from Brazil, and two other Americans.

This Saturday was Nele's much anticipated 9th birthday and party. It was very similar to my birthday parties when I was younger I think, especially the part where she got extremely cranky and sassy when things weren't going her way. The absolute best part of German birthdays is all the cake though... Between yesterday and today I've had probably 10 slices, since we celebrated it with three different groups of people! Anne, my oldest host sister that lives in Bremen, came home for the weekend and Nele's Geburtstag, so it was nice to get to meet her since she only makes it home a couple times a year. She is an "art therapist" and has worked with disabled children and people in jail previously, as well as spent significant amounts of time in Mexico and Nepal. She invited me to visit her in Bremen which I can hopefully do in one of these next couple months!

Monika, Nele, Anne, Ines und Thomas at the table where we eat all of our meals.

Side note, writing on my blog is the only time I ever really write in English (besides chatting online but that hardly counts) and I keep wanting to use German words, which has to be a good sign!

Spring Fever

My February class: 14 students and 7 nationalities! So süß.

Well, today was the first day of March classes and just as I expected, I was a little more than disappointed with my new class... All of my classmates seem nice, but our teacher speaks sooooo slllllowwwwwlllllyyyy and we literally only did about 20% of the amount of activities as we would do in my class last month. Hopefully it will get better, because practically falling asleep on the first day is never a good sign and I constantly kept wishing that it was my February class!

On the plus side, it is currently sunny, 60 degrees, and feeling like spring here! Some friends and I ate lunch while drinking Radlers (bier and lemonade) along the river and it felt quite heavenly compared to the cold wintery weather we've been having. Afterwards I was on such a sun-high that I decided to go running for the second day in a row, something that I do very seldom. Here's to hoping German weather isn't as inconstant as Michigan weather!

Berlin, Berlin!

The Brandenburger Tor

My first mini-vaca in Europe to Berlin was a success! Berlin is seriously a cool city with such history that still has a big presence everywhere, and also some of the best food stands in the world I think... It reminded me a lot of New York City in a lot of ways--they are both not the prettiest cities but there is always always something to do, have really fantastic public transportation, and Berlin's Tiergarten is practically a mirror image of Central Park. After being there for only four days, we really only skimmed the surface of all the possibilities of things to see and do, and I could have stayed for quite a while longer. For the first two nights, I stayed with a friend from UM, who is studying at the Goethe Institut in Berlin and lives with a host family in East Berlin. It was really nice knowing someone in the city and getting a less touristy picture of Berlin, especially in terms of nightlife. The next two nights I stayed in extra beds in my friend's hostel rooms in the Mitte--not having to pay for any accommodations made me feel less bad about spending more money in Berlin than my whole first month in Schwäbisch Hall!

With Hera at the Altes Museum

Denkmal für ermordeten Juden Europas

Our train got us to Berlin a little after 9 on Wednesday night and after dropping our stuff off at Corey's place, we went to the Stammtisch for the Berlin Goethe Institut which was really cool, and made me laugh to compare it to our little Stammtischs in Schwäbisch Hall! Thursday was a pretty touristy day, but we covered quite a lot of sites: the Brandenburger Tor, Reichstag, Memorial for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and Checkpoint Charlie. I was a little bitter because I got scammed in the U-Bahn to buying a fake day-pass, but luckily we never got our tickets checked... whoops! I met Corey and his French friend, Antoine, for dinner at a famous German brewery before meeting up with the other UM students at their hostel bar, which was more crowded than I've ever seen at a hostel! Friday we spent the entire day on Museuminsel, an island in the middle of the city literally covered in very cool museums. We covered four of the most famous museums, progressively spending less time in each as our attention spans allowed. Saturday was a really beautiful day, so we walked through the Tiergarten for a while and past the zoo, then back into the Mitte and along the Mauer and through the Topographie des Terrors, which is a outdoor museum in the basement of the old Gestapo headquarters. That afternoon I got to meet up with my good friend Alexandra, who is in Berlin for her spring break with the Max Kade group from UM (the same program that I went to Cologne last year with). It was unfortunate that my little break from Goethe only overlapped with their vacation by a day, but still nice to see her! Even though my time here has been going by really fast, I know I'll be grateful to get to see friends from home sporadically during my time here later on and will help me from getting too homesick!

Just passing some llamas along the riverwalk

Yesterday I woke up after getting probably three hours of sleep, and we headed out to the Berlin flea market before 10. The flea market was a really long stretch of stands selling pretty much everything you can imagine and was a little cold, but very cool and somewhere I could see myself going often if I lived in Berlin. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel, I packed up my stuff, and managed to get to my train a mere 5 minutes before it left, also whoops... The train back to Nürnberg was quite long but comfortable, and then we had to take an S-Bahn, bus, and train to finally got back into Schwäbisch Hall. Needless to say, the traveling, lack of sleep, and many kilometers walked made me quite exhausted, which is what I blame for my taking the wrong bus home last night. It was quite an exciting weekend, but I've been enjoying my day off of classes today in little Schwäbisch Hall!

Also, quick update on the flu I had last week... Apparently it was a strain of noro-virus and has been spread around so much and so quickly that Ines had no school on Friday and today! Talk about German efficiency. ;)