Munich...

I was a bit bewildered when I arrived in Munich’s enormous train station, with so many people and so many options for transportation. I had the address of the apartment in which I would be staying, but couldn’t quite remember how the public transportation system here worked, so wasn’t sure where I needed to purchase a ticket. In the meantime, I saw an unbelievable number of women in dirndl dresses and men in lederhosen and wondered if that was merely because of Oktoberfest or if that really was slightly normal. Eventually I took the S-Bahn and Straßenbahn and found the apartment. By that point I was tired and sweaty and wanted nothing more than to do nothing. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone or going anywhere or even like unpacking my things. I did, however; do all three of those things. I spoke with the owner of the apartment briefly, unpacked my things, showered and headed off to the nearest S-Bahn stop to go to the Theresien-Wiese to see the second-to-last evening of Oktoberfest.

Oktoberfest was very different from how I had imagined it to be. The beer tents were much larger, fancier and colorful than I had pictured them and I had also not counted on so many rides such as at a fair or carnival. Wandering around and observing many of the people there in their traditional outfits, with their beer, pretzels and sausages made for an amusing first evening in Munich.




I have my own room here in an apartment and share the kitchen and bathroom with a woman and her son. My room is really comfortable and it is nice to be able to have peace and quiet when I want it, but it feels like an awkward situation. I live here, but there is really no contact with either of the other two people. There is no living room and they are never in the kitchen when I am around. I scarcely see them and am lucky to exchange 2 words with them throughout a day.

I enjoy my class at the Goethe Institut here in Munich much more. I have an excellent teacher, so although I have afternoon class rather than in the mornings, it is much more bearable. I wish I would have had a teacher like him in Göttingen. I truly believe that I learned more in the first one or two days here than I did during my entire previous two months.

On Tuesday morning I decided to register myself with my new address here in Munich and to try to get my visa, but after spending 4 hours going from office to office I was told to come back in a week, with a paper saying how many hours a week I am taking classes. That was kind of frustrating, but it makes me understand all the more clearly how frustrating it is for some people trying to get US visas, which can be much more difficult to come by and much more time consuming.

This morning I went to the Deutsches Museum, which is the largest technical museum in the world. I found the musical area with one of the world’s first Jupeboxes, which is really like an enormous music box that plucks tiny keys and while gears and propellers spin, and the aeronautics section with many of the first successful flying machines.



There is so much to see here. Little by little, I shall see more of this city.

Between train stations…

I left Göttingen on the morning of Wednesday September 29, with far too much luggage. Funny how things accumulate over the course of a year- luxury items, such as books, and necessary things such as laundry detergent, cooking supplies, and shampoo. Fortunately morning and mid-day trains in the middle of the week in Lower Saxony are not in high demand, so I did not had no problem maneuvering in the train stations or in the trains.

I arrived in Cloppenburg and waited for my former host family to come pick me up, since they were taking my host cousin to that same train station a few hours after my arrival. I spent a few enjoyable days in Spahnharrenstätte. I was able to go running on fairly flat terrain in familiar territory and to stop by the flower shop where I had done a practicum nearly three years earlier. I spent my evenings with friends drinking tea and eating ice-cream as well as one evening with my host sisters and their current Finnish exchange student watching movies. One of my sisters and I delivered newspapers on Saturday afternoon. It was kind of a strange feeling placing the newspapers in the same newspaper mail boxes that I used to put them in every Sunday morning 3 years ago.

Sunday morning, on the day of German Unification, my host mother took me took me to the train station in Lathen, from which I departed for Munich. I was a little nervous about making all of my connections, because I had little time, but everything worked out. I am so thankful that I had reserved seats in the ICE and EC trains because it made life so much easier, just finding my seat, sitting down, and not having anyone come along and tell me that I needed to move and find a new seat. On my final train, I had my first encounter with a Bayrisch-speaker. Very difficult to understand, but doable with a lot of concentration!

مساء الخير

Good evening! On Friday eveing, my roommate from Minnesota and I went over to the apartment of two men from Iraq who are also studying here on the Goethe Institut. Both men are named Mohammad, and one of them is in our class. They invited us over for supper and wanted to share their traditional food with us.

We had accepted their invitation, but were not sure how comfortable the meal would be, especially because the one in our class had been somewhat hostile towards us as "Americans" in class. It actually turned out to be wonderful. We spent five hours preparing the delicious food, eating and talking. It meant a lot to both of them, but especially to Mohammad from our class, that we actually came to his home. He was really friendly and even said that we should have done that before, but he didn't think that Americans would ever accept an invitation from and Iraqi. We all had a lot of fun spending much of the evening laughing and joking around. I'm really glad that we had the opportunity to get to know each other better and eliminate the tension caused by political conflict between our homelands.

Relaxing in the Ruhrgebiet

After several weeks here in Göttingen, I was finally able to travel a little on my own and go visit some friends (from my exchange year) in the Ruhrgebiet. It was a wonderful break from Göttingen. My train ride was quite long, lasting nearly 5 hours with 4 changes of trains, and one stop as short as 3 minutes. I was picked up by two friends at the train station in Duisburg and we went to eat a delicious meal, but way too much food. After finishing an enormous plate full of pasta and soup we decided to have tea and crepes as well. After supper, we went to a small but elegant movie theater with red carpet and walls and theater lights. The commercials before the movie were quite amusing.

On Saturday we went for a long walk around Voerde through the forest and then eventually looped back around to purchase groceries. But since we hadn't thought of doing that before returning to their house we had no grocery sacks/bags so divied up the groceries amoung ourselves and carried them all in our arms to avoid purchasing a 15 cent sack. I realized that they had the same thoughts as me... It is simply the principle of paying for a sack. I refuse to do it either. Later in the day we ate and then went to a dance class in Wesel. It was a lot of fun learning the basic steps to Rumba, Tango, Waltz, Disco Fox, Fox Trot, and Cha Cha Cha. The others had been taking the class for a few weeks, but my friends had asked if I could participate that one day, and the teacher had even been kind enough to make sure that there was a partner for me. It was a ton of fun. Afterwards we attended the Dance Party which was by far more to my liking than a disco because it was people who actually know how to dance... classy dances rather than just "Jump Style" and other such things, it was smoke free, and the music was not at an unreasonably high volume. We met a few other young people there that we were able to visit with. After we got home, we decided to watch a movie- Gegen die Wand. It was an interesting movie that focused on social problems such as the issues that Turkish immigrants and their children face in Germany, not fitting in here, but not in Turke either.

After very few hours of sleep, I got up on Sunday morning and walked to the train station to go to Recklinghausen. There I was able to spend the day with my first German host family, with whom I spent one month for orientation in July/August 2007. It was wonderful to see them again. Food was of course a major part of our day as was our walk to an art exhibit. My host father and one of my host sisters are quite interested in art, but the other host sister is not. We went for a long walk up a giant hill to see the exhibit, known as "Der Schwarze Kugel" ("The Black Ball"). And that is precisely what it was. A black ball, which had a diameter of about 1.5 meters, according to my estimation. I found it amusing to listen to the discussion between my host sisters, one saying it was interesting because of its symbolism (although she didn't know what they might be) and the other wondering why we had walked so far just to see a black ball. We then continued to walk to the highest point overlooking Recklinghausen, from which one can also see Dortmund and the Schalke soccer stadium in Gelsenkirchen. My trip back with the train was kind of interesting because I had to change trains in Gelsenkirchen, shortly after the end of the Dortmund-Schalke soccer game.


Inga, Birthe, and me

On Tuesday, I visited a Realschule near Duisburg and got to talk to several English classes, answering questions about the United States and helping them with some assignments. I returned that evening to Göttingen in high spirits after a splendid weekend with friends whom I had not seen for quite some time.

Die Sonne scheint!... The sun is shining!

Today has been a gorgeous day. It's been one whole rainless day of sunshine. I woke up and had a great hour-long run through the forest and discovered a gorgeous meadow. When one runs along the perimeter it is possible to gaze down on forest and villages below. The last of summers flowers covered in dew and colorful trees showing signs of autumn were a sight. One my way back I was able to see the tiny little black doorway where the trees parted for the trail, other than that, it was not evident that a trail even existed.

I then went to the church on Albani Platz where I got to listen to some beautiful organ music and of course Luther's famous "A Mighty Fortress..."

This afternoon, Steffi, a German lady, who I met a few weeks ago who was interested in practicing her English, invited me over to her house for cake and tea. I met her husband and we chatted for a while. then we went to a little lake or pond nearby and went for a walk. The weather was perfect and it was so nice to go for a walk in a new place.

I've barely spent anytime indoors. Who knows if there will be any more days of nice weather. I sure enjoyed it!

a day in the life of "Ah-preel"

A typical day goes something like this...

6:30 alarm clock rings. I decide I'm not ready to get out of bed, so I hit snooze, but can't really even doze because I don't want it to actually ring again because my roommate is still sleeping. Then I stumble out of bed, find a ponytail holder, my keys, glasses and running clothes. Then I head out of my room, down the hallway and out the door with high hopes that it will not be raining. But either way, I'm already outside, so I begin my run. "Where to?" That is the question. If it has rained a substantial amount, I decide I will run around Göttingen. If not, I head off towards the forest...all uphill. When running in the forest, I like to explore different paths (which sometimes leads to a longer run than previously planned).

One such instance would be last Sunday evening, when I went running with a guy from my floor. We planned to run for about a half and hour. It took us probably about 20-25 minutes to get to the Biergarten in the forest and we decided we could go a little further, since the whole way back would be down hill. As it turned out of course, we did not choose all the correct paths and ended up at an opening in the forest where we had a gorgeous view of all the surrounding areas and a small town far below in the valley. We ran on a little further and saw someone cycling on another forest path. Ram, my friend, sprinted up a hill and caught up the the biker and asked for directions. What we had found was another lost person also searching for Göttingen. We were finally able to find our way back and arrived back in Göttingen after 1 hour and fifteen minutes, then walked the rest of the way back the the Goethe Institut.

I then return, get ready for class, read a little, make breakfast and always end up grabbing my things at 8:29 and hurrying out the door to make it to class in the Pavilion by 8:30. The good thing is when I arrive then, I arrive on punctually but not early enough to listen to our abnoxious class song, which is supposed to get us ready for the day. None of us quite understand the purpose of listening to it. It's a tecno song, so fine for a disco, but not the thing I'd like to listen to at 8:30 in the morning.

Then I have class until 1 o'clock with 2 twenty minute breaks. We (my classmates and I) usually play table tennis or stand around and talk and then make tea in the last 2 minutes before class resumes.

After class, I make dinner and then usually go for a walk with my roommate, take a walk in the forest, or wander around town. Then I read until it is time to make supper and other people finally exit their rooms and become sociable. We then usually eat together and have interesting conversations covering a wide range of topics. Then I return to my room and try to convince myself to get my homework done so I can either have free time, make some tea,and go to sleep with the sounds of tecno music playing from somewhere in the building.

Erfurt

This week on Thursday we had our Projekttag...Project Day, which means we took a field trip. We traveled to Erfurt, a city in Thüringen, one of the former East German states. There we were able to see several historical sites and museums, including the Kaisersaal- a meeting place for famous people such as Goethe, Schiller, Napleon, and Czar Alexander I. In 1808, Erfurt was the important city in Europe.

The Rathaus (city hall) is filled with beautiful paintings depicting scenes from German epics and also many paintings of Luther. Luther began his studies in Erfurt in 1501 and later became a monk in the Augustiner-Eremiten Monestery there. We visited both enormous churches in the city, a catholic church (Marienkirche) and the Lutheran church (Sewerinkirche) which are side by side, with a Biergarten just off of their steps, which I found a bit humerous.

The Zidelle Petersberg was interesting in that we were able to learn about the different changes of who was incontrol of the region at different points inhistory including the meeting of the French and Russians there. We walked through 2 km of underground zigzagging tunnels that were built for combatting the enemy and hiding.

It was a nice day to spend with the class, especially to be outside of the classroom.




My roommate and me in Erfurt