Jen in Deutschland

B2: Moving Day

2005-09-07T22:10:00.000+02:00

Hello anyone left desperately checking for posts on this blog. But I will tell you now, once and for all, that "Jen in Deutschland" has come to a close.

But this is not the end. Oh no, this is not the end.
After spending almost an entire month *blogless*. I have put together a new one. It looks very different, but believe me, it is still a blog, and it is still mine. It is called "These are the Voyages" and it can be found at www.jennygiez.blogspot.com

Auf wiedersehen and enjoy!!

16.August.2005 - Central Time

2005-08-17T13:39:00.000+02:00

Aaaaand I'm at home again!
It has sure been a while sice I've seen this place.

At Nat's I woke up at a good 6am, and even did a little workout in my room before I showered and met her upstairs for breakfast. She made me an amazing cup of tea and before I knew it we were on our way back to Pearson. I checked into my favorite - WestJet - this time, said thank you and goodbye to the Binders, grabbed a coffee and a sandwich and just sat at the gate for an hour, catching up on Canada with the good old Globe and Mail.

The two hour flight ended up being almost two and a half, but it felt like 5. I was starting to have enough of airplanes and I was also jumpy because of that coffee. At least this WestJet plane had satellite TV. So I watched Red Green and 22 Minutes to really welcome myself home.

No sooner had I steppped out of the plane than I saw my parents waiting at the bottom of the escalator. I even got a little teary-eyed! We drove straight home from the airport, as it was too early to have dinner yet. We all basically just hung around at home all night, Steph came home and they all just watched me empty my bags, awaitig the little German presents that I had promised. Later on, even Isaac and Adam called me from Waterloo!

So let the holiday begin! I've got a lot of people to see, but also a lot of time on my hands do to who-knows-what in a town of 4000 people ;) The plan is to do some camping the week after next, I can always go look for old friends or hang out with Grandma, and now there's this wedding to plan... I'm sure the time will be over before I know it.

As for the blog, I'm thinking of taking a little break. I'm not "in Deutschland" anymore, am I? (Even though my internal sleeping-clock still seems to think so). I know there's a bunch of you who have read this thing almost every day from the start, and I just want to say thanks, especially for the encouraging comments! I really just started writing the blog for my parents, so that I wouldn't have to email them every single day to tell them I wasn't in trouble in Germany, but it's turned into a real journal for my thoughts, concerns... and pictures!

I am definitely going to start a new journal, at least when I get back to Waterloo. What can I say, I'm addicted! I'll give it a new name and a new look and I'll link to it from this site when I get it started. So check back in a few weeks!

This is Jen in Deutschland, signing off.

15.August.2005... or is it the 16th?

2005-08-16T14:40:00.000+02:00

Aaaaaand after almost an entire year I'm back in Canada again. I'm actually at Natalie's house in Newmarket right now, just writing in the blog because we have a bit of time still before we have to leave for the airport again. Tonight I'll be back in Altona again with the old family, but most importatly my NEWLY ENGAGED SISTER. Congratulations, Steph!! NOW it's time to talk.

So the flights were good I guess, and totally vomit-free although the landing in London was a close one. The company that provides the catering to British Airways was on strike, however, so there was no food service on the planes. The airline people were totally apologetic, of course, and they were handing out free food vouchers like crazy in all the airports, as well as handing out little bag lunches to absolutely everybody. So we were fine. Sandwiches from Starbucks are amazing, btw. But what else would you expect?

We got to Nat's house at about 9 in the evening or so, I made a quick phone call home and then went straight to sleep in the huge comfortable bed in their guest-bedroom. A nice change from the German residence rooms, that's for sure. I wonder what I'll have to sleep on at home? I'll find out soon!

14.August.2005

2005-08-15T00:03:00.000+02:00

More rain today. More packing. Chris came by with Döners again for lunch. These were going to be the last ones, probably. I took pictures :) I didn't want to go out, so I basically just used the afternoon to finish up packing. Dinner was at Veronica's place, though. Kerfalla was cooking and it was super good. The wine made me chill out from my packing-stress of the afternoon, so that was good. We ate pretty quickly, though, because Veronica wanted to go to church. And I had missed Veronica this past week while she was in Seville, so I went with her! Kerfalla came too. He and I just "observed" the mass. I had been to one before, but he was there for the first time and was totally curious about everything, it was cool. And the music was actually quite good. Back home we broke out the wine again and also ice cream. Good mass, guys, eh? Cheers! Haha More good times. I'm gonna miss that house.

So then was goodbye. I'll see Veonica again in Canada, though. Looking forward to living with that girl! And hopefully Kerfalla will come visit us too.

It was a quick streetcar ride home, and I sat down, caught up on this little blog of mine, as you can tell, and wrote a few last emails. Tomorrow it's off to Toronto. I'm scared of the airport. The Germans are going to get me there, I know it. But that story will have to be written from home...

13.August.2005

2005-08-14T23:56:00.000+02:00

I love the flea market. It was even bigger than last time and I totally topped off my gift-buying, and got something especially cool for my mom. Lunch was flammkuchen, another thing from this region of Germany/France that I am really going to miss. We (Chris, Nat, Me... who else is there anymore??) got back in the early afternoon. Nat went home to meet somebody, but Chris and I stuck around in the city and ended up taking a little trip up the mini-CN-Tower that Mannheim has. Apparently it's must-see(must-go-up) for any visitors to Mannhieim, and it's something that neither of us had gotten around to the entire year. And yah, it was really cool, and probalby actually more worth it when you are familiar with every section of the city that you are looking at. "Hey... there's where we ate Döners that time....!" Haha.

Dinner consisted of cleaning out the freezer. Chicken wings, potato wedges, and fish sticks. It was disgusting. But the freezer is empty of my stuff, more or less ;) Next stop: the fridge. But I don't know if I really have the guts to go in there...

12.August.2005

2005-08-14T23:41:00.000+02:00

So there was soup for lunch today, of course. It was raining like crazy so I didn't do much except halfheartedly pack some more all day. I had a surprise visit from Maria in the afternoon, inviting me to the bar in the evening. Couldn't go, though, because I'm getting up bright and early to go to the fleamarket tomorrow! She's leaving on the same day as me. I might still take her up on that offer to spend the winter months in Sao Paulo, though...!

In the evening the rain let up, and Chris decided that it was a good night for a Döner, so he stopped by and we went to Alanya for a late and very tasty dinner. It was still early to bed for me, though. Fleamarket, here we come!

11.August.2005

2005-08-14T23:33:00.000+02:00

So it was samosas for lunch as well. I did a whole lot of packing in the afternoon, amd before I knew it, it was time for supper. Luckily Chris at his place had decided not to pack as much as make a huge pot of stew today... so that was supper. Afterwards we watched the German DVD that I had gotten from Jan for my birthday. That movie was so great, it is so... German! And the perfect souvenir :)

10.August.2005

2005-08-12T15:52:00.000+02:00

First thing this morning, I went to go pick up my A+ certificate from the professor’s office. I was kind of dreading it, but sure enough, it was there, and it was really an A+. The secretary was even quite nice and even knew that I was an exchange student and had my certificate for me right away. So then I just had to go hand it in to the other nice lady in the international office, get my transcript printed out from her, like she said she would do, and I would be totally done with this school forever.

But was the international office lady there today? Of course not. She was sick today. But there was a girl there. I asked her if she was there to do Frau Berg’s job. She said kind of. I asked her if she knew where the file with ALL my certificates from the entire year was. She said no. I asked her if Frau Berg would be back tomorrow. She said the office was closed tomorrow. I asked her if there was any possibliby that I would get my transcript printed out before I flew out on Monday. She had no idea. So I actually went over to the shelf and found the folder myself, put my certificate in it, as well as my mailing address in Canada and left. So I will most likely fly home with every proof of my participation at this university stuck in some folder in this poor excuse for a student office. Needless to say, this kind of scares me. But what was I expecting, really? I’d just as well do it all over in Canada anyway.

So. As for the better part of the day…
I wandered around in town a bit after that, and got some Chinese noodles at the fast food place since I have pretty much quit buying groceries already. Then I met Chris and Borislav in town and we headed out to Heidelberg for bubble tea. I got green apple this time, and it was probably the best yet. And we just hung out in the same old spot by the river. Man, I’m going to miss Heidelberg! We walked around a bit more and did some gift shopping for people back home. Back in Mannheim we did a little more strolling around and shopping until the hunger set in. And it was a hunger for samosas. So Chris and I actually went and slaved in the kitchen for a good two hours in the eveing and made a huge recipe of potato/meat/bean samosas. They were so yummy. We gave some to Borislav and Tushita, and we even brought a few over to Natalie when we went over to watch the OC. She had never had them before but she really liked them so I was happy. The OC was the second season Christmas episode. So that was kind of weird, considering that we are pretty far from Christmas time in either direction. But of coursre the OC was still fun to watch. Hey, from now on, we’ll never have to watch it again in German :) Somebody's just going to have to lend me the second season before the third one starts back home...

Mmmm, I can't wait for my jun jiu nai cha...

09.August.2005

2005-08-11T18:22:00.000+02:00

Finally! After an entire week, we made it to Trier.

Mmmmm, Trier.

Trier is my some standards the oldest city in Germany, and has actually been recommended to me as a day-trip destination by a bunch of Germans. So I painfully rolled out of bed at 7am and was on the train with Nat and Chris by 8. The ride was fun, like it always is. We played random games and ate food. We all agreed that we were going to seriously miss this train system when we get back to Canada. Oh, of course I’ll come visit you guys in Toronto, I’ll just hop on the... oh... crap.

Well right out of the train station in Trier we came across a huge Roman… thing. It turned out to be a gate and part of an old city wall. It was extremely old, and extremely huge. We weren’t going to go up, but then we found out that the ticket that we would buy covered entry to all the other Roman ruins in the city, and there were quite a few. So since we had gotten there nice and ealry, we decided to go for it! After the huge gate, we walked up the cute pedestrian zone, visited a huge cathedral, another historical church, and a huge underground Roman bathhouse complex. Then it was coffee time. We stopped at your typical German/Italian street café and I had the most amazing Eiskaffee ever (which is a tall glass of cold coffee with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream in it, topped with whipped cream… mmmm). It was a good break. And afterwards we were ready to head out again.

I don't really have any pictures of the big gate, but I pulled out the camera at the cathedral.

The cathedral had a really nice graveyard/courtyard inside.

Nat liked it too.

This was another Roman church, and at some point somebody went and built a big pink... thing in front of it. The corners of the two buildings actually touch each other and overlap. Weird, eh?

Mmmm. Coffee. And always better when you bring your own peanut butter.

Time to work it off!

Next stop: Karl Marx’s birth house. Somewhere along the line I know I had learned that Karl Marx was born in this city. But somewhere along the line I had also slightly forgotten, and it came as a slight (and very nice) surprise as we were reading about the attractions in the city. Our little Roman ticket didn’t cover entry into the Marx House Museum, but we went in anyway. It ended up being pretty cheap, but I would have probably emptied my wallet to get in there! Okay, so Chris and Nat might have thought I was a little over the edge about it all. But I study this stuff. I mean, the ideas from Marx have influenced... okay, I won’t get into it now, but let’s just say this was my favorite place of all in Trier. I even bought souveniers. And that’s saying a lot.

It all started in such a normal looking place.

This is not the souvenier I bought.

This is the one I wish I could have bought ;)

Awww. Friends!

This is Karl Marx’s breakfast plate. Wow.

Teachings of Master Hegel.

Karl Marx’s wife’s name was Jenny. Jenny Marx. I like that.

And we even had our very own guided tour.

After the Marx House we went on a bit of a walk and ended up at another huge Roman bath complex. Man, those people liked to bathe. This was the “King’s Baths” actually. There were a lot of cool ruins above ground, but the best part was the huge underground labyrinth of tall narrow tunnels that went all over the place. We walked a little further to find our last little Roman attraction, an ampitheatre, which was no less cool than the rest of the stuff. Unlike the Coliseum in Rome, this one had actually been carved as a basin into a huge hill, like the one in Heidelberg. We were able to enter it through tunnels from the ground level, just like the Gladiators and stuff. It was pretty big, and from the top you could also see a lot of the city.

I’d love to have a bath in there…

I think this has been reconstructed a little bit, but who cares? It’s still cool.

Ampitheatre

But then it was time for supper. We walked all the way back into the city center from there and grabbed some Nordsee. Beside that was a place that was wafting the scent of its homemead waffle cones into the street, so afterwar Nordsee we just followed our noses. I had already had ice cream in my coffee that morning, so I didn’t get anything, but Chris and Nat picked up some pretty amazing looking creations for the walk back to the train station.

We got there in perfect time to catch the train back to Mannheim. The ride was pretty nice too, except for the stinky guy that came and sat with us for the first 15 minutes. But it was even fun making fun of him and taking pictures of him while he fell asleep.

No, this is not the stinky guy.

Long day?

After getting back to Mannheim at like 11pm we were ready to eat again and grabbed Döners at the station before catching the streetcar home. I had actually barely fallen asleep when my phone rings and it was Dad. It was good to hear from him, though, and I didn’t mind at all that he woke me up. So we talked for a good half hour. My uncle from Saskatchewan is coming by on his new Harley for a few days apparently. I hope you guys have fun!

08.August.2005

2005-08-11T14:52:00.000+02:00

Monday. And a lazy one. I didn’t eat all too many tacos yesterday, just because... well... because you never want to overdo it at Taco Bell. But that meant that I was extra hungry for lunch today. I stayed home and made lunch myself, and was it ever good! It was so good, in fact, that I fell asleep immediately afterwards. I was woken up by none other than Chris later on, on his way back from dropping off the car. He and I did a bit of shopping at this point, and then just settled in and made amazing stir fry at my place which we ate with Borislav. After a bit, I got up to wash the dishes, but I was immediately pushed back down into my seat by both of these guys, and they proceeded to clean the entire kitchen. So I sat back and watched, and it was very enjoyable.

07.August.2005

2005-08-11T14:25:00.000+02:00

So I slept like crazy, of course. But as afternoon creeped in, I found myself again needing to battle the boredom of these last non-working, non-studying days in Mannheim. But luckily Chris still had that Smart Car for the rest of the weekend, so he and Natalie and I just hit the road! Destination: It’s a village somewhere in the area between Mannheim and Heidelberg that apparently escaped any bombing whatsoever during the war and the entire town is now an historical site. This weekend was also some kind of flower festival.

It was adorable, needless to say. And our Smart Car fit very nicely into the tiny streets. Due to the flower festival, every street was lined with really tall potted sunflowers. It pained me to see how dry they were (I would have gotten in serious trouble at Gardenland to let things suffer like that) but I managed to see past the droopy leaves and appreciate the whole effect. There were a bunch of old churches and old German houses, roman ruins, and even a founatin with koi! It was unfortunately kind of cloudy and cold, and after the party lats night the three of us weren’t moving very fast at all, but I’m still happy we went.

Part of the old city wall in Ladenburg

Chris, Nat, droopy sunflowers.

On the way home, we thought it would be fun to go get coffee and Cinnabons at the American army base. Turns out Cinnabon isn’t open in the evening, though. But there was a Taco Bell right next to it, so we grabbed Tacos instead. I’m not really a big fan of the army base, but it’s quite the experience to go into a mini-America like that, especially when you’ve gotten used to the “style” of Europe. The food was… well… the food was Taco Bell. But I actually like Taco Bell, so I’m not complaining. The worst part was the half hour that we ended up waiting! I don’t know what the deal was. We were only behind two other people in line, and the one guy did order enough to feed a... well... you know. But this has still got to be the slowest fast food place I’ve ever seen.

We actually hung out in there eating our tacos till closing time. We drove back to Chris’ place in the car and popped in Apollo 13, in honour of the shuttle relaunch. This is my favorite movie of all time, by the way. But luckily for Chris, I kept dozing off, so he didn’t end up hearing me say *every * single line.

What? Cinnabon is closed?

I guess we wait for tacos now!

And wait and wait and wait. Hey man. Have you never seen a girl take a picture of herself waiting before?

Ooooh. They’re here!

Oghhhh. They’re gone.

06.August.2005

2005-08-08T21:34:00.000+02:00

Be a SMART Driver.
Anyone ever heard of a SmartCar? Well, if not, just think of a go-cart with it’s ass cut off. They only hold two people, are amazing on fuel, and you can park them just about anywhere. Which is quite a good thing in Europe where people seem to enjoy breathing down each others’ necks. So anyways, I wanted to go see Pavol in Frankfurt one last time before I left, and Chris basically wanted to drive one of these cars, so we made a Saturday out of it.

First stop – Frankfurt flea market. It was huge! I almost bought a 1½ foot statue of Lenin, but I figured it would weigh down my suitcase, so I settled on a picture of it and just picked up some more Soviet Union lapel pins :) We ended up spending the whole morning there, and before we knew it, it was time to meet Pavol. Okay, I’ll just get out my phone and call him like we had planned. Or at least that I would have done if I hadn’t left my phone on the shelf in my room. I used Chris’ phone to call a bunch of people and ask if they had Pavol’s number. But nobody had it. Luckily, I had his street address, though. So we just went and bought a map of Frankfurt. It turned out to be a good walk, but we found it. But was he home? Of course not!

So we went for lunch at a Thai fast-food place nearby. Mmm loads of fresh veggies and extra spicy ginger sauce. It was awesome. Then we went back to Pavol’s and just as I rang the bell this time, I heard a voice from the roof – Whats uuuuup!!. Haha, so I go back out into the street and sure enough, there was Pavol looking over the rooftop balcony. So he came down and let us in. And yeah, apparently he had called me a bunch of times, but sooner or later he realized that I probably didn’t have my phone on me. When we had gotten there the first time, sure enough, he had been out getting lunch. The only 20 minutes that he had been out of the apartment all day.

At least we were finally all together. We hung out in his cool apartment for a little while and he served us orange juice on the balcony. Then we just headed out. We basically just walked around the city, with Pavol showing us lots of different gardens, historical sites, churches, as well as the Deutsche Bank building in which he works. We stopped for a nice long coffee break outside an Italian café next to the Pauluskirche. Then we just walked some more. It was a lot of fun just hanging out. Before we knew it, it was 7:30 and we realized that we had to find a grocery store before 8:00 or we wouldn’t be able to cook dinner like we had planned!

It was a bit of a mad rush (and on very tired feet at that!) but we did find a market with about 10 minutes to spare, and successfully found all the things I needed for zucchini crepes. Then, of course, it started raining but we still made it back to Pavol’s with the groceries safe and sound. As I started in the kitchen, at first the guys had no clue what was going on, but I eventually found them jobs, and by the end of it, we were enjoying a very awesome dinner. By the time we were done eating, it was almost 10:00! Pavol didn’t even let us clean up. About half an hour later we were saying goodbye. Pavol’s working in Frankfurt until November and then probably going to Sri Lanka to visit a friend until who-knows-when! Have fun, man! See you someday again, hopefully!

So then we hit the road again. But was the day over yet? Of course not. Back at the Hafen there was a party. An African party, and we had even been invited by Kerfalla. This was extremely cool. Getting back at 11:30 from Frankfurt wasn’t even a problem either, because that’s only when the thing got started! Veronica and Kerfalla got here at about 12:00 and came up to my room for a bit. Then we all went down to the party. A lot of Veronica’s roomates were there, so it was nice to know people. I saw a few more guys that I had met during the year (including creepy Valentine’s-man) and they all wanted to dance with me – which I was in no way opposed to ;) ;) So that as awesome. Even Chris was getting his freak on a little bit, and I was proud of him ;) Forget the German parties, man. Where have the Africans been all year??

So needless to say, after getting up at 7:30 and doing Frankfurt by foot and then partying till all-hours, I was once again very happy to find ma’ bed.

05.August.2005

2005-08-08T13:28:00.000+02:00

It’s almost the weekend and still no trip to Trier. Between administrative stuff, birthdays, and countless farewells this week, there has just been no chance! Today was a no-go cuz Chris had to sleep after his long night at the airport plus he had another ‘goodbye’ lunch to go to in the afternoon. I spent the day doing a lot of sleeping as well, plus just starting to clean up and pack. Pack! Hehe. It really is just a big countdown already. “10 more sleeps until we see you in person at the Winnipeg International Airport, Jaffer!”

04.August.2005

2005-08-05T13:54:00.000+02:00

After pulling myself out of bed this morning, I headed into town. I had certificates to drop off, gifts to buy, drycleaned uniform to pickup, drycleaned uniform to drop off at work, food to buy, bank machine to visit… When I got home I felt like I had walked 10 miles. Lunch tasted very good. Veronica and I had planned to go with some guys from her place to a club tonight, but then she called me and said that Kerfalla had suddenly gotten a job and had to work till midnight, so that was a no-go. So then since I wouldn’t have to dance all night long, I figured I’d go jogging. The weather was cool today, and it was really good to run in. Then I hiked out to the store again and all the way to Chris’ house to make some dinner. We had one episode of Star Trek left to watch too.

Then it was time to say goodbye to Eddie. His flight leaves early tomorrow morning, but he was going to go tonight already to the airport instead of running the risk of sleeping in. And just to keep him awake, Chris was going to tag along and hang out in the airport all night too. Those guys are crazy. But they’re gonna have fun, I know it. So at midnight, Veronica and I saw the boys off at the train station. She was tired and despite my pleas to go and grab a drink with me, she went straight home again. I went to McDonalds. Saying goodbye always makes me hungry. Because I misread the schedule, though, I managaed to miss the last streetcar home and ended up walking across town for the third time today. Well, at least I worked off the McDonalds in the process. Add that to the jogging and you can imagine how long it took me to fall asleep.

03.August.2005

2005-08-04T09:08:00.000+02:00

We couldn’t even postpone our Trier trip to today because it’s Eddie’s packing day and also Kelly’s birthday. I guess yesterday ended up being quite late with the movie and everything. I really didn’t do much today except take out the garbage and pick up the mail before I was back in bed again. My little nap lasted till about 6pm, too! But it’s not like I had anything else to do today. I have to enjoy this while it lasts, right? But still, 6pm was kind of pushing it, considering that we were meeting Kelly at the Italian restaurant at 7 for her Birthday! So I got ahold of Natalie and told her not to leave until I came and got her. But we made it. In fact, we were still earlier than the others. The food is really good there, and I had fun seeing Kelly and Sascha again. Afterwards Nat and I made it back just in time to catch the last 40 minutes of the OC! Back home I found Steph on the internet and talked to her for a while until I went to bed. I wonder how long I’ll sleep tomorrow?

02.August.2005

2005-08-03T23:13:00.000+02:00

We had planned to make a little sightseeing trip to Trier today. But then Veronica notified us that it was Tuesday and that during the break between semesters, the students offices are only open on Tuesday mornings, and if we were going to be able to un-enroll from this school at all before we leave, it would have to be today. So that pretty much ruined the day from the start. Of course it was raining like crazy in the morning. And of course the bus left with one minute to spare and I was stuck in the middle of the street, watching it drive away and waving to Nat who was already inside.

So I got back in and got my umbrella. I called the girls so they would save a place for me in the line at the office. I first had to go to the library and wait in line in order get a certificate saying I have no books on loan. Then I found Ed and V and Nat in the student offices, and even though they had saved me a place in line, we did end up waiting for a good half hour. With Eddie there, though, it wasn’t so bad. He managed to entertain us, as well as the rest of the Germans waiting in there. But like, when a good song comes on your I-pod, why not dance to it?

After the offices, I realized that I had not eaten breakfast. The others had some more office-stuff to do, so Nat and I arranged to meet them at the café at city hall. We went there, but it was at that point that I realized that I wasn’t just hungry for breakfast any more. So we switched the meeting place to Burger King, and I was quite happy with that decision. I wanderee around town a little more until it was time to meet everyone at the train station again to see Alicia off. We came right out to the (… place where you board the train – I have no clue what it is in English) with her and even made faces to her (and the rest of the Germans inside) as the train sped away.

So after the offices, and the rain, and the farewells, I was quite a sad girl. So I did what I always do when I’m sad – spend time with good friends. So I invited everyone over for dinner. Nat had left her huge wok in my kitchen, and everybody else had agreed to buy a few of the ingredients, so I whipped up bunch of everybody’s favorite Thai pasta with peanut sauce and we just spent most of the evening eating, chilling, and drinking wine in my kitchen. Some of us watched a movie yet aferwards. American Psycho. I think the book would be better, but it was entertaining nonetheless. It was a really fun night, in all. And afterwards I was definitely in a better mood :)

01.August.2005

2005-08-02T16:04:00.000+02:00

August 1st. The deadline for my term paper!
Unfortunately Timo moved out before I was able to actually mooch a printed copy from him in addition to his edits ;) This means I have to go print at school nice and early in the morning. Chris wanted to use up his card credits so he came with me and helped me out in the library. Ed was there to print something too. And after a bit of a library-card-password-hassle (was I expecting anything less?) I finally got my stuff printed out. Then I headed across town to the professor's office to hand it in. Only she didn't want it. Apparently in THIS class, the electronic copy that I'd sent her in the email is good enough. Nice to know... now.

But again, was I expecting anything less? In this country, not anymomre. So I just said goodbye to my prof (she was the really good one, btw.) and took my freshly printed term paper with me back to the school to meet up with the guys again. We were going to try to waste our last card-credits and eat in the cafeteria, but when we found it was closed today, we just met up eith Veronica and Alicia and all headed out for Döners :) I had the hot sauce today - and man, did they ever pour it on! Wow, I was burning, but at least after I downed Alicia's iced tea, I was nice enough to buy her a new one.

After Döners, the girls left us and I and the guys met up with Natalie and we took off to Heidelberg for the rest of the afternoon. First stop, bubble tea! I had mango this time, it was ok. But still no Sweet Dreams - I think the powder makes me too full.

So sitting out by the river, this middle-aged guy randomly came up to us because he had a big-ass camera, he noticed Chris holding Eddie's big-ass cameria, and he heard us speaking English. But at this point, I'm not so sure if it was the *speaking* of English that attracted him to us, or the fact that we could *understand* it.

So he comes right up to Eddie's camera... uhh... I mean, to Chris... and introduces himself as a professor from Rochester. (Oh great, an American ;) He asks Chris if we are his friends, (yes, we're Chris' friends, but we're not really friends with each other... we just like to follow him around) So we introduced ourselves too, he seemed nice enough. But then he just started talking. He was a psychology professor, but he is retired, he spends his time now travelling around buying art and allowing his daughter who *only * has a BA in English to run a store on an island in the Carribbean where he sells and makes loads of money, he’s just in art for the money, actually, but his real love is designing specialty firearms, you see, because he was a sniper in Vietnam, and in two other wars, and then there was this time in Rome when he got taken out to dinner by a man in a Ferrari, and then there was the time he spent sailing through Greece on a 50ft yacht where the most beautiful women in the world live, and of course he had dinner with a different one every night, but it wasn’t sexual, it was just for the wonderful conversation.

We all highly doubted, however, that these Greek women ever got a word in.
After about 20 minutes, our bubble teas were quite empty and our leader Chris politely excused us and we made our way… well… away. It didn’t really matter where at that point. As long as we found a corner to round so we could all burst out laughing. Hello? Is this the American military? Are y’all by any chance missing a sniper?

And that wasn’t even our last new friend of the day.
After shopping and walking bit more down the main street in Heidelberg, Nat wanted to stick around and shop, but Ed needed to go home so Chris and I joined him on the streetcar back to Mannheim. About 10 minutes into the ride, an old long-haired who was sitting behind Chris randomly gets up, turns around, and starts… orating. I can’t really think of another word to use, because it wasn’t really preaching, nor was it Nazi propaganda (which you’ll hear every now nad then in my neighborhood…) or even unintelligible jabber. He had a huge smile on his face, and roughly translated, he thanked us all for gathering on the streetcar today, and wished us peace and love and happiness in the rest of our time on Earth. I thought it was adorable. That, however, did not stop me from laughing along with the rest of the guys. After his little speech, the man sat down again across form this lady. He talked to her quietly for a little while, and she talked back, but from where I was sitting, I could see her trying SO hard to suppress her laughter. She looked up at me now and then, but I’m sure my expression didn’t help her much either. And then the man randomly started singing a hymn, really loud, right to her. It was hilarous. After the singing, he got up and walked to the back of the train, gave another oration got off at the next stop. When he bid us farewell, I almost started clapping.

Back in Mannheim, there would only be one thing that would compete with the day’s entertainment. So Chris and I headed to his place…
… for some Star Trek!
We whipped up some yummy veggie pasta and continued on with season 4 of Enterprise. Later on we dropped in on Alicia and Veronica. Alicia’s leaving tomorrow for Portugal, so she was packing. We won’t see her again till Canada! But she’s going to have a blast out there, I know it. And we’ll definitely have to swap stories back in Waterloo.

Hot Shots III, Retun of the Infrared-Eye

2005-07-31T18:58:00.000+02:00

I haven't been able to upload pictures since Hanna left with her computer. But for some reason today, I randomly restarted my computer, and my totally dysfunctional infrared port activated itself. I immediately took advantage of this, of course, as well as my Sunday-boredom, and put together another little visual walk through the past three weeks of Jen.

The picture I promised of Timo and his mountain of stuff in my room

Shrimp Creole night

After dinner. Veronica working – Demba playing

Since Hanna left, it’s just me on the door.

“Me” in the elevator. Is a 3-floor elevator that difficult to operate alone?

Chris and his new baby. After spending the entire year being jealous of my cell phone, he went and got himself a new one. Exactly like mine, only the next newest version. JUST see if I show you how to use it.

Chris’ nighttime friends.

I love this picture. We were saying goodbye to Moni!

A glimpse of my famous 16-hour shift.

Yes. I am taking a picture of your ridiculous shareholders meeting.

I know you all are tired of seeing pictures of me at work.

But this is the last one, and that’s a promise : )

The cheesburger after the longest day ever. I’ve never seen such a beautiful cheesburger.

Flowers I bought for myself. They’re plastic. They look good in my room.

Flowers from Chris to replace the pathetic flowers I bought for myself.

Yummy wine.

Yummy car.

Hanna, ice cream, and boys at her farewell lunch.

Veronica lives with Ryan from the OC. Did I forget to say?

I get the best pictures when people are laughing at me.

Well, if you guys can’t finish that, just pass it over here.

Alicia’s portion was a little smaller.

Finally got the Daniel pictures up!

He is just a beautiful man.

And he knows it.

Finally – bubble tea in Germany! You can’t see them, but there are gay unicorns on the top of this cup. Oh, Japan.

It’s no Sweet Dreams, but it’ll have to do.

Chris in my room with my hat and my beer. We all know who’s the bigger man.

Jen, cocktail style. Okay, maybe not so manly.

And if you think this is everything, you have no idea how boring Sundays in Germany are. The wedding pictures and the party pictures are actually just samples of those posted in my two Yahoo Albums.

30.July.2005

2005-07-31T11:26:00.000+02:00

Alicia and I woke up and pretty much just stayed in bed and watched another movie. Hackers. A good old favorite, and a whole lot better than the Richard Gere Gynecologist-in-Texas… thing that we watched the night before.

My plan for the afternoon was to go and finish reading my newly-edited term paper, and also work on another English paper for a friend of mine. But after walking home, I barely had the energy to eat lunch and I literlly found myself staring longingly at my bed as I tediously chewed the last piece of my croissant. I don’t think I had even swallowed and I was already in bed. So much for the paper!

I woke up at 5.
I got dressed and headed straight back to Alicia’s for her dinner party!
We had pizza there again. It was so good. Afterwards Kerfalla brought out the stereo and we all just danced like crazy! It is so much more fun dancing with friends in a kitchen then in a bar full of strangers :) Nat and I walked home together and got there at about 2. Thanks to my nap, thought, I wasn’t even tired yet! That, however, still did not prevent me from going to bed.

29.July.2005

2005-07-31T11:02:00.000+02:00

Timo’s last day at home.
I got up in the morning to find him bustling around in his room. The caretaker is coming in 35 minutes for room inspection, he said. And that’s when I looked into his room and almost noticed almost no difference from the way it had looked the entire year. When the caretaker comes, you see, your room must be entirely clean and empty and when he leaves, he takes the key with him! So Timo and I got to work.

What we basically ended up doing, was just throwing everything from the shelves and closet into random boxes and bags and bringing them into my room. It made a great picture. When the caretaker got there, the room wasn’t quite clean yet, but luckily he wasn’t busy today, so he let Timo whip out the vacuum cleaner and just came back 10 minutes later. Yess! We made it!

But now what – he says – as he wanders into my room and sits down on the top of his mountain of stuff. I hope this will all fit in the car! But first a break. It’s still the morning, everything was done and safe in my room and he had the whole afternoon to get home. It was at this point that he remembered that he hadn’t edited my term paper yet. So he managed to pull his computer out of the pile, hooked up to Hanna’s old connection and just sat there and spent a good hour working on it, thanks Timo! And after that he just started writing emails.

I had actually eaten lunch already and fallen asleep before he was done with the computer. When I woke up, I noticed that the mountain was considerably smaller. Look who’s finally decided to pack! Haha. Well, stuff everything into the car, is a better way of putting it. I helped him carry the last few things down, and rearrange a few things inside the car so they would actually fit. I think packing must be a special gift that some people have and some people definitely do not!

Well, then we said goodbye! Timo is actually the person that I’d lived with the longest in this apartment! Come to think of it, now that he’s gone, I’ve got the most seniority of anyone that’s left here! You know, I’ve got the best spot in the fridge, the best cupboard, the best furniture in my room :) Hard to believe, eh. Too bad it’ll only last for two more weeks. Timo, by the way, will be going on exchange this coming fall in France. Have fun packing, haha!

In the evening we were set to go out and say goodbye to somebody else – at my buddy Jan’s farewell party. He’ll be studying in the Illinois next year! In the afternoon I met Alicia in the city, then she came over for dinner. The plan was to wait for Veronica to come home from work and then we’d go out to the tennis club where Jan was throwing his party. Unfortunately, Veronica came home a little later than expected, and even after she did get home, she couldn’t get out to the place where we said we’d meet, because of construction on the streetcar lines. The weather was also really crappy and after waiting for half an hour out in the rain, we weren’t all that up for an outdoor party anymore. So after missing one of the last streetcars that would have actually taken us out to the tennis club, we just said – screw it!

I called Veronica and told her to stay home – cuz we’re coming over instead! So that’s when Alicia and I hopped on the streetcar in the other direction. Back at Veronica’s we watched a movie with Kerfalla and basically just hung out eating the food that we had brought for Jan. It was almost 2 by the time we the movie was done, so I just spent the night in Alicia’s room. I felt pretty bad for not making it to the party, but at least it still ended up being a fun night!

28.July.2005

2005-07-29T14:12:00.000+02:00

My last day at work. My last day at work! Just think of it, I was never ever able to get shifts at this stupid place, and then in my last month I get 5! (6, if you count the double-shift last week!) I’m lookin’ forward to that paycheck, let me tell ya.

So work was okay. It was another shareholders meeting, which means lots of really really old people hobbling around and packing the catering into their handbags. There were also lots of us working today, which means people to talk to, which makes it worth it. I was having a good language day too. The craziest thing I had to have done today, however, is spend the first two hours of my shift inside the elevator. Like, they wouldn’t even let me stand outside – I had to wait inside the elevator, just in case somebody on either of the upper floors had to get down to the wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. It wasn’t so bad, really. I just played with my phone the whole time and tried not to imagine that I was in a prison cell. Luckily, when the catereres started bringing their carts of pure temptation up in there, I was allowed to stand outside the door again.

It was a good sized shift, must have been 8 or 9 hours or so. But I am finished now, forever! I said goodbye to everyone, even boss lady was there and she was just being all-out nice to me today. Finally.

I was SO tired afterwards for some reason. After work I headed out to Chris’ place again. Since almost everybody is leaving Mannheim at this point, I seem to be alternating daily, hanging out with Veronica and Alicia, or Chris. Haha, so today was Chris’ turn again! And I will never refuse anybody who wants to make me supper after a long day at work. OR anybody who has episodes of Star Trek Enterprise on his computer :) So that was fun. First two episodes of season 4, by the way. I never thought I would see Captain Archer join the Mafia to take on Nazi Martians in Brooklyn. But I did. And it was awesome.

27.July.2005

2005-07-29T13:45:00.000+02:00

Today was a slow one. Another hot one, but not bad altogether. The bulk of the day was spent putting together my new-and-improved I-need-a-job-in-Waterloo resume. I also sent it to a few places. Push me the thumbs, everyone! ( ?? Wow, that sounds so stupid in English…)

I went for a nice river-walk in the afternoon. The most fun of the day, however was when Veronica and her boyyy Kerfalla came over, along with a friend of his, plus Natalie and her huge Wok. They were so great and brought over all the ingredients, and I whipped up a huge amount of Shrimp Creole. I was too lazy to take the shells off the shrimps, but that’s ok we had more fun eating them that way. It was still totally yummy.

And we were finished cleaning up just in time to watch the OC! What a perfect ending to the evening. The movie that was on afterwards was crap and everybody was gone anyway, so I just went to bed. Work tomorrow! Last day!

26.July.2005

2005-07-27T14:14:00.000+02:00

Work today was a breeze. Got up at a nice leisurely time, even went to the bank and the bakery before I got there. I worked at one of the entrances today with another guy from the Rosengarten and also one private security guy. We handed out pens and magazines, and basically just chatted the whole time. They thought it was just absolutely the coolest thing that I was from Canada. And Canada is one thing I don’t really get tired of talking about, so it was fine. The shift was 6 hours long, with 2 breaks and I was out of there by 3:00.

I went and bought some veggies at the store, hiked all the way home with them, just for the exercise, but as soon as I dropped them off, I headed out again. This time to Chris’ place to watch the space shuttle lauch on the NASA internet live-feed. It was just the two of us, as if anybody else would care. But it was awesone! I don’t think I’d ever actually seen one go up before. Just pictures! Good luck to them up there.

After that, it was time for supper, and the tortellini that I tasted off Alicia’s plate last night at the Italian place was just calling my name. So that’s where I dragged Chris. He got the same thing, (with a different sauce) and yeah, it’s reeeeally good – even better than in Italy, as far as I’m concerned ;)
Mom and Dad called me too, while we were sitting out there. Nice to hear from them again, as usual. So I totally ignored Chris for a good half hour while I talked to them, haha. But he still walked me home, so that was nice. The evening was nice too, and we walked along the river just like yesterday with the other guys. It actually ended up being quite late by the time I got in. I guess that laundry is going to have to wait yet another day! But that’s ok. I think it’s going to be a hot one tomorrow!

25.July.2005

2005-07-26T08:06:00.000+02:00

Monday, but classes are over, and ever since I sent that term paper off for editing, I am quite useless in terms of the typical university-things that are supposed to occupy the mind of a student. So I took my time waking up, took my time writing about the weekend, and before I knew it, I was back in bed. From 11:00 to 2:30... that would constitute as a little nap, wouldn't it? But seriously, I don't know what's up with me these days. But I'm not worried, either, I just keep telling myself that I only have three more weeks of this European vacation and life will speed up before I know it!

So then I ate a little lunch and worked on my resume. But it wasn't even two hours later that I left to meet Alicia and Veronica and her schatz Kerfalla for ice cream. So the ice cream was okay, and we sat there and chatted about our various recent adventures. But then it began to near 6:30pm and we were getting hungry and not-just-ice-cream-hungry. And we were sitting in a pizza place after all, so we just ordered a few of those! Yummy, and we stayed till about 8. Then with 5 minutes left before the grocery store closed, K and V bolted across the street and managed to pick up some coolers and we all wandered down to the river and had a drink. (This is entirely legal in Germany, remember.) It was fun to just chill out there too.

Back in the evening and it was quite late, I didn't even get my laundry done. Just chatted with Steph, mostly. I got another shift at work tomorrow, and I was somehow already sleeping by midnight! Not complaining :)

Country Wedding Weekend

2005-07-25T14:37:00.000+02:00

Saturday 23. July

Okay, Chris doesn’t just rent Mercedeses as a random weekend activity (…yet). The car was our transportation to a wedding in the country that he’d been invited to! Long story short, his mother is from this area and since she couldn’t make it from Canada to this wedding (a good friend of hers), so Chris went on her behalf. And me, well I was just there to look good and keep him company. I am almost a professional wedding date, after all ;)

The weekend was just really fun.
So we left at noon on Saturday and drove the backroads. The car was so hot, it was so beautiful out there and the the roads looked like they were out of a car commercial. And we were totally dressed up too, listening to hip-hop music and feeling totally cool.

We found the place no problem with the GPS system, hehe. And we were actually a little early. The wedding was actually quite small and was in a old stone Catholic church in a little town called Waldfischbach-Burgalben. It was simply adorable! I was even able to sing one of the hymns. The wedding was quite normal, and wasn’t very long, though, and before we knew it, we were back outside, congratulating the couple and chatting with long-lost relatives “Christan, dear, I hardly recognized you… and who is this young lady?” Everyone here was speakign this back-country dialect too, but it was in some ways similar to my Plautdeetsch, and I was quite proud of myself for understanding most everything people said!

Then it was time for the reception. It was held in the next town over called Landstuhl. We had a little trouble finding the actual hall, so we asked a couple old ladies on the street if they knew, and it turned out they were going there too, so we got them to just hop in the car too! (after turning down the gangsta rap of course). The reception hall was cute. I’ve only been to one wedding that was smaller than this one, and I think we all know whose that was. There were appetizers outside with champagne, and after hanging out there for a while, we were invited inside to find our spots. Each place was marked with an ivy leaf on which the names were written with a silver pen. It was so gorgeous. We ended up sitting across from the cutest little red-haired kid, too, so we were happy. The man beside me had also been to Manitoba once, to Silo and to Brandon with the German military. I asked him if he experienced the mosqutos. He said yeah, but they had been trained beforehand to deal with them. Haha.

Once we were all sitting, then came the real appetizers. I can’t even describe how yummy they were. The main course was good too, and the wine, and the champagne, and the special strawberry dessert as well as all the traditional German cakes you could think of. It was even better than yesterday’s supper! All the long lost relatives and then yet others wanted to talk to the two crazy kids from Canada that showed up at this tiny wedding in a Benz. We even met a big fat white-haired guy named Siggi who invited us over to his place in the Mannheim area. There was a bit of a program with a picture slide show and presentation and stuff. Then there was the walz music, then the polka, and the evening ended with a giant conga line of absolutely all the wedding guests, winding around the dining hall, into the kitchen, and even in to the parking lot – all to German folk music. It was only midnight by the time we left. And our only excuse to leave that “early” was that we had to drive all the way back to “Thaleischweiler-Fröschen” (gotta love these names, eh? We also passed through the towns of Rammstein and Frankenstein this weekend. Frankeinstein is beautiful, btw.) and we didn’t want to show up at Opa’s house too late. Once again, after all the food and the wine and the folk music, I was kaputt.

Sunday 24. July

Opa’s house was built in the 1930s. Oma died a few years ago and now Opa and Uncle Lew live in this place alone. They do a lot of gardening, watching of TV, and wearing of jogging pants. They weren't really the biggest conversationalists, either, but they were supter hosts, and really adorable.

There was more than enough room for us in this place, and more blankets than I’ve ever seen in my life. I love blankets.I slept quite well in my own little upstairs bedroom beside the backyard window. And instead of getting woken up by garbage trucks and morning traffic, it was horses and roosters. Much better, in any case. Breakfast was typical German. Coffee, buns, cheese, and loads of sausage. After breakfast we had just gotten back from brushing our teeth when Opa called us into the kitchen again. So we went back in and there were three shot glasses on the table with curious brown liquid in them. “Come on guys, let’s have one together!” But Opa, it’s 10 in the morning. “Oh, it’s good for you”. Ok, whatever you say… gulp. That was number one today. So after our breakfast of coffee, red meat, and alcohol, we decided to go for a little hike so we’d be able to face the lunch that Opa would most likely be serving no later than 11:30.

It was kind of humid outside, but still nice. We made it through the entire town in about half an hour, then we climbed around in the woods for a while. It reminded me a lot of the Pembina Valley. We made it back for lunch and sure enouch, no sooner than 11:45, the salad, the pork-goulash and the potato dumplings were on the table. Man, it was good. And we ate a whole bunch. After lunch Opa basically just went back to bed and we played chinese checkers on the balcony, until we fell asleep too! We woke back up when Opa came out and started watching the neighbors through his binoculars. Then we just wandered upstairs, took our time packing up, and said goodbye. Now it was time to visit the aunt in Zweibrücken.

We cruised around on the backroads a little more, and phoned the Aunt to tell her that we were coming now. Now, Chris had told her on the phone that he was bringing a friend along. We think, however, that she had hung up a little too soon to hear that part. Because when we showed up, she just freaked out because she hadn’t gotten “ready” for guests. I would have baked a cake, she said, and made coffee! Christian, you need to tell me when you bring strange ladies over!! She was really nice, though, totally adorable, but also totally loud and totally hilarious. By far the favorite relative that I’d met this weekend. So we all chatted for a good while and she fed us Coke because it was all she had. But then she went and brought out the liquor too. It was from Austria and tasted like apricot jam with 30% alcohol. She gave me a whole glass. I’m not really used to drinking pop at all either, but after that stuff, the Coke was like water. That was number two. Then she pulls out a bottle of champagne and sends it home with us.

So then it was back in the car, and just as we were leaving town, we figured we’d better get a little more food in us for the ride home. So we stopped in at the newer Chinese restaurant on the highway, anything but red meat, bitte schön. What we got, though, was really good. We didn’t eat loads of food there, cuz it was pretty expensive, but what we did get was quite good and we ended up wating out quite a rainfall, just hanging out in the place. And then we paid. But with the bill came three things: two warm towels, a plate of watermelon slices and… two shots of some strange Chinese brew. That was number three. (Oh Germany. For me in one weekend that was five servings of alcohol, three servings of red meat, two of coffee and one of coke. These are not the things I normally sustain myself with. And I was feeling pretty strange by the end of it ;) But it's what the people serve, they were all super nice, and of course I totally appreciate it all).

So then we hit the backroads again. We were on the Autobahn for a little bit, but the valley is just so much cooler in the woods. As we neared Mannheim, we stopped in one more town to pee and walk around a bit more. It had stopped raining anyway, and the town was cute. Both of us had forgotten our wallets, though, so we had to leave the ice cream behind.

When we arrived in Mannheim pretty late, and I was once again kaputt (I have a few pictures of the weekend, but again, without Hanna’s computer I can’t upload. Maybe later). So we just split the leftover goulash and dumplings that his Opa had sent along with us, I kicked Chris out and he took the car home for one last night. I wonder when I’ll ever be hungry again?

22.July.2005

2005-07-25T08:51:00.000+02:00

Work only started at 9:45 today, so it wasn’t that hard to get up. Even after the “party” last night. I even got there a bit early. This shift was given to me by another girl, so I didn’t really know what was going on. I seemend to be the only one in the dressing room. So I waited a bit, read a magzine, and still nobody showed up. So I just changed and went upstairs. And sure enough, there were only three people working today, and two of them were guys. Like, wearing the suit isn’t so bad, when there are other totally-cool-in-real-life girls hanging around with me wearing the same thing and making fun of themselves just as much. But not today.

I got put at the front entrance the whole day. I guess maybe I was just having a bad language day, but it was totally sucky up there. It’s like, I can do this job, mostly because you just have to greet people and smile. But this time, I had to talk to every single person who came inside and direct them to a set of staircases that were totally hidden from sight when you walk into the building. “Whatever you do, don’t let them miss the staircases because they’ll end up wandering all over the building.” Ok, simple enough.

But then there was the sign. I mean, there were signs with arrows pointing all over the place, but this was the main sign. It was right in the gap between the invisible staircases and it had the name of the conference and a big arrow pointing UP. The conference organizer thought it was pretty plain. UP means up the stairs.
I’m sorry man. People don’t think that way.
People walk into a big marble lobby, they see a sign in front of a huge beautiful conference area that points UP, and they walk STRAIGHT AHEAD. If there’s anything they don’t do, it’s look for staircaes hidden around corners.

So the entire day, I ended up saying “no no no, please up the stairs… these stairs” and then running back to the entrance to the next group of people that came in. “please make your way around the corner and up the stairs to the second floor where the conference is being held.” And of course they either smile and nod or just ignore me altogether and just follow the sign.
“no no no, please up the stairs… ”

And then because there were only three of us working, the boss had nothing to do except come and stand right beside me. And say absolutely nothing. Except tell me that my directions weren’t clear enough, or give me crap when I didn’t say “please”. So of course that made me totally nervous. And I didn’t even have a single girl in the dressing room to complain to.

And of course the conference went an hour later than planned. (After last week, though, that didn’t phase me too much). But when I was finally finished, I walked out into the parking lot to find Chris and Eddie standing beside the brand new Mercedes that Chris had rented for the weekend! Very hot. Yeah, I didn’t even end up going home, because we just picked up Veronica and headed right out to Speyer for the best Italian food in Germany. And we spent the entire night eating. It was so nice after work to just chill like that. And after my glass of wine, I was totally kaputt :)

21.July.2005

2005-07-23T00:00:00.000+02:00

Oh yeah, my suitcase arrived yesterday too. It is so cool! I've decided to call him Status-Symbol Sr. (I'm sorry, nobody will really understand that... djjjjjjjjjds)

But anyway. I made it out of the house in the afternoon for a late Döner lunch with Veronica and Ed and Chris. It was so good. Then we all just followed Chris to the city offices to do some random un-registration stuff (yeah, before we leave, we have to un-register not only from the school, but from the city, the state, and the country :P

I got home in time for supper, but before I knew it, it was time to go out again. V had gotten us tickets for the party at school tonight. Last one of the semester - so we had to go. We waited for the guys in a cute little bar across the road and talked to the cute little bartender. Wen we got there, the party had not *really* gotten started yet, in other words, most of the Germans were still in the process of gathering in the entrance, buying beer, and trying to get drunk enough to be able to move themselves onto the dance floor. So I just walked around. And I walked around some more. And then there were enough people there so walking wasn't so easy. So I stood. And I stood. And then I decided I wanted to catch the last streetcar at midnight and I left.

On the way to the streetcar, though, I stopped in at Jan's place. Man, I haven't seen him in a while! He's writing exams right now and getting all ready for the big trip to Illinois ;) But I was finally able to pick up the DVD he had given me for my birthday. Looks cool. See you at your farewell party, dude!

20.July.2005

2005-07-22T23:51:00.000+02:00

I've fallen behind a little on the blog.
If someone would remind me what happened today, that would be great.
I know Amber left this morning. That's two friends in one week so far. I'll miss ya babe! Aber wir sehen uns auf jeden Fall!

The afternoon is a blur. I might have worked on the paper. I think I also went to Kaufland and bought my favorite yogurt among other goodies.

The evening consisted of moving another armchair out of the kitchen into my big empty room, so Veronica and I could richtig chill and watch the OC. She'd actually never seen it before. I thought it was time for an Einführung. After that she got picked up by one of her adorable roomates and I just stayed in and watched another movie on TV, 'The In Crowd', only they had messed up the German title so much that I had to actually watch half the movie to remember what it was. Translated in the TV Guide, it would have been something like "We'll get you yet too".
...The OC was better.

19.July.2005

2005-07-20T09:03:00.000+02:00

One of my coworkers called me this morning and gave me her shift on Friday. Right on! That's good, because it's starting to look like present-buying time. I just wish my new Ebay suitcase would get here so I know how much room I have! Man, it's unreal how excited I am getting about going home. It's been almost two years!

Well, this morning just consisterd of more writing. I mean, this paper is really interesting, but I kind of just want to get it done already so I can hand it in and get the un-registration stuff over with at the school. Never again will I study in Germany.

Before I knew it, though, 3:00 rolled around and I was meeting Ed and Veronica at the magazine stand where she works, and the three of us headed off to Heidelberg. when I was out there with Steph back in May, I had noticed a bubble tea store off of the main pedestrian street. Of course I told all the Canadians about it (and Chinese too), and of course they were totally pumped and they all went - but now 3 months later they have all been there and I somehow hadn't gotten around to it! But today was the day. I got strawberry, they made it with powder, not syrup, so it was no sweet dreams, but it was still totally good. Then we just went back to Mannheim, simple as that. Haha, yah I'm sure gonna miss being able to do that in Waterloo.
"Hey guys, I'm just gonna run to the most beautiful city in Europe for a few hours, be back for supper!"

Back in Mannheim I did a little shopping, but before I knew it, it was already the evening. Back home I ate some food, watched some TV, did some chatting, did some writing. I also stopped by at Amber's to say goodbye. She's leaving tomorrow morning! So we actually ended up just chatting for a good hour or so, just like always :) Then she took me into the kitchen and loaded me up with all her extra groceries and I bid her farewell. Now I've got to find an excuse to get down to North Carolina some day. Well, a little easier than Hong Kong, in any case ;)

18.July.2005

2005-07-19T09:02:00.000+02:00

Almost 10 months together.
She came from Beijing via Hong Kong.
I come from Altona via Waterloo.
And we were roomates.
What roomates we were!
If you could think of two opposite people, we would be them.
We never even talked that much,
But somehow we were perfect!
She never bothered or disturbed me one bit.
And she never even let on when I was being annoying either ;)
She liked my music.
And I liked it when she spoke Chinese on the phone.
She taught me about her culture,
And I taught her to cook.
I hugged her when she missed her boyfriend.
She hugged me when my grandpa died.
Both of us could hardly speak German when we got here.
Now we're both awesome!
Neither of us had really drank beer before either.
Now we're pros ;)
We had the biggest and best dorm room in all of Mannheim.

But now I'm all alone in it.
My Hanna left for home this morning at 6:30am. Of course I got up to say goodbye and wish her a good flight and promise that we would keep in touch online and that I might even find my way to China one day.

So then it was 6:30, and I was totally awake. Oh man.
I ate some breakfast and since it was nice and cool out, I just went for a run! I got back and it was only 7:30. Oh man. I can see this day going on forever. So then I started cleaning and moving stuff around in my new huge room. I'm probably not going to get a new roomate, you see, because Hanna was technically on contract until the end of August, just like me. When the room was clean I sat down to work on my paper again for the first time since last week. It felt like an eternity till Chris showed up for lunch at 11:00. So we ate and then just hung out watching TV until he had to leave for his train to München at 2:30. I actually ended up falling asleep. I got up to say goodbye (again... but no worries, he's coming back in two days, haha) and then just started on the paper again. I got a little more done, but before I knew it, I was back in bed. That was about 4:30, apparently. Then next thing I knew I was opening my eyes in complete darkness, and noticing that the clock said 10:30. Oh, great. I just slept for 6 hours PLUS my after lunch nap. Now I'm totally going to be up all night! Or at least that's what I thought. I worked a little more, the watched TV for another hour or so, but by 1:00 I was sleeping again and went the whole night through till 8:30am. Now, that's a crazy amount of sleep. I must be in grieving or something!

17.July.2005

2005-07-18T07:54:00.000+02:00

Hanna's last day at home.
Moni was sleeping in our room again, we all woke up at pretty much the same time. The only thing is, Hanna and Moni rolled out of bed and they were both wearing pink PJs. That's when they decided that my green and black ones didn't quite fit in to the sleepover party, so I went and put my pink shirt on too. Just for them ;)

And then we just started making food. Moni had to leave already at 2pm, so in order to have our "farewell Hanna fondue lunch" we just got cooking right away in the morning. So there was cheese sauce, there was chocolate sauce, there were fruits and veggies from all over the world, and chips and sweets and everything. It was so good. Chris showed up a little later too, and pretty much finished the stuff off.

Then it was lazy time. Nothing else to do on a Sunday, right? Hanna had to actually go to another farewell party in the evening, but Chris had nothing else to do either, and just stuck around all day. We went and played frisbee by the river and hung out there. It was sooooooooo beautiful today. And before we knew it, he was totally late for his 5:00 dinner meeting with Janice and Norma, the Waterloo grad students that are here this semester. But we called them, and they were running late too, so it was all good. They told me to come along too, not a problem ;) So we met up with them later at the restaurant. The reason they were going out, actually, was because an old student of Janice's was in Germany at the moment and they were meeting up with him. He had actually also met a random American guy at the hostel yesterday who had just started his bike trip through Europe and brought him along. They were both really cool and the bunch of us ended up hanging out all evening. First after the meal it was ice cream, then a walk down the pedestrian zone, then back to Janice's apartment block for pub/game night, where we played ping pong, cards (well, they played cards), and Trivial Pursuit (in German!) till the last bus took us home.

Enjoy the rest of your stay, guys!

16.July.2005

2005-07-17T09:20:00.000+02:00

So there were three of us sleeping in the room last night (soon there will only be one!) We got up relatively early, actually, considering when *some* of us went to bed... ahem, Moni couldn't come back to Mannheim without visiting her favorite salsa bar ;)

What I did all morning, actually was post the blog about my workday. Turned out to be a long one! Haha - well it was a long day! I also did my laundry, come to think of it. In the afternoon I trekked on out into the city in the heat and picked up some food for the weekend and some little things for Amber. No sooner had I gotten home, though, that I read a message from Paulina telling me they're going to the pool! At this point it was only about 2:30pm and Amber's party only started at 7, so I figured why not?? So I just dropped my groceries off and headed right back out again. I got a little lost on the way there, thanks to Paulina's directions ;( but eventually I found her and a bunch of the British girls just chilling out by the pool. At first, I was quite shocked at the amount of skin that I was forced to look at as I entered the pool area. I guess I haven't been to the beach in a while - much less a european one :P Haha. But I got quickly used to it... pretty much. The water was also really nice. I stayed till about 6:30 and was still the first one to leave. But I had a party to go to!

Back home, Hanna was also in the process of getting ready to go. We were going to Amber's goodbye party tonight. She's flying out on Wednesday already! She had been planning this party - a *cocktail* party - for quite some time, so just to make it extra special for her, I whipped out my black and gold *cocktail* dress that I hadn't worn in a good two years (since Sherwood's wedding, actually) and did my hair up all crazy and stuff. Nobody else was really dressed up fancy at all, but they were all good firends of mine too, and they all know already that I'll tend to do weird stuff like that sometimes ;) And it was really fun.

Amber had made so much food - I was expecting just drinks! But it was all sooooooo good, especially the daquiris, and extra especially her famous salsa. Natalie had brought the game Taboo along - the German version! Man, we had a good time with that one too. All in all we just ate and drank till about 12:30am and after a little cleaning up - (and taking leftovers home!!) I went the 50 meters back to my place. After all the swimming and partying and EATING, I was quite ready for bed.

15.July.2005

2005-07-16T12:17:00.000+02:00

I don't think beauty sleep is all it's cut out to be. But then again maybe I'm missing something...

Well, I felt alright this morning as I got on the streetcar at 7:30am. I even had time to pick up some extra lunch food and touch up that makeup before starting work at 8. I even started the day working outside! Okaay, it was still parking garage duty, and I wasn't too thrilled about being out in public in my red suit, haha, but it was actually in the driveway to the parking garage... outside! It was a beautful morning, too.

But of course I still have stories. So I had been there for maybe 15 minutes, and the sun decided to peek out from behind the building across the street. Well, it more like *blasted* out from behind the building... and they had just led me straight from the meeting room outside, so I didn't have my sunglasses or any water with me, and nobody was really supposed to come for another half an hour, so I called up the house manager and asked if I could quickly come pick up my sunglasses. Okay, we'll send somebody out to take your place for a few minutes...
... hey, thanks!
But did anybody actually come? Of course not. It turns out later that the totally adorable guest services manager (Herr Pfeifer... hehe...) had actually told the loser house manager to send somebody out to me, but she just didn't. Booo. Well, I survived, anyway. I found a shadowy place to stand and just drank a liter of water when I got back in at noon.

I actually maybe should have mentioned this to Mr. Adorable too, but now I am really convinced that having a girl in a red skirt and jacket standing at the entrance tot he parking garage is a pretty dangerous thing! Not for me, really... for everybody else on the street! See, what happens is that MEN will drive by, and when there's a female with pantyhose and high heels standing in front of the parking garage, with the sunglight gleaming off her red clown suit, these guys really don't pay attention to where they're driving. Most of the time I just smiled at the guys in cars who were craning their necks. I never waved, though, for fear that they'd actually take their hands off the wheel! There was one man, though, who was actually driving out of the parking garage and as he passed me he opened the window to make a comment. He didn't manage to get the comment out, though, before he totally ran down an old lady on her bicycle on the sidewalk!

She was fine, thank goodness. Even though she looked kind of funny sitting there on the ground in her white pants. He bike was kind of banged up, and she pretended to be all mad at first, but later she just chatted with the man for a bit and exchanged info with him. Shortly thereafter it was time for me to go back inside. I'm still not quite sure if I should feel guilty or not!

Well, back inside I took a place in the conference room. That's when the boss lady comes up to me. It wasn't the evil Frau today, though. This one was always kind of mean, still, but still cool, and for some reason she was smiling today. Anyway, she came up to me in the conference room and was like - so, long one today, huh? Well, just till 3, I said, it's not so bad....
What? She said and looked at her clipboard one more time - I have you here till midnight! You got the call, right?
Ummm. No. I'm quite sure nobody called me.
Oh...
But I can still stay, I said, as my eyeballs turned into dollar signs.
Really?
Yeah, when you need me, no problem.
Ok, midnight it is, then.
And that's when I looked at my watch and realized that midnight was still 13 hours away.

Well for the rest of the day I ended up sharing the entrance-guarding position wiht this girl named Sabrina. She's actually from Singapore via Jakarta, and we had a good time talking. When we weren't taking breaks, that is. See, there were only two of us and one position and we were basically just allowed to give each other breaks whenever we wanted. By the time 8pm rolled around we were just taking turns having breaks, in other words, only actually working 50% of the time. And it was totally fine with the boss too - who was actually probably spent the entire night in the break room anyway, just constantly smoking and praying for the thing to end.

What it was, was a shareholders meeting, you see. And at these things they vote on stuff and do question-answer stuff and it's all just really official with a moderator and stuff. And basically what this company was deciding, was if they were going to sell out to an American firm. Big decision. What actually dragged it out this long was just this one lady who would constantly interrupt the moderator. "It's not your turn yet, Frau Steg" is what we got really used to hearing throughout the day. And when it actually got to be her turn, it was not over quickly, nor was it easy to listen to. The cops had actually shown up during the day, and we later found out that it was actually because of this Frau, and that she had actually been forcibly removed from shareholder meetings in the past.. from all sorts of companies! *Sigh* shareholder-meeting violence, such a probelm these days...

So yeah, she actually managed to drag the thing on until 11:30. Midnight was the official closing time, at which point they scrap everything and arrange a new shareholders meeting altogether. The thing about our job at this kind of thing is to make sure that strangers don't come in, and also that the members don't leave, in order to make sure the votes are valid. These people are basically stuck in this room until they make a decision. I mean, it's catered and everything and it's a real comfortable place so no problem. But when it came to the end, this lady got kind of upset and like 2 minutes before she was techniclly alowed to, she stormed out, right past the guy at the parking garage door (who was probably also half asleep by now, as were we all). Because of that, appearently they should have scrapped the whole thing! But they let it go. The votes were in, they said, and it was final. (I'm actually not totally sure if they're selling the company or not, I had stopped trying to understand at noon already, but I'm pretty sure it's going to America). Not that we cared! It was midnight and we were going home! The three of us that had been there since 8 were pretty proud of each other :) It's a new record for me, anyways, 16 hours, baby!

Finally outside again, I checked the streetcar schedule and realized that I had another 10 minutes to wait. And that's when McDonlads across the street started calling me ;) A 1-Euro cheesburger has never tasted so good. Back home I found Moni and Laura in the kitchen! The old family is home! Now it's time for some fun.

14.July.2005

2005-07-16T09:50:00.000+02:00

Another lovely hot day. I hung out at home in the morning and in the afternoon I made my way to the faculty offices, because this was the day on which we were to pick up our certificates (yeah, the quasi-worthless ones from the absolutely-worthless class I took). So it's not like they told us where to pick them up either. But I've gotten a little smart to how things work here (albeit a little too late) and looked up the office addresses on the internet - now why would they be on campus? Well I got there and tried to get to the 5th floor, like the internet said. But at the 4th I ran out of stairs. So I asked a lady up there where this particular faculty office was. But this lady couldn't actually speak German, so she just smiled and nodded and pretended she understood and was basically even more worthless than I am at my job.

Eventually I found the office, back down on the 2nd floor. I happened to pass by the door of the totally worthless T.A. that led the class, her door was open so I actually saw her sitting there and I looked in and asked where the certificates were to be picked up. She just stared at me for a good 2 or 3 seconds and said down the hall to the left. I was like: Thanks!!! :D:D:D... Her look: *why the hell are you talking to me?* So that was nice. But, I finally made it to the office. At this point I was praying to God that they'd actually have something for me. Well, they did. Even though this lady actually did speak German, though, she was even more useless than the lady upstairs. I don't think she's ever had a conversation with a real person in her life, actually. I didn't catch a single word she said because she murmured absolutely everything under her breath. And forget about eye contact. I bet she grew up locked in the basement of some library. Probably even the one at this school - because nobody is actually allowed to go into it (we just have to order books from it on the internet). So anyway, I basically just gave up trying to communicate and stated nice and loud that *this* is my name and I want *this* certificate from *this* class... please. So I got it. On the way out I passed by the T.A.'s door again - Thaaaaaaaaaanks!!! byyyyyeee! :D:D:D (forever!)

Just one certificate left now. Then it'll be a matter of proving to Waterloo that they're worth anything. That should be fun. Man, could I get any more sarcastic?
... ;)

Ok, sorry.
So in the afternoon I tried to hang out by the river for a while but it was just too hot in the sun and there were like a hundred million dogs attacking each other under the bridge beside me, so I went back in. In the evening I headed out to Alicia's house for pizza! Her mom is out visiting and she wanted to meet us before they go on their little Prague/Budapest trip tomorrow. The pizza was great and so was the wine and the company. After dinner Veronica had to go to a work thing so Alicia and I and her cute mom all went for a walk along the river. Once we got to my place I went in and they turned around and went back. It was a really nice evening!

Beauty sleep. yup. Work tomorrow.

13.July.2005

2005-07-14T09:19:00.000+02:00

Another relaxing day. I ended up going grocery shopping in the afternoon with my new backpack. Actually first I stopped by to see Veronica at her new job, selling newspaper subscriptions on the street. I signed up for one too, just so she gets paid. I'm just going to cancel after the free ones stop coming. Then I went and got both of us ice cream. And we just stood there by her stand eating ice cream. There are actually a lot of nice people walking along the street, I was surprised. They wished us a good break :) Back home again I made cous cous salad for dinner and then Natalie came over to watch the OC. Then there was this movie on TV called eXistenZ or something. It has got to be one of the most horrible movies I've ever seen. Even the fact that Jude Law was in it didn't help. Fortunately I didn't end up missing the shuttle launch for it. This weekend, hopefully!

12.July.2005

2005-07-13T11:05:00.000+02:00

More sleeping, more writing. It wasn't as hot today as they had predicted, so I went running in the afternoon. While I was out, though, is when it must have gotten hot :P of course. My face has not been that red in a while! My second opportunity to leave the house today consisted of going to the cocktail bar in the evening to meet our exchange program contact-person one last time. It was a really nice night, but we didn't stay terribly long. I guess a while weekend of partying plus Monday had caught up with some of us ;) So we all said goodbye to her and I had a nice walk home with Norma.

11.July.2005

2005-07-13T10:59:00.000+02:00

Just like usual these days, no class aymore so I just wake up whenever and work on that last paper until I finally encounter the need to leave the house. Today the need to leave the house involved going grocery shopping and then to Veronica's for dinner in the evening. A flatmate of hers had a birthday, so we cooked for him and basically just hung out all evening with everybody. I caught the last bus home at 12:30.

10.July.2005

2005-07-12T10:42:00.000+02:00

Guess who's baaaack?
Yup, Mr GQ...uh... I mean, Mr. GM himself, my old buddy Daniel was back in town on business. But work on a Sunday in this country? I don't think so. So why not visit Jen?

He got here at about noon and we grabbed Döners for lunch. Then we jumped in his car and headed to the most beautiful city ever, Heidelberg, for the afternoon. We ended up actually driving through Heidelberg first, because it was just such a nice drive. Then we turned around, stopped the car, and wandered around by the river for a bit in some kind of campground or something. We called it Heidelberg's trailer park... y'all.

Back in the car, we drove into town and parked and walked down the main shopping street there, then we headed right up the hill to the castle. It was really nice up there on this warm summer day, so we just walked around in the gardens and stuff, talking nonstop, of course. There were actually a few theatre performances going on up there in the ruins and the guards kept telling us to be QVVIET!!

On they way down we kind of got caught up in the middle of a huge Chinese tour group. No worries, we thought. Let's just pretend like we understand and maybe we'll fit in...

Back down in the city we got ice cream(mmmmmm) and then headed back to Mannheim. There we picked up Chris and all the spaghetti that he made and we all headed back to my place, to meet Nat and Amber and sit down to a nice big meal. I have never had such good meatballs. I'm serious ;)

Afterwards the plan was to watch some STE, but we couldn't get the CDs to work on my computer, or any of three that Daniel had brought along :P But before we knew it, it was late and we were bringing Chris home, then it was my turn to say goodbye to Daniel too, and send him off to Franfurt/Milan/London. Have fun, man! See you around :)

Hot Shots II, The Wrath of Dawn

2005-07-11T09:09:00.000+02:00

I guess I’ve been feeling a little unpopular these days for lack blog comments. So once again I’ve decided to dig deep down into the files of my little camera-phone and post a few more bits of everyday life.

This is the panoramic view of what I see when I’m studying. Yes, my desk. And what am I doing taking pictures of my desk? Well, not studying, that’s for sure.

This is the view from inside Number 2. One of the oldest streetcars in Mannheim and the one that I take to get home.

These are my onions sitting on the streetcar too, in the seat beside me.

This is Eduard. He was very excited to finally find a shoulder bag in his favorite color.

Boris made this shirt for Hanna. “That is my nephew”. It is so cute. Hanna, however does not have siblings. Her cousin had a baby. Maybe they call these nephews in Bulgaria, or maybe they just have really “close” family relations...

This is a shirt I found on sale in Mannheim. Can you read it? I would have bought it, but it was an XL and the only one left.

I am going to miss having a big east window in my bedroom. It actually happens a lot that I just wake up at 6am for maybe 5 minutes, notice that the room is entirely RED, and look outside to see an amazing sunrise. "Daaaawwwwn!" The same happens through the huge west windows in the kitchen in the evening. Too bad I'll be living in a basement next year :(

This is what our room looks like when we both end up on laundry day.

The beer and the water and the cupcakes that came before the flammkuchen and after the flohmarkt :)

Hits means hits. Wurst means…. Sausage. I don’t know if they know English here.

You find strange things at the flea market. Which one is real?

More strange things at the flea market. My color?

Natalie and Veronica on the Rhein ship. Their smiles are so nice. Too bad they are actually laughing at my hair in this picture.

Playing around at work.

My post. The glass walkway.

The electricians conference and the millions of people. I like it better when there’s catering down there.

I guess they forgot to tell me that rule “don’t take pictures of yourself at conferences”

I don’t like the parking garage.

09.July.2005

2005-07-10T08:57:00.000+02:00

Up at 6:30 to shower and orgnize my pantyhose and get all that makeup on for work. That's actually not too early, considering that I've done 4:30 even. They had also moved this shift to half an hour later, so I wasn't complaining. At least in the summer it's light out at 6:30. If there's anything I hate it's waking up in darkness... and big dogs, I guess... and chewed gum... and bananas... ummm

Ahem. Yeah, I was at the streetcar stop in time. Unfortunately I had forgotten AGAIN that it was Saturday. (This happens frequently when you don't lift a finger during the week.) Another guy came down for the streetcar too and was waiting with me. So, there was a bum down there having his 7am beer, (they hang out down there, especially in summer, cuz it's cool underground). And then the time came - and went - for the streetcar to come. The guy standing with me was like - uh oh, something's wrong, I'm gonna be late for work - and that's when the bum - from the other end of the tunnel - looks up and tells us "it's already come, it's already come". What? we said... and sure enough after he said that we both just painfully realized that it was Saturday, and of course the streetcar was running on messed-up-Saturday schedule and wouldn't be coming again until it was too late for the both of us. Haha, thanks man. Enjoy your breakfast.

So that's when the guy and I started walking. He was going in the same direction so we walked together. It turns out he was from Guinea and his name was Mustafa. Yah, like from the Lion King... haha. But I didn't mention that to him. Did you know that I also called Morpheus from the Matrix 'Mustafa' for the longest time because I just couldn't remember his name?? It's not even the same guy. Now Mustafa and Darth Vader, that's the same guy. Is that not just even more crazy??

Right, well I bid farewell to Mustafa at my last corner and waltzed into work right on time. It was a dentist's conference. I spent most of the day up on the glass walkway to th hotel. I kind of like that place, you get to see everything going on both inside and outside. Even when they started bringing over the beautiful-lookig and even-more-beautiful-smelling catering over from the hotel, I was still glad not to be in the basement. I did end up taking a couple rotations down there, though, keeping the riff-raff from the street out of the dentist party. People just don't like getting sent back into parking garages, I guess. But I don't blame them. I hate parking garages too...

So then the dentists were done, but I was not. There was a concert yet tonight, and I was staying till the end! The concert was great, but my work was awful. They had stuck me up in the balcony doing entrance and seating even though I had never even been up here, much less been shown how the seating works. And with Germans, you know it will be complicated. "Excuse me, am I in the right place to find Entrance D, Row 3, Seats 19 A adn B?" Of course you are, right this way... *smile* (??!!)

It also didn't work so well, that I had somehow never actually learned the German world for 'balcony'. So it wasn't very impressive on my part, when the big snotty guy comes up to me and asks me where the balcony is, and I ask him if he was sure he was in the right city and the right theatre... (!) Luckily my coworker saved my butt on that one. I had never met him before either, but he was really nice and helped me a lot. He was a little too manly and patronizing for my taste, but considering my work performance that day, I didn't really blame him ;P

The concert, however, was from a group of Japanese drummers called YAMATO, they were really cool, and I actually got to hang out inside for the whole second half - now THAT's why I got this job in the first place, hello!

Well the concert - and my 10 hours of wearing high heels on the marble floor - were over before I knew it and I went home to a huge wok of stir fry at Natalie's and three of my good friends just waiting to chill out with me. The stir-fry was unbelieveably good after a long day as well as the English-speaking company. That was awesome. And no sooner had I gotten home than my phone rings and it's my dad! A lot has been happening at home lately, and we talked for almost a whole hour. The best part was when my sister asked me on MSN to ask Dad on the phone what they were having for supper that night. Even though she works 5 minutes away from our house and Dad had just seen her 10 minutes ago. "And now I have to pass the message through Germany what we're having for supper, this is crazy."

And then Mom came home and he handed off the phone and I talked to her for another 40 minutes at least, about how she had survived the big storm last week home all alone, and about all the weird things Dad has been up to. So that was really fun. I stilll can't believe he wants a Ford. All he just says is "why does nobody understand that I'm a person open to change?" Hehe, whatever you say!

08.July.2005

2005-07-10T00:38:00.000+02:00

I slept like crazy, which was good, but I still felt gross today. It was cold and rainy too so I just stayed in. I actually got more actual writing-work done on that paper of mine than ever before. I forced myself out in the afternoon to buy groceries, because I knew tomorrow because of work I wouldn't have time. And my backpack served me well again! Despite all my new lovely food I still didn't have much of an appetite, so I basically just snacked on veggies and stuff while I just continued with my work. After another hit of rain I went back out again, my sickly muscles weren't really up for running, but I took my usual route at a nice walking pace, this time also with my music on. I think it really helped me relax. I chatted in the evening and went to bed relatively early - needed beauty sleep for work :P

07.July.2005

2005-07-08T11:00:00.000+02:00

Rowing this morning.
Jut the girls, actually. None of the guys showed up at all so it was just Me and Amber and Kathrin and the teacher in the 4-person race boat. It was awful. Maybe it was because of the wind, or because the boat was narrower, and probably because my technique was wrong, but my hands kept hitting together and my skulls kept getting all messed up, and I was so unsteady, the entire time just trying not to tip us all over. Thank God we only went 3 km today.

I got home and I was in total pain. In fact, I felt exatly like I did after getting out from behind the wheel on the autobahn on the way to Brussels. It must have been the stress or whatever, and I went straight back to bed until it was time for class at 3:30. I still wasn't feeling well as I sat down in class. All we did today was get our certificates and personal critiques from the teacher. She is so nice. She also said she gave me the highest mark possible, by American standards or something, but the best part was when she put her hands way up in the air and said, your vocabulary is this big!! So that was nice. At least my futile essay-writing has done me a little good.

I excused myself from the class right after that, though, because I was starting to really be in need of medicine and my bed. So I headed first to the pharmacy and called up my grade 5 "phrases you use at the pharmacy" lessons and asked for headache medicine. The Pharmacist was so nice and after asking me a few more questions he decided that I needed Ibuprofen. Ok, whatever you say. I don't do this very often. Ok, now I just have to get home...

Outside waiting for the bus as well was a super-nice floormate of Veronica's, so I chatted with him on the bus until I was home. And of course I get off the bus and there are a bunch of more people I know, most namely this Polish guy from my class who was really pumped to see me and wanted to know about Live 8. So I told him a little but I could almost hear my bed calling me from upstairs and soon headed up. Ahhh. Finally. A cup of tea, a bit of medicine, and my bed.

I wasn't really tired, though, and as soon as the pills started to work I just wrote emails. Still not enough energy to work on the paper. Hopefully tomorrow. I watched some crap on TV in the evening too, and just went to bed. Hanna was the one at the bar tonight ;)

06.July.2005

2005-07-07T23:06:00.000+02:00

I had barely rolled out of bed today when I got a call from Alicia. She wanted to have lunch with somebody. And sure enough, it was almost lunch time! And we had even left the bar relatively early last night. I guess I needed sleep. So what I did was first go and pick up my last installment of scholarship money from the office no more in August!), then meet Alicia in the city. We ended up going to the same place with the salad bar that Amber and I had gone to during the Stadtfest. It's just a really good salad bar! We hung out and chatted there for a good while, then I went to the bank and when I finally got home again it was already after 2! I was having big-time concentration problems in the afternoon, and the weather was cool and gloomy so it felt really good to go jogging in the evening. When I got back from jogging I switched on the TV and before I was able to even stretch properly, I hear "last time on the OC..." Probalby still in first season, I thought. But no! It turns out Germany is starting the summer programming this week - and that means season TWO of the OC was starting TODAY! Forget stretching. Even though it was in German, it was so good. She was lying! Aaaaaah!

And to top it off, my phone rings while I'm watching. This had better be important, I thought. The number was 'unknown'. It turns out it was a guy from work, looking to give up a big shift on Saturday. His phone was having problems, and the call was just so unexpected, and alltogether that means my conversational German skills were totally messed up. But I managed to pull myself together somehow and make him understand that I would take the shift. So that's 4 this month! It's funny how deprivation can make people excited about the smallest things. Well, working on the weekend also keeps me from going out and spending loads of money. It's all good. I'm even thinking of celebrating by wearing the flat shoes again...

05.July.2005

2005-07-07T13:15:00.000+02:00

Happy Birthday Hanna!

My little roomate ist 21 years old today!
Unfortunately she has like three tests this week, so there's no party. But in two weeks she's actually leaving for good, so that's when the real party's going to be.

For me, the day consisted of simply sleeping as long as I wanted and then since Grammar class is over I just hung out in my room all day working on my *real* paper. I had already bought a present for Hanna yesterday, but I realized that I didn't actually have anything to wrap it in, so later on I headed back to town and picked up a gift bag and some other cute things. She was home, though, when I got back, so I went and hid around the corner and wrote in her card and put it all together. Then I waited till she went into the shower and I put all the stuff on her desk. Hehe. She was pumped.

While she stayed home studying, however, I *had* to go to the pub with the rest of the Canadians ;) First was our favorite cocktail bar (the one that I had taken Steph to), and then was Brasil. Even though I was still in the process of doing my laundry and had absolutely nothing cool to wear, it was fun to hang out with the friends. The big drinking crowd showed up at Brasil later on, though, and that's when Nat and Norma and I took a liesurely walk home.

04.July.2005

2005-07-05T15:48:00.000+02:00

One weekend is so not long enough to see a city like Berlin. The only reason we came back on Sunday night was because I had to go to class. Now I'm actually quite sorry I did. Basically it was my last day of classes before the exams start. Considering that I failed again this semester at signing up for exams, I don't have any, but that's fine by me. What I was really counting on were these two Monday classes that I have been attending, the credit for which were to be provided by two different term papers. So after my first class I went up to the T.A. that had been leading the session and asked If I could discuss my topic with her sometime.

Her response - What term paper?
Umm, the one that I've spent the past two weeks researching and writing...
No, there is no term paper for this class. You've done the homework, so you're fine and you can pick up your certificate with a miniscule fraction of a real class-credit next week in the office.
But... your opinions on social equality in this class were so terribly messed up and I need to express all the things that I was never able to say during the semester for fear of getting that how-dare-you-even-talk-about-Germans-you-foreigner *look* from all of...
... yes, exactly that one.

So this semester instead of not writing a Term paper and then finding out at the last minute that it was always assumed that every seminar class has one - I did all the work of writing one just to find out that in this case it was assumed that we didn't write anything. And get this. The whole class was based on researching the question of why non-German students tend to fall through cracks in the school system. Well I have a few ideas. In fact, I might just end up writing this paper anyway and send it to anyone who has ever thought of ever migrating to Germany - especially to go to school in Mannheim.

So that kind of put me off for the rest of the day. Good thing, though, that I was still in a good mood from the weekend. After class I just took a walk to calm down and shop for Hanna's birthday present. Then I grabbed some lunch (becuase I still hadn't had a chance to get groceries since the weekend) and met Alicia in the cafeteria and we hung out till I had to go to my other class. This one was fine, as usual. The guy beside me was talking the whole time, but the topic was about German political parties and I really didn't care at all. Besides his voice was really sexy ;) So now that class was done too and it really does have a term paper, so hopefully that will keep me busy for the whole month.

So then I finally got to go grocery shopping. To celebrate my new and amazing 40L hiking backpack I took it all the way to Kaufland and just shopped until it was full! Back at home I had the biggest most relaxing dinner and finally just chilled in the evening, chatting and stuff - most importantly to Shan! I'll see you soon, girl! Hang in there!

Berlin Berlin Berlin

2005-07-05T13:32:00.000+02:00

30.June.2005 - Einsteigen!

Finally here! Another chance to get out of Mannheim and disturb some $#!t somewhere else for the weekend. Well, our train only left at about 1:30pm so I made it to rowing in the morning, which was good. I was in a 3-person boat with two of the cooler people from rowing class. We did quite well, too, and we were pumped for our little team. After rowing, though, was when the real fun began. I actually grabbed a shower in the changeroom at the boathouse, and since I had taken all my stuff with me in the morning I just changed and headed straight to the train station to meet Chris and Veronica and Eddie. The only unfortunate part of the morning was the Milka-Berry-Joghurt Flurry that Chris made me buy at McDonalds. It tasted more like Kool-Aid powder than anything and even though I made him eat most of it he’s still going to pay me back. Haha.

So the train ride was fun. We had actually thrown a couple extra bucks in and reserved seats all together because it’s a 5 hour trip and we didn’t want to be running around with our bags finding seats every time some German businessman walked on and * needed* to sit by the window or whatever. The ride was generally uneventful, I guess. We kept ourselves busy with the crosswords out of the German trash newspapers and were quite successful with them, I must say. Eddie and Chris were snapping constant train pictures as usual. Oh yeah, and what was probably most impressive was the fact that after he finished a bottle of water, Eddie somehow managed to stuff the label of the bottle, three banana peels, and an entire Pringles box into the bottle itself. Apparently this is also a hobby of his. We thought it was art. The cleaning lady, however, chucked it without a second look.

Ok, enough about the train. In Berlin we took the subway and found our hostel no problem. We were actually in a pretty central location, which was nice even though we still used the subway to get around everywhere else. Our hostel itself was cool too. It was generally a really small hostel and kind of Asian/Bohemian because the owner had lived in Indonesia for like 5 years. Our room was an 8-person dorm with its own livingroom and bathroom! The mattresses were on the floor like Japanese-style and there were cool plants and pictures in the livingroom – as well as a DVD player and TV!

Eddie liked it a lot – except for the fact that all the other hot girls in our room were sleeping on the other side of this screen.

We had arrived at about 7pm so in the evening we just took a walk down Straße des 17. Juni (June 17th Street) from the Siege Säule (umm victory monument thing) till the Brandenburg gate. It was a good couple of kilometers and really nice through the Tiergarten (city park). The weather was good too. Once on the east side of the Brandenburg gate, we just kept walking down the famous street Unter den Linden basically until it was dark and we were all totally tired and wanted to go to bed.

There was a huge display of the post-war gate right in the middle of the square. Looked awesome.

01.July.2005 – Canada Day… indeutschland

We woke up and had a nice leisurely (free) breakfast of toast and jam and coffee in the hostel kitchen. The plans weren’t huge for today, just go see the basic Berlin-things. First was the broken-church. I’m sorry I really don’t know what it’s called, but it’s this really tall church in Berlin whose steeple was pretty much just blown right off by a bomb during WWII and remains broken off to this day. The inside is this touristy exhibition now and there is a real modern cylinder-shaped church on the one side of it now that they actually use and a real big tower in the same style built on the other side of it, like it was also separated from it’s steeple or something. It was cool to see.

This picture was on display inside – showing a church service immediately after the destruction.

It was raining however, pretty hardcore all morning and we actually ended up waiting under the archway of the broken church for a while before we could move on. While we were there this old guy from England just started talking to me, saying how he should have stayed home if he’d wanted weather like this. He was kind of crazy and it turns out he and his other old man friend were travelling around Europe for a while this summer and that’s when he pulls out this huge wad of Polish money and tells me he’s going to Poland to change it into Euros. It had to have been like 5000 (insert old Polish currency here) worth, and I loved the fact that he just had it all in his pants so much that I asked him if I could take a picture of it.

When the rain finally let up a little we said goodbye to the crazy English guy and went to see Berlin’s huge famous mall. In English it would be called “The Shopping Center of the West”. It was of course in Western Berlin and apparently built to symbolize the glory of capitalism on this little island of democracy in the ocean of Soviet states. It’s 7 floors, I think, but basically just like any old department store you’ll find in America. Was significant for the time, I guess. My favorite was the bar that sold only champagne and zwar only one kind. Wow, fancy : |

If I’m remembering right I think we went to the Canadian Embassy next, just to see if anything was going on. Apparently the real party’s tomorrow, we didn’t think we could make it but the British guard wished us a happy Canada Day.

Potsdamer Platz was next, it was weird. This was my favorite part:

But this is one of my favorite pics:

“In this place in 1989 was the first hole in the Berlin Wall”

Then we visited the new Holocaust Memorial at Brandenburg, which I loved. I had read about it a while ago in the paper and I think the design is really great. It’s hard to describe, really, but it’s basically a series of cement blocks evenly spaced on a wavy surface, all the same length and width but varying in height, from like 6cm tall to 3 meters or so. They remind me of coffins actually. I don’t know if they’re supposed to, but it’s really surreal walking around in there. It’s totally uniform and structured, but you feel totally lost at the same time. Lost in death…. !

Ahem.
We saw the Reichstag next, the big huge square German government building with a big glass dome on top. Even though it was a 45 minute wait and we had to go through loads of security, it was free to get in, so we went up. It was a good view too, and it wasn’t raining anymore. The building itself was just so…. German. Like huge and imposing and square and perfectly symmetrical. It kind of annoyed me. I was just like, no.. I’m not scared of you.. ok? There was also this really tall and pointy TV tower thing with a glass ball in the middle of it sticking up in the middle of the eastern city that you could see from everywhere. That might have annoyed me even more. It is also apparently famous but it just makes me think of the old Sputnik cosmonaut ships. Ed loved it for the same reason.

A nice big perfectly rectangle piece of German art. It says “The German People” in letters under the plants.

This building is behind the Reichstag on the river. Can you say “built in the 90’s” ?

At the Reichstag we had also met up with three of Chris’ friends from high school who were in Berlin at that point too. These three cute little girls were in the middle of a two-month backpacking trip and as far as I could tell were having a great time.

Chris and his Mädels.

Believe it or not, this word means “straight ahead”
Oh, Germany.

So all 7 of us ended up getting dinner together at a really nice Vietnamese restaurant in the eastern city. The evening basically brought us home to the hostel for movies, drinks and games. We settled in to watch the Aviator, which was kind of strange and incredibly long. So we weren’t all that disturbed when this weird guy comes in and tells us that it’s his DVD and he needs to go home now and take it with him. The owner of the hostel was all apologetic and stuff but we really didn’t care. Ed figured they both had emotional problems. It was all really ok, though, mostly because Chris went over to the shelf and pulled out a box of German Trivial Pursuit cards. Needles to say we did not get to bed for a while.

02.July.2005 – This is Not a Rock Concert

Woke up whenever. Another nice leisurely breakfast in the hostel. Today was the concert. Live 8, baby. Right on that same street leading up through the park to the Brandenburg Gate. I was pretty pumped about it but the others weren’t so sure they would want to stay all day and miss ‘seeing the city’ or whatever. But I was okay with staying by myself for a while even if they wanted to go. We all had phones and the hostel was pretty close by. The crazy thing is, we got there at 11 without any idea what time it would start or if we could even get in without tickets or whatever. Turns out it started at 2 but we were already caught up in a big crowd and they were playing cool music for the sound checks already so we just stuck around. We ended up being relatively close to the front (which is not at all close in absolute terms, but hey. I had two big guys’ shoulders to sit on when I really needed to ;) And yeah, unlike in London and Toronto, apparently, there were no tickets necessary and we saw the entire show. It was so incredibly cool, in fact, that everybody stayed with me all day! Having a concert on a long narrow street, however, may not have been the best idea crowd-wise, but it was a really historical and beautiful location nonetheless, and there probably weren’t all too many huge fields available in the vicinity.

The first band was actually the best of all – die Toten Hosen. I couldn’t believe they played first, but apparently they had another concert that evening to get to. All the big German pop bands were there, most of which nobody out in Canada has ever heard of, but I’ve grown to like them this past year and it was really cool to be able to see them live before I go back home. Green Day was there too, and Audioslave, but I totally missed them while I was picking up lunch meeting up with the Ontario girls again. Dang, yah I was not happy about that. But they’ll be in America when I go back anyway. In the breaks they showed clips mostly of London and Madonna’s performance and U2 as well as Will Smith in Philadelphia and stuff like that. The big motto of the day was like “this is not a rock concert, this is a demonstration”. So they were doing a lot of promoting of the March of Justice to Edinburgh next week as well as the signing of a petition to the G8 leaders to cancel African debt. The symbol of poverty alleviation is a white band and we were all wearing them. It kind of felt like we were part of one of those old civil rights demonstrations or Vietnam protests or something. A cool feeling.

“red red wiiiiiiiine”

I think that lady behind my homiee Chris was into him…

The big message…

That guy looks kind of familiar…

I’ve studied a bit of development back in Waterloo and I really think this is a good cause – and an important step towards the meeting of the Third World challenges. What I don’t think people really understand, though, is the challenge that this poses to the actual G8 leaders. We say today that we want them to cancel the Third World debt and we draw pictures of these big fat white men next to starving black children – but we certainly don’t re-elect them if the economy is doing badly – which it may very well do if we lose interest payments from all those countries. We challenge the world leaders to do something, and they may have a lot of power, but they really only represent our own consumption.

“Your voice against poverty”

Ahem… right. So.
The Burger King food that I consumed for lunch successfully – but barely – carried me to the end of the concert. Well, almost the end. V and Eddie had left already and Chris and I had just decided to see if we could get up front into the VIP section somehow but that wasn’t successful and instead we ended up in a section where there were exclusively 7-foot tall Germans standing all together. It was like I was in a forest. Seriously. Then they had a really long break in the music and absolutely all of them pulled out cigarettes and started puffing away. It was unbelievable how much smoke we breathed that day. So that’s the point at which we decided to leave too. We’d seen all the good stuff and it was already past midnight! So we cruised back home on the subway. By the time we got back to the hostel I could hardly stand. That’s how awesome the day was.

Jen’s eye view.

03.July.2005 – Bye Bye Berlin

For some reason the word “leisurely” and “breakfast” just fit so well together. Today we had an extra member at the table, though, and zwar the owner of “John’s Hostel” – John himself. This is the point actually, at which we learned that he had been in Indonesia for five years and everything. But he still asked us, like all the Germans do, if we have grizzly bears in Canada. Yes John, we do. But they sleep all winter, you see. And since the winter is actually 10 months long, we don’t view the bears as much of a threat…

We checked out of the hostel that morning. Our train back to Mannheim, though, was only at 6:30 in the evening. So what we did was lock our heavy bags up at the train station and hit the city again. Veronica actually wanted to go to mass so I went along and she and I ended up at this big catholic church modeled exactly after the Pantheon in Rome. They were even doing mass in the original Latin, with the chants and everything. so she was pumped. I just hummed along. Apparently the bishop forgot this certain kind of blessing and Veronica totally noticed it, so in order to prevent being *cheated * out of a mass, she actually went up and talked to the old guy after the service. He was the cutest old man ever and was wearing the whole costume and everything. So after he gave Veronica a personal blessing he proceeded to tell us about the history of the church itself and even took us outside and explained to us what the carved facades on the outside were depicting! And our personal little history lesson ended up attracting like 5 or 6 more people off the street who came up to listen too. It was really cool.

"Behind the catholic church" oh - is that where I am??

When that was done we called up the guys again and headed out to Berlin’s “Museum Island”. The best part of this island, though, had to have been the fleamarket that was happening there that day – where I bought old Soviet lapel pins with Lenin on them for only one Euro! Other than that, there were a bunch of big square imposing museums. We were going to go into one of the really important ones but decided that no matter how important it is, sometimes you just don’t feel like seeing pottery. The weather was really nice too, so we just kept walking to the Berlin Cathedral. This place was really huge and nice and there was a big garden across the road where we chilled for a while, looking at it. We wanted to go in, of course, but they were charging admission (to a church… on Sunday…) so we just took more pictures from the outside and left again.

Chillen.

This is just a weird shot.

It’s Giez street!

On the bridge to the Museum Island – it’s huge!

Time for lunch back at the train station. Eddie did not want his chocolate.

Then we caught a subway out to the Jewish Museum, our one last adventure before heading back to Mannheim.

This place was really modern and interesting. The front of it looked just like any old fancy building in Berlin, but the first thing you do when you go in is descend to this underground series of hallways called “the continuity of…” this and that. They were all at odd angles with each other and all at a different slant with the ground. At one point you ended up outside in a garden of cement blocks, much like the ones at Brandenburg, only there were trees growing out the tops of these and they were much taller and the ground was slanted in a way that you just felt ill walking around in there. At the end of another hallway was a odd-shaped and hollow “void of remembrance” or something like that, that you would just walk into and stand at the bottom of and look up into darkness. Along the slanted hallways, too, there were just a lot of personal documents and possessions that would tell the life stories of different Jewish people that were killed during the war.

After the crazy hallways, we actually had to walk up a huge long staircase that took us to the very top of the museum. Up there we started with the cultural history of the Jews in Germany as well as the political history of their oppression. Now that was really good to read about since it had been something that was on my mind lately anyway. Why the Jews, eh Hitler? Well, just like I kind of expected, it was simply a series of preconceptions that just got way out of hand. They had a lot of really old and disgusting propaganda up there too. It was so interesting…

Look familiar?

That’s supposed to be a physical comparison between Jews and Aryans…

When you’re real tired just sit and pretend to look at the art…

Or just find something else to do.

That museum was huge, though, and by the time we got out, I was really tired of walking around. At that point we just headed back to the train station, picked up some food and our bags and boarded the train back to Mannheim. The ride home had to have been even more fun than the ride there. We got ahold of a bunch of German crosswords again and also looked at pictures of the weekend and finished off some of our special drinks from the night before, and were basically just in one of those really-tired-uncontrollable-laughter moods : )

You want to sleep the what out of your bed???

You guys think we have enough to last the trip?

Chris, I know your feet are tired, but….
Wait, let me switch the camera into panoramic mode…

Guys, I think Germany puts extra ingredients in the coke…

Whatever it is, I’m not complaining!

Everything alright over here?

Everything’s just fine!!

5 hours later we were back in Mannheim. The streetcar came right away to take me home and I was even lucky enough to find Jerome and Maria on the street at my stop so I didn’t even have to walk home alone at all. Hanna was still up when I got in, and my new backpack was there too. Hanna said it had arrived one hour after I’d left on Thursday. Of course. On my desk was something else, too. A belated birthday present from the wonderful Adam who is back from his road trip now – the Guns n Roses “Welcome to the Videos” collection on DVD. Haha! Just tops off a great weekend.

29.June.2005

2005-06-29T23:07:00.000+02:00

I hardly did a thing today. Well, that's what it feels like anyway. I actually worked on my paper till about 3 or 4 pm. So it's not like I was just lying around. But it's just that it's summer and even though my room is really cool, I simply hate the fact that I am sitting inside at my desk. Never again will I study in summer. I don't know how they do it here. Somebody remind me in a couple years also that I promised never to work behind a desk, no matter what the season.

But I got out later on, to pick up a few snacks for the big trip tomrrow. Berlin, here we come!!! Man, don't even ask me about affording this one, but we are planning on keeping expenses on a down-low. Hopefully ;) Besides, it's Canada Day weekend, AND the Live 8 concert is there on Saturday. And we'd better find a way in.

So anyway, I met Veronica and we went to Kaufland. It was fun shopping for junk food for a change. But I simply went home after that and whipped up all the things I had left in the fridge for supper. Before I was able to eat, though, it started raining. Raining like MAD. Finally, I thought, some real entertainment out here. Too bad we don't have a balcony. But I stood in the open window until the plant tipped over from the wind and I started to get all wet. That's when the rest of us noticed the big stream of water coming out of the roof right above the garbage can. And behind the sofa. And from the window above Asami's bed. So that's when the hustle began. Pails, bowls, mop and bucket... it was kind of fun, actually. Well, not for Asami. Shows her right, though, for getting a package from the mailman today exactly when I'm expecing my new backpack!! But Nat gave me hers for the weekend, so I'm alright.

Well, anyway. In the evening I finally got down to eating and then I just packed and watched the Confederations Cup championships (soccer) with Timo. It was kind of fun. Too bad I never got out to a real soccer game out here. Brazil won. Germans love Brazil for some reason. But I love them too, when the game was over they all pulled out random musical instrumetns and started playing them and dancing. That's it. I'm moving there.

So anyway...
No, just kidding ;)
Just check for Berlin stories on Tuesday.
Later!

28.June.2005

2005-06-28T23:01:00.000+02:00

The big thing today as going to Grammar class and getting those exams back! But it was actually cool this morning too, so I went jogging first thing. And then I made an excellent ceasar salad for lunch - with bacon :) I got caught up in the kitchen talking to one of Timo's really nice friends who will be going to school in Montreal this fall, and I almost missed the bus! Thanks to Hanna pushing me out the door, though, we both made it just fine. I got something equivalent to a B+ on the exam which was just fine by me, considering how little I studied for it. Veronica rocks just as much too, we got the exact same mark. Yay us! The stuff we did learn, though, has actually been quite useful, I gotta say, even though the class was so boring I usually would rather have just let somebody inject the information into my eyeballs with a big fat needle. We even had a normal lesson still in the hour that was left after we had discussed the test. It was really hot in there and for those who had not actually gotten good marks on the test, nor were sitting by the fan (like I was) it was almost unbearable to stay in there.

But finally it was over and I went out to meet Chris for ice cream like we had planned yesterday. And Veronica and Ed came along too, which was cool. Because we got ice cream and then we all decided to go see the new Batman movie because it was discount day and it was playing in English. The theatre was nice and cool, the movie was really really good, and also nice and long and this particular theatre is just really fun to hang out in (eg. wierd furniture all over the place). After the movie Veronica and I just made it to the store before it closed to buy breakfast food. Then I just wandered home, made dinner and drank the rest of my birthday wine - yumm! Now that bed is starting to look really good again.

27.June.2005

2005-06-28T22:33:00.000+02:00

Monday and it was nice to have reason to wake up in the morning for a change. Even if it was for my school-system-inequality class. The cute boy that I met in the elevator on the very first day and never talked to me again had a presentation today. It sucked unbelieveably. After that class I went out and got some lunch and ate it as I walked nice and slowly back to school. No matter now slow I walked, though, I was still super-early for my next class, so I stopped one last time in the lecture that I dropped when I found out I'd forgotten to sign up for the exam... again. And guess what he was talking about today? Social Capital. But instead of spewing it all over the floor today, I simply fell asleep. It was kind of nice, until my leg had a spasm and I woke up just as everyone was starting to make lots of noise and pack up their things, a good 10 minutes before the professor was donen speaking, as usual. But I guess I shouldn't talk. I was sleeping ;)

My next class is really the one that gives me hope for this university. It is a small discussion class of students in second semester. The guy doing the presentation today was hilarious. (You know you're in a fresh new generation of Germans when you're making Nazi jokes in your Political Sociology class...) Most of the students here actually talk to each other and get along, and the professor knows a LOT, is also quite funny, and is a really good discussion leader. And today, to my huge surprise, one girl actually randomly starts talking to me. Turns out she is going on exchange to the States this coming fall and she's freaking out. So she wanted to know what it's really like. She also said my German was perfect :D and after class she even wanted to walk with me uptown because she was going there too. Well, if it's possible to be pleasently shocked, that's what I was.

In the evening I just worked on my paper, I guess. I wrote to my little cousin Holly who graduated high school today(!) and I cooked maultaschen, which were excellent. We pretty much just went to bed early, I guess, because we were tired. That's just nice sometimes too.

26.June.2005

2005-06-27T09:02:00.000+02:00

Wow, it's been like a whole week since the canoe trip! And the weather is still just as great. I should probably email Pavol...
... anyway. I woke up today with intentions of doing some serious introduction-writing on both of my term papers. After a couple hours at my desk in the morning, however, and after losing concentration and falling back asleep in bed - I decided that it was not going to be possible. So I got out of bed and went for a walk. Well, it was more like a hike. It was so nice and sunny out in the high-twenties. Perfect. So I walked the bank of the river for like 4km! I only stopped because I hit one of the river locks and stopped to watch the boats going through. One guy on this big coal freighter asked me if I wanted a ride to Heidelberg. Man, I almost jumped on right there! How fun would that have been?? And what a story! But I actually hadn't brought my transit pass along with me, much less any money, and I could just picture myself being stuck in Heidelberg for the rest of my life with no way home. Come to think of it, that doesn't sound that bad...! Well, maybe next weekend.

But anyhow I didn't jump on the boat. I sat there with my feet in the water for a while and then hiked the way back home. I was able to concentrate on the paper a little better after that. But it wasn't long before I was hungry and meeting Veronica in the city for ice cream. And then going back to my house and making dinner. We opened up one of the bottles of wine I'd gotten for my birthday too, from Portugal. It was soooo good.

In the evening I lost a bid on Ebay for a huge suitcase. I think I need to work on my technique. So then Hanna and I watched a DVD. We'll think about school again tomorrow.

25.June.2005

2005-06-26T09:31:00.000+02:00

So it's the weekend again. As if my whole week isn't like one long weekend anyway. So I basically just worked on those papers again today. I wandered to the grocery store sometime in the afternoon and picked up some things but it had just raied and was disgustingly humid and sweaty outside and I was glad to get back home again. In the afternoon I had had enough of working and sat down to watch a DVD that Hanna had brought home for the weekend. Sliding Doors, it was quite good. I had supper and watched a bit of the soccer game with Timo and Laura. Then my family called, Mom and Dad had been gone on a fishing trip for the past little while so it was good to hear from them again. I also totally scored my first item from Ebay today, a 40L hiking backpack to hopefully use next weekend and also for the trip home and so on. Oh yeah, my interet purchases last night also included a plane ticket from Toronto to Winnipeg and back again. August 16, guys! See you then!

24.June.2005

2005-06-25T00:00:00.000+02:00

First of all, Happy Birthday Sarah DJ :D
And to celebrate out here in Deutschland, what did I do?
I sat in my room the entire day, playing around with ideas for my term paper. It's become kind of hard, actually, because everything I want to say always ends up being a major critique of German society in its entirety. And I don't want to end up offending the person that's marking it too much.

It was still hot today but I was loving it in the new tank top from yesterday. At about 4:00 I realized that I'd hardly eaten anything yet in the day and was starting to get really restless at home. So I called up Veronica and we made plans with Ed to go over to her place and play frisbee and whip up some dinner. So it was good to get out, we had some fun outside and even made POUTINE for supper. Nobody in her house had a clue what that was, haha but it was totally awesome. I was kind of in the mood to go to a big party I'd heard about this afternoon, but the other guys were more in the chilling mood, and that was fine with me too. So we just ended up cleaning the kitchen and dancing to the radio. Our own little party - and not so bad either. Then we settled down to watch a DVD. The big plan was to see Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I'd never seen. It turned out, though, that all of Veronica's DVDs were in her flatmate's room - the one who was currently in Barceona for the entire week. So what now? Nothing, I guess. We hung out a bit more and then Eddie and I caught the streetcar home. Even at 10:30 it was still sweaty-hot, and after all that frisbeeplaying and dancing and cooking and eating and walking all the way from the streetcar stop, my cold shower felt reeeeally good.

23.June.2005

2005-06-24T13:39:00.000+02:00

I am officially registered now with Ebay.de :)
My current goal is to find the biggest possible suitcase for the lowest possible price. Things are looking good - and it's fun.

Rowing was back on this morning, and it was awesome. Today I ended up in the big boat with three other guys plus the teacher. Noon was rolling around too, and it was nice and hot out on the river. These guys were really going too, and I was just barely keeping up. But I stil was. Man, we were all sweating pretty hardcore at the end!

After home, shower, and lunch, it was time for another big test - this time in Text class. We basically read an article and answered three questions about it. It was a piece of cake. But we'll see how she marks it, I guess.

After class it was time for more grocery shopping, endless grocery shopping. But that's life, I guess. And I like it anyway. So I got out of the streetcar at the store, but then I noticed that I had left my brand-new 1-Euro sunglasses on the seat after I got off. So luckily the doors were still open and I got back on and found them. But then I couldn't get back out and I got swept off to the next stop. But that was alright, because this stop was beside the drugstore and I needed soap anyway. And while I was out there, I just wandered over to the clothing stores across the street. Haha. Big mistake. One skirt, one tank top, and one more trip to the bank machine later - I finally made it back to the grocery store. But the stuff is all really really cool and was really really on sale, so I feel alright. I'm finished my exams now, anyway! (Haha, all two of them...)

Turns out it was Maria's birthday today too, but Veronica and Chris and I had tickets for the Math-Faculty Party today at school ;) so we stopped in Maria's for a little bit but then were off again. The Math Party was pretty good. Not so crowded and we found cool people to hang out with. These outdoor parties only run till 1am, though, so afterwards we all just hung out in the city for a bit longer. Back at home we stopped in at Maria's for another drink, but by now I was starting to feel my rowing muscles again and decided it was time for bed.

22.June.2005

2005-06-24T13:30:00.000+02:00

I participated in a study today researching foreign students and their opinions of the German university system. When I got the letter in the mail last week I thought -is this for real?? But sure enough, I met the interviewer in the evening in the common room of our apartment building and she asked me all about my own high school and also what kinds of difficulties I'd had in Germany so far. I had her writing a LOT. Unfortunately it seems that nobody else in this place much value in survey research and I was the only one that showed up. And so (I know how this works) since they did not even get close to a representative sample of foreign students for this thing, my rich commentary will most likely just get chucked. Nope, the exchange students are fitting in just fine, it seems. Except for this one strange girl... Oh well!

Special Edition - BUSWATCH

2005-06-22T21:07:00.000+02:00

This is a special post of jenindeutschland dedicated to the bravery of one Alicia Christie.

My little friend and future-roomie Alicia was on the bus to the Frankfurt Hahn apirport yesterday, it was an extremely lovely and extremely hot day and all she had to do was stick out the 1.5 hour bus ride before she was on a plane to Ireland to spend an entire week with her long lost cousins in Ireland. There was a British man on the bus as well, who did not look very healthy already when he got on. During the ride this man suddenly throws up, falls over and passes out, flat on his back in the aisle. Alicia's first-aid training kicks in immediately and she runs to help him. He's not breathing and he's turning blue! She successfully wakes him up again, just in time for him to throw up another time. Stay awake, sir! I'm here to help you, you're going to be fine!

This bus needs to stop, thinks Alicia. So she shouts to the bus driver - stop the bus and call an ambulance! Now! He did not do anything. Her German is good, btw. He had to have understood. The second time she shouted he did manage to turn around and give her the beloved German dumbface expression. Let it also be known that all the rest of the people on this bus except one other man were either ignoring the man, staring at him with their own personal dumbface expressions, and a few were even laughing and calling him a drunk. Drunks don't hyperventilate and turn blue in the face, thought Alicia. Plus all the man seemed to be able to say was how scared he was, how his chest hurt, and how he was NOT drunk...

So after playing translator between the sick man and the driver for a while, Alicia finally gets the driver to stop the bus and call an ambulance. The man keeps coming in and out of consciousness and at this point our Alicia was getting a little upset at the other dumbfaces who are still calling him a drunk.

The paramedics finally got there and the man was still in pain and periodically passing out. At this point the bus driver asks one of the paramedics if he could find the sick man's wallet and take some money out in order to pay for cleaning the seats in the bus. It was all Alicia could do not to smack him right there.

The bus got going again right away, but despite a few phone calls to the airport, when she got there they did not let Alicia check in. Her plane was still there, of course, but the check-in desk was already closed.
There was an accident!
But... the check-in desk is closed... *dumbface*
This is the approximate point at which the waterworks started.

But luckily our hero of the day had a sidekick, poised and ready in Mannheim with a roomate with a car and the strength of will to rush to her side and bring her back to Mannheim for one more night. Her new ticket is for tomorrow afternoon. A whole new ticket for full price, of course. But her parents, yes the wonderful people who had raised this excellent human being, offered immediately to cover it.

Here's to you, Alicia.
Here's to BUSWATCH.

21.June.2005

2005-06-22T15:33:00.000+02:00

Well today was the *big day* of the grammar exam. I studied a bit last night, I guess, and I told myself I'd spend the whole morning going over the stuff before we went and did it this afternoon. But even that was hard. I think I just ran out of things to study (not to mention interest). So I caught the bus at the normal time and I sat with Tushita's boyfriend Dave who's from Australia - a really cool guy - and we were having a good conversation when we suddenly noticed that we were only about halfway there and the bus hadn't moved for about 5 minutes. That's a pretty long red light...
But as Hanna suddenly pointed out, it was not a red light, and sure enough the bus had basically just stopped driving. I don't know what was wrong (the driver didn't feel the need to say anything but 'you all have to get off now in the middle of the street'). So that's what we did, and the bus just drove away. Ok, whatever. Now we walk, I guess. Of course this will happen to me today - I was stupid enough to try to write another exam in this country...

So about 15 minutes later I got to class. I was about 10 minutes late for the actual test and everyone was writing when I got in. The students had all been spaced equally around the room in a semi-circle of tables and chairs. At least the teacher wasn't mad. But my spot was going to be the extra one - right in the middle. Hi guys, guess who's here!

So the test was really long. And easy. And boring. And I had it finished about the same time as the smartypants Polish girl got up and handed hers in. Haha - maybe I should check it over once, I was late after all...

After class I walked up town wth Amber and Natalie. Then they went into the department store and I went to get food. Mmmm, BLTs for dinner again. Just didn't get enough last time, I guess! I took the streetcar home because it was hot and I was wearing my flip-flops again. Although I am getting used to them now. Hehe, that Gardenland sock tan will be gone before you know it!

In the evening I managed to decline a few various party invitations in favour of BLTs, lemonade and European Union academic journals. Later on there was a movie on TV. "L'enfer" being a French movie from 1994 dubbed over in German and one of the worst movies ever made, it successfully put me to sleep.

20.June.2005

2005-06-20T23:59:00.000+02:00

I somehow managed to roll out of bed this morning at 8:30 but man, this old lady had some serious canoe-soreness going on in certain places. So I hobbled to my seminar, but it just made me mad again. Okay so in just a few words, there are three versions of public high school in Geramny into which the students are distributed according to academic performance at a very early age. So yeah, society's social classes are basically laid in stone right there. And what do we want to find out? Why the heck are all the migrant chlidren landing in the dumb schools? Did we maybe consider that assigning negative social labels to seven-year-old children is not really going to encourage achievement? No no, that would go a little too far...

But I didn't walk out today. It was just too hot. Yeah a bit of a heat wave has begun and the only places that have AC around here are the grocery stores, and even they're not nearly as extreme as at home. I'm not complaining about that though. I hate air conditioning. And I love heat waves! Tomorrow's the longest day of teh year and it's supposed to be 34 degreees :) :)

So after that class managed to walk all the way to the cafeteria in my flip flops (I have difficulty in flip flops - just don't wear them enough, I guess...) and 'joined' Paulina and some other girls in the lineup for party tickets. So I bought a few. It turns out Maria is having a birthday party that day too, but there's no reason we can't do both, right?

I ran into Alicia at that monment and she was going in to the caf to eat. She invited me to come along and share the giant serving with her. And I had never actually eatern in there yet, so I said why not? So she picked up the thing from the cheapy menu, a big plate of rice with some meaty/gravy sauce that they had decided to call 'curry'. So yeah, it wasn't bad. Definitely worth 2.50 and the one plate was also definitely big enough for the both of us. It was fun hanging with my future roomie too. And we had some time afterwards and went and got ice cream too.

My last class was ok but again this time they were talking about social capital and in my years of university I have had about enough social capital to be able to spew social capital all over the floor. But the prof is good and the cute guy that sits on the other side of the room got a nice haircut. Instead of trying to walk home after class in my darn flip-flops, I took the bus. Back at home I just did my laundrdy and tried to study for grammar. The best part of the day, however, was a solid hour late in the evening when I got to talk to ADAM on the phone! I heard all about his road trip and he heard all about my most recent little Germany adventures. See you again soon, buddy!

Now, it's time to try to sleep in this heat. Goodbye clothes, hello bed!

19.June.2005

2005-06-20T18:02:00.000+02:00

Canoe Trip!
This was the real reason, actually, that Pavol came out this particular weekend. The VISUM group was having a canoe trip today. Veronica and I had signed up already last week too. The whole thing only got underway at 11am, when we met all the 25-or-so other people at the train station. So after waiting there for at least half an hour for them to tell us what ‘group number’ we were, we were all herded onto this train headed for the middle of nowhere. And nobody seemed to know where we were actually going or how long it would take to get there. So I was kind of frustrated with their event-organizing skills from the start. Not to mention uneasy – I don’t know, something was just telling me that this kind of situation has happened in Germany before…

Well I finally asked this one girl who seemed to be barking orders and stuff. I got this why-are-you-even talking-to-me-while-I’m-barking-orders look from her first, of course, but she did tell me where we were going and we were all a little relieved. Well, we got there and then spent a little bit of time walking around this little town and seeing their little-town festival which was really cute. Back down by the river another canoe group was there and not even in the water yet, so I got ice cream from the gas station and Pavol and I just waited by the water for our group to gather. It was nearing 2:30. (There’s just something different about canoeing at 7AM, I don’t know…) Well, we finally got in the water. We were in these big plastic canoes with little plastic paddles and everybody had to go three to a boat, the group had invented all these water-splashing and boat-jumping games too. So I guess they don’t take canoeing as seriously out here as they do where I’m from… ;) But after I got over that, it was quite fun. The river was beautiful and with Pavol and Veronica in the boat with me, you know it’s gonna be a good time!

The actual tour was about 4 hours long, including two pee-breaks and one small portage (known better to some as slide-the-fiberglass-canoe-along-the-pavement… ouch!) The weather was more beautiful than we could have asked for. At the end we all pulled ourselves and our boats out of the water and up onto this really nice big grassy field looking up to vineyards on the hills in the distance. We all laid out there on the grass drying off as our babysitters brought out the sandwiches and beer.

We chilled there for a while but then it was nearing time to go back home. What we did at this point was all get into various tiny cars and get driven to the train station. At the train station we waited for a good 40 minutes for the trian to come. Then we all got on and rode for about 20 minutes to get to the town from which we had actually started the canoe trip (directon: away from Mannheim). After a good 30 minute wait there we boarded another train heading back to where we came from, passing right by the station that we were at originally. Only this particular train did not stop at that particular station, of course. Which is why we had to ride backwards. So then two stops after that one we got off again, RAN to catch yet another train on a different track leaving in 3 minutes. From there we got to Heidelberg, transferred once again and were in Mannheim by about 11:30PM. (On the program plan, of course, was something like return time, 8:30pm) Needless to say I was NOT able to call my father on Father’s Day. Sorry Dad, not really my fault. Pavol also had planned to get the trian back to Frankfurt that evening yet so he could go to back to work on Monday, but that didn’t work out either. He just ended up leaving real real early the next morning.

So it was a fun weekend, to say the least, notwithstanding unfortunate confrontations with Germans, of course. And I know the crap tends to teke up more space in the blog than the good stuff, but we really did have a great time, and i LOVE the weather here. It was so fun, in fact, that we've all decided to do a real canoe trip sometime when we get back home :)

18.June.2005

2005-06-20T18:01:00.000+02:00

Finally a nice busy day again!
Got up at 6AM, yup. Just to go with Chris to the flea market in Bad Dürkheim nice and early – before the good stuff was gone!

Well, it actually turns out that we were pretty early anyway and whatever “good stuff” was supposed to be there we did not find. Not that any of it was going anywhere anyway. But even though we didn’t buy anything it was really fun walking around. I think we made our way through the whole thing about three times in all. It was almost noon, anyway, when we finally tore ourselves away from all the old Nazi propaganda magazines and military stuff.

So then we climbed back up into the city, took a little walk through the Kur garden and found Flammkuchen for lunch. Man, it was good. The day was really really beautiful and we were sitting outside and kids came by and wanted to sell us cupcakes for 50 cents so we bought some and they were good too. But were we done? No, we needed ice cream yet, of course! So we went back to this place where they were selling ice cream for half the price it usually is. I was kind of suspicious but it was the best ice cream I had had so far (in Germany)! I think the cone is where the bargain came in. It tasted like total crap :P

And still not in the mood to go home yet, we took our ice cream back to the park. I successfully recalled the latin names of all the flowers in the whole palce. That took a while, though. Then we just sat with our feet in a fountain for another good half hour at least. Finally we found a streetcar that would take us back to Mannheim. It must have been at least 4:00.

Back in Mannheim I said goodbye to Chris and hello to Pavol (used to live on my floor) who was coming from his internship in (the Deutsche Bank!) Frankfurt to spend the weekend at the old crib ;) We had arranged to meet at the grocery store and pick up things and then go back home and make dinner together – just like we always used to! So I decided to show him and Hanna and Borislav what a BLT is. I think they liked them. I sure did!! We all spent quite a while at the table so later in the evening Pavol and I just went out for a beer and then back home. He was just as crazy as always, too. Even moreso probably considering he has to be all serious at work now the entire week ;)

17.June.2005

2005-06-18T16:06:00.000+02:00

I slept in today but I still fell asleep in the afternoon. I decided to study the entire day because I won't have time on the weekend but I still watched a movie on TV. I went for a 'walk' today instead of a run because it was hot but halfway through I got bored and I ran anyway. I ate guacamole for lunch and greek salad for supper. That's about it, I guess.

16.June.2005

2005-06-17T13:15:00.000+02:00

Rowing was cancelled today and so I only had to go to class at 3:30. The morning semeed to drag on for an eternity. Around lunch time I picked up some food and made salad. In text-class in the afternoon I did my presentation. I basically just had to talk about a certian article in the newspaper or a magazine or something. Mine was about a German student who decided to raise money and/or protest the new tuition fees by 'stripping' in the internet by means of a series of photos. So the more money comes in, the less clothes she will wear in the pictures. Haha, I don't think many of the people in my class caught my lovely sarcastic comments throughout the presentation, but they got into a good discussion afterwards.

After class Natalie and I went and joined a totally long and worthess meeting with one of the visiting Waterloo professors. In other words I didn't get to eat supper until 7:30 and neither did I get a chance to even ask about my Political Science credits. So as soon as we could go, Eddie and Chris and Nat and I were out of there and picking up Döners. Then we all went back to my place for tea... and before we knew it, it was midnight and we were still hanging out in the kitchen and talking! So at least the evening was fun.

15.June.2005

2005-06-15T23:20:00.000+02:00

Back to having no class. Man, yesterday was rough ;P
Well I woke up with a headache. I think it was probably just my body telling me that I was dehydrated because I didn't drink enough water yesterday after running (because it was raining and for some reason I wasn't thirsty - but that's no excuse) and then ate just really salty food for dinner and topped it off with a null-comma-drei of Eichbaum. You really gotta listen to what your body tells you, ya know. Anyways. So I drank a good bottle of water after breakfast and the headache went away. I spent the whole morning reading - yes, still German Sociology. I'm actually starting to hate Sociology, they are so caught up in the details. I don't care what percentage of children from migrant families go to carreer college and how many end up in university. The big picture is just so much clearer. Now Political Science, that can just explain everything away in one shot :)

In the afternoon I took my other little assignment out to the river with me and sat by the water. *Oooooops* forgot my pen, though! Oh well, I'll just have to lay here for a couple hours and listen to music. Providing there are no naked old men in my vicinity. Nope? Ok, good.

Haha, as soon as the guy on the bicycle stopped a couple meters downsream from me and started taking off his shirt, though, I was out of there ;)

Back home Hanna was cooking with another Chinese friend of hers. They just happened to be cooking a whole lot and invited me to join, and it would have just been rude to say no ;) So there was chicken, there was rice, there were veggies, there was fruit, there was pork, there was soup.... oh man, it was great. And at the end Borislav just up and pulls a big thing of strawberry ice cream out of the freezer! Man, were we stuffed.

I think we worked it off, though, washing all those dishes. After the kitchen was clean, Hanna's friend randomly announces that she wants to sing us a song. Okaaay...
So yeah, we just all sit back down at the table and she sings us this 1000 year old Chinese folk song about a women whose lonely because her lover is gone to work in another town. Its not like I understood anything, (or could even tell if she was hitting the right notes...) but it was absolutely adorable! Then Hanna tells me to sing a "Canadian" song. Haha, well, I said, we don't have any that are 1000 years old, that's for sure. (I don't even think the English language has been around that long...) but why don't I sing that Sarah MacLachlan song that you like so much? Ok good. So I sang "Arms of the Angel" for them. Hey, it's Canadian, right? So then it was Hanna's turn. She so didn't want to sing but we eventually convinced her and she just breaks out into Peking Opera for us. Now THAT was cool. It kind of reminds me of Arabic music but still differnt, I can't describe it. She's sending me mp3s, look out Waterloo.

The two of us went running in the evening, despite the large amounts of dinner still stitting in our stomachs. But we were fine. I also think we only got honked at like 3 times.

14.June.2005

2005-06-15T09:26:00.000+02:00

Tuesday and ever since I stopped going to that early lecture it's a day just like any other. Although I don't have any exams this semester, I do have two different term papers to write and I'm going to try to do them both in German too so that's what I'll probalby be spending my working hours doing for the next month or so. And that's what I did this morning. I went jogging too, in the rain. It was cool :) In the afternoon was grammar class so I acually changed out of my pajamas and got on the bus. It was boring, but I reallly do try. I do. During class Alicia had to go and mention to me that she and Eddie had found a Thai buffet for only 5.50 and they were going there right after class. I wasn't going to go, but as soon as she mentioned that my stomach started telling me that all it hat gotten today was a stupid salad and my brain started telling me that all I had in the cupboard at home was spaghetti, and before I knew it they had both convinced my mouth to tell Alicia that I would come along. And yeah, it was really good! Eddie, however, decided that he wanted to buy me a beer for dessert. Haha. Since yesterday's coffee problem, I figured a beer woudn't be that bad ;) So there we were at 4:30pm in the Thai restaraunt drinking German beer and talking about stuff to do in Toronto. It was great!

After dinner I tagged along with Alicia to go shoe-shopping. But then my streetcar pulled up and I realized that I had to go home and pick up a letter I had forgotten to mail. So I got in a Hi Hanna and a Bye Hanna and I was on the bus again. First stop was the International visitors center where I had to go pay the fee for next weekend's canoe trip. (Jen, Veronica, Pavol - taking over the Neckar!). And after that I still didn't have the right change to buy stamps for my letter (the machines don't actually give change...) so I went back home again. I guess I could say I worked on one of my papers for the rest of the evening. Talked to Rachel for a bit :) Didn't even turn on the TV.

13.June.2005

2005-06-14T09:21:00.000+02:00

Aaaaaaaand back to class.
Well, I went to my first class, but today - it made me so mad that I left after 45 minutes. I don't want to get into it right now, but they are so utterly misled in this country about social inequality and race relations. Anything I would have said in that class would have ended up being entirely contrary to the entire purpose of the seminar and I would have a started a big debate that would require a lot of broken-German explaining, not that they would have been able to conceptualize non-descriminatory social behaviour anyway...! See? I've gone too far already. *Breathe, Jen*

So what I did was just politely say I had to go, and I quickly put my name on the attendance list before I went out and peacefully ate my lunch by the river. I actually think I was more awake in my next class because I took time to eat a real lunch. So that was good. My third class was alright too. The material was dry but the peresenters did a good job. Since we did our presentation last week it was now our turn to critique the group that was up there today. Which means I had to talk again today. Well they all know who I am now so whatever. It's still kind of nerve-wracking, but not necessarily in a bad way. But yeah, I got a laugh from the class. Is it wierd that that's just always what I care about? I guess it is a real accomplishment out here ;) Ha ha.

After class I met Amber for coffee to hear about her little weekend trip to Switzerland. I think we actually spent most of the time talking about the issues that I had with my class. But she understands me :) When I got home I just ended up writing emails. Chris and I also got down to booking hostels in Berlin for the Canada Day trip we have planned with Eddie and VR. We found an "interesting" one, too. But the wierd thing is, by the time we had it all worked out it was 9:30pm and I hadn't eaten anything since my 11am lunch by the river! It turns out I had been running all afternoon and evening on that coffee I had had with Amber. I mean, we all know how I react to coffee, but man, this one must have been strong! It was too late to eat dinner now too, so I just had some bread and veggies before bed. And it still took me a while to fall asleep. Won't be doing that again for a while. (Oh, but it's so good!) Aaahh, no!

12.June.2005

2005-06-14T08:41:00.000+02:00

The original plan today was to go to the theatre. The group had actually organized the trip, though, before they had found out if there were tickets available. Of course they were not and the trip was cancelled. Even though they did not manage to send ME and email about the cancellation, a few others found out somehow, just in time to plan something else for Sunday.

And what we ended up doing was still pretty good :)
It was another one of those discoveries by Chris - a Rhine cruise, about four hours long along one of the most scenic stretches in Germany - all for just 12 Euros! So yeah, nice and laid-back, the 5 of us Canadians got on the train to Bingen at about 11AM and had a picnic out there by the water until the boat arrived. Then we just cruised! There weren't any seats availabe at first because the place was just full of Japanese tourists. But what do you expect for 12 Euros, right? Somewhere, though, they just suddenly all got off (along with the cute Japanese waiter, unfortunately...) and we got a nice table and relaxed for the rest of the time. It was only partly sunny and probably only about 15 degrees or so. The wind wasn't all that confortable either and us girls ended up wearing a lot of the boys' extra shirts and jackets and stuff. But it wasn't enough to drive us inside, no sir. We stayed right out there on the top of the boat the whole time :) We passed a new castle almost every 5 minutes or something, it was really cool. I hope Eddie has posted his pictures. My 'camera' just wasn't performing under the conditions, haha.

We made it to Koblenz in the early evening. That is a really nice city too. (I just keep adking myself - why did we ever go to Brussels anyway? Haha). Well, being Sunday evening, there wasn't really much 'up' in Koblenz at all. We really just wanted to find dinner. We walked around for a while in the pedestrian zone and eventually settled on... I'm kind of embarassed to say this... McDonalds. Yeah, I'm actually usually the one that rejects the McDonalds option right off the bat, but somehow today I was in the mood for it! And they have a huge menu of things that are only 1 Euro :) It was fun, anyway.

We made it back to the train station without any trouble and then headed home. Again, seeing that it was Sunday night, Natalie and I couldn't get a streetcar to take us anywhere near our house, so we just walked home. I think the number of men that hoot/whistle/yell at you on the street must increase exponentially with the number of girls that are actually walking together as well as the time of night. I don't want to know what the equation would look like if I factored in blondness of hair, size of breasts, and amount of alcohol consumed (on their part, of course). So basically, we just walked home really fast. We were actually running at certin points. Why are men so disgusting? Well, I guess a better question is, why don't the non-disgusting ones ever call? Haha, oh but we were fine. Any one of them would have been real sorry to have made us mad ;)

11.June.2005

2005-06-11T21:58:00.000+02:00

You guys. Your comments are so nice. You know you'll be sorry one day that you encouraged me.

So anyway, today:
Had a nice sleep again. It was nice to actually be at a good party for once, even though it got cut off early. All the quieter for bedtime ;)
Today was my long-awaited first and only shift of the month at work. Good thing my shift only started at 1. It was the most boring ever. The organizers were all confused.
How many people have come through your door in the past half our?
I don't know, maybe three.
Why is nobody showing up to this electricians conference?
I don't know, maybe because it's an ELECTRICIANS CONFERENCE?
I started the day in the basement with this other guy. Absolutely nobody was down there so we just talked the whole time. He was really really nice. He was into modern dance and performs showtunes his spare time. Yes, literally. So there wasn't exactly a *spark between us or anything.
But then he went on break and we just did position rotations from that point. In other words, I just got to watch the three people that were at this conference from a series of different perspectives. Until I got back down to the parking garage again, where there was absolutely nobody at all. I actually spent most of the day focussing my eyes on certain objects in the room until everything around them got blurry and then imagining that I could move them with 'the Force'. But just before I was able to rip the big fish statue by the bathrooms out of the ground, Master Meiner came down and told me it was home-time.

Even though my feet were real tired, I walked the whole way home. It was just nice to wear the sneakers again. I bought groceries too. Cherries are in season! I got home and Hanna was sleeping. I hardly noticed her, and she looked up at me when I came in and just smiled from under the covers.
Hanna, what are you doing sleeping at 8PM?
She was at the party last night too ;)
I guess it'll be another late night in our room!

10.June.2005

2005-06-11T10:17:00.000+02:00

This was a day of sleeping.
Yeah after the movies last night it was nice to get to bed and not to get out again for a long time. I woke up at 9 or so (yes, that's a long time for me) and basically just had one of those sitting around days. I actually got a lot of thinking-work done on one of my papers and also wrote a good number of emails. The afternoon rolled around before I knew it and I didn't even finish my lunch before I was back in bed. I'll just rest those sore rowing muscles, I said. And then I woke up and it was 3:30.

Around that point I finally changed out of my pajamas and made a little trip to the store to buy vegetables for dinner. In town I also found another of cheap expendible sunglasses - because I wear no other kind ;) Steph, remember that kind that everybody was wearing in Italy? Haha, look out Manitoba - it will be a fashion attack.

At home I made the greatest zucchini-mushroom spaghetti with parmesan. I ate so much of it too, and combined with all the sleeping I had done today, I was actually kind of excited to go to the party tonight. Especially since it was here at my place and out by the canal! I wasn't even done my supper and a bunch of my friends (and a bunch of everybody else's friends too) were hanging out in my kitchen already, watching the people gather down there behind the building. After getting the kitchen good and dirty };( we all made our way down to join the "harbour-fest". All the Canadians were there and Hanna and Grace too, the music was ok towards the end (well, until the Polizei came at 1:30am and pulled the plug. KARL!) It wasn't too crowded and I actually had a good time. I met a lot of interesting guys too, even Germans. Haha, In Chris' words - Jenny did well tonight ;)

09.June.2005

2005-06-10T09:51:00.000+02:00

Thursday, rowing day!
As per usual I met Amber outside and we headed out to the Boathouse together.

"So who feels strong today?"
We do!
"So who's feeling steady today?"
We are!

And sure enough, Amber and I got the fast boat - the really thin fiberglass rowboat (as opposed to thick wooden ones) - all to ourselves. We were pumped! We hadn't seen each other for a couple days either, so good, now we had a bit of time out on the water to catch up. It was a pretty nice morning too. The thing is, though - and we did know this - rowing takes concentration and precicse instruction and movements. When you're chatting, though, instructions and movements are just not as precise as they should be. And sure enough about half way up the river... we were in the water.

It came as such a suprise and we had no idea whose fault it was or how it happened, but we had totally tipped. We were far enough ahead of the group that nobody really saw us, except for two old fishermen on the other bank. I was laughing so much! And the first thing Amber says when we swam the boat to shore was "wet T-shirt contest, anyone?" Stop it, you're killing me!

It took us a little while to flip the boat back over and get the paddles back in place. It wasn't cold at all, really. I was still laughing. And then we got back in the boat. Only to fall right back in on the other side because the paddles were messed up. The second time we never actually flipped the boat over so it was easier to get back in. And we did, just in time to see the gay-Jesus-guy (you'd have to be there) coming up into sight. Alles klar!

Right on his tail, though, was the big boat with the teacher in it. Before we could get going again, he sees us - Why are yall so wet?
Just a little swimming is all! No worries!
Well, he says and looks at us, that's not on the program.
He didn't buy it.

But we were fine and rowing again so he didn't see a big problem. So we went further. We tried not talking, and made it to the end of the route with the others. They they passed us on the way back and disappeared and we started talking again. I think it started about me making a comment about how I was sitting in a huge puddle of water and my ass was SOAKED! And halfway back... yup. We were in the water again. For the third time. You'd think I'd laughed enough the first time. But seriously, falling out of a rowboat has got to be one of the funnest things ever! By now we were pros at getting back in ;)

They're gonna wonder where we are! Well, we're certainly not telling them we fell in again! So since we were already late, we decided to paddle over to the fishermen and ask if they'd seen a pair of really cheap broken sunglasses and a pair of really expensive nice sunglasses anywhere? (Mine were the cheap ones. Which might explain why I was laughing a little more than Amber was...) But nope. They're probably in Ludwigshafen by now ;P

So finally we got back. How are you still so wet? Did you fall in AGAIN?
Hey, of course not - we just stopped to ask the fishermen about our sunglasses!
Oh, ok.

It took two big guys to pull our little boat out of the water and empty it out. It's amazing we got back at all. Apparently after ouf first fall, in the chaos we had installed the paddles wrong too, which might explain why we had fallen that second time. Woops! Hey, what second time?

We were ready to carry the boat back up, but the teacher was like, no. You girls have had enough, go take showers and I'll get yall dry clothes. Score! No more carrying heavy boats! That has got to be the worst part for me. I don't know why, but I am just never able to carry that darn boat all the way down to the water without injuring myself somehow. Plus I'm just the smallest and wimpyest one there. Oh well.

So we kind of dried off and walked back home. I was still laughing.
At home I had the hottest and best shower ever!
Later on I went to Text-class (Grammar-classes counterpart) which I had not been to for literally 6 weeks. (3x my fault, 1x teacher's fault, 2x public holiday - what are ya gonna do?) Anyways, it was boring as ever. We wrote stuff. And she came around to each person and checked it. While the rest of us waited. It was an eternity.

After class I headed out with Chris and Veronica to the grocery store and back home we made caesar salad for dinner. The plan tonight - to see Star Wars again! IT was great. Again. Afterwards we went out for ice cream and then... back to the theatre. It was cheap night for students and we just weren't ready to go home. So we went back in and saw House of Wax. Basically just to see Paris Hilton and PMK girl. It was no Star Wars, and it was in German, but at 11:30pm it was cetainly enough to keep me awake. Ughhhh, the finger scene!!!

I got to bed at about 2am and had a very, very good sleep.

08.June.2005

2005-06-10T09:35:00.000+02:00

Today, I said, I would not make plans and not go out. Just chill. And start some of those homework projects. And that's what I did! Well, I tried.

So in the morning I guess I spent a lot of time blogging and chatting. Suddenly it was 2:00 and Hanna comeshome from a morning at school and asks me what I had had for lunch. I was like... lunch?

So then I think I went and got some cheese and crackers or something. When I finally managed to close that Messenger window I got down to reading and finished off a nice big chapter (of German sociology) before I got bored again. I still wasn't in any mood to see people and I was out of yogurt (you haven't lived until you've tried German yogurt) and since I was so bored I trekked all the way out to Kaufland on two different streetcars and bummed around there among their fantastic yogurt selection. Hanna is starting to make fun of me and my yogurt. I also found banana chips. Yessss.

So that was fun.
I got home just in time to join Hanna for dinner. As in, cut up veggies for her as she made this amazing Chinese curried chicken wings. Yay for roomates who cook! In the evening I dragged myself outside again to go for a run. Hanna stayed in because there was a special on TV called "the top 20 romantic films of all time" just her cup of tea ;) When I got home I realized that they were just gettin ready to play #2 - When Harry Met Sally (which I'd never even seen... #1 was Pretty Woman, btw.) so I decided it would be ok if I did the rest of my homework during the commercials ;) And you think Billy Crystal talks fast in English!

And don't even ask me what my dreams were about.

Hot Shots

2005-06-08T12:45:00.000+02:00

It's come to that time of year where I need to start working on essays again. So of course I go and do things like clean out the file folders on my camera. So here are a few funny shots from the last few weeks.

First of all, these are from Min-Ji's concert yesterday.

Hanna on the bus with the flowers for Min-Ji

Inside the palace.

And the piano.

Intermission :)

And more pictures from Heidelberg on Sunday.

A big coffee, and a beautiful lady with a big camera. Now that's life.

Chris' good side.

And Eddie's.

Alles für 1 Euro - how can you go wrong?

Our new elevator. Some of you might remember the old one...

Hangin' in Heidelberg.

International BBQ last Thursday. The clothesline of flags accidentally dropped to the ground. American boy over here rushes to pick up those stars and stripes. The rest of the non-nationalist-brainwashed people there kind of giggled.

My Blair Witch impression.

One birthday present that I'll treasure forever. Boy, I'm really going to need to relax after this semester! HaHa! And on the back it says "NOW"... I wore it to Grammar class yesterday.

Oh... and I made a new friend. Check out his blog --->

07.June.2005

2005-06-08T11:00:00.000+02:00

I've been sleeping well lately. I think that's the key to having really fun dreams. But we'll get to that in just a moment.

So now that I've dropped out of these two I-missed-too-many-sessions-because-I-was-in-Italy classes, I only have the real major stuff on Mondays (re: yesterday's presentation) and only Grammar class on Tuesday.

Which means I had the morning free. First of all to sleep. Then I had to go to the university offices. To pick stuff up. Like my essay and certificate from last semester's seminar class. I got a 2.0. I hope this one is real. Some of you will know why I don't trust anyone anymore with this stuff. But the prof had written it on the thing herself and put her initials down, so even if it is a mistake, I'll be able to put up a good fight.

Then I went back down the three flights of stairs and down the street and up the other flights of stairs to the next office to pick up my monthly scholarship. Which we will not be getting for the month of August, by the way, even thoguh our apartment rental contracts have to be until August! So that knocks another 200Euros out of my budget. Boo! On the way home I went grocery shopping and managed to eat lunch before heading off to class.

Even though today I hadn't even been sitting in class the whole morning beforehand, I was still as restless as ever in Grammar class. Like in there I seriously feel like I'm 10 years old. I make faces, I write notes, and bug my friends, and make prank phone calls. It might have something to do with the fact that that class is literally like kindergarten and so sloooowww. Like, either I can't understand a freaking word and I fail or it's so freaking slow that I can't hold my attention anymore and I fail anyway... there's no middle ground here! I can't function!

But anyway... ahem. We finally got out (Tuesday afternoon - let my weekend begin again!) I did some more errands on the way home and once there I had just enough time to get ready to go out for the evening. The plan - to meet Hanna and Dorothy and Chris and Boris and hop on the train to Heidelberg to the "Palais Prinz Carl" to hear a classical music recital from our Korean flat-mate Min-Ji who studies Piano out there. The room was incredibly fancy, with chandeliers and mirrors paintings and all that stuff. There were a few different performers, a group of violin, clarinet, piano, a few other piano players, and a flautist. Min-Ji was last one of the evening and played a Theme and Variation by Rachmoninov (or however you spell it). It was really good and the theme was in my head the whole way home. We even gave her flowers. It was a nice night.

Okay, and now about that dream:
This time I was at a beach resort with a bunch of people, one of whom was Adam Brody, only his appearance was that of one of the German boy-band singers' and his name was Kyle. In fact, I might have been there with the entire cast of the OC only they all looked like German boy-band singers and had normal American names, I can't remember exaclty. But we were at a beach resort and thre of us had decided to take these really cool motor-powered innertubes out on the ocean. It was fun. Bt suddenly there was like a mile-high tsunami that rose up in the distance. On the top of it there was like a huge traffic jam of sailboats, but it had not gotten to us yet so we decided to cruise over to the one side where the wave was smaller. We could see it starting to white-cap and curl over so we had to hurry before we got crushed. Just as we had gotten to the weak part of the wave, we got bombarded by a caravan of firetrucks, ambulances, and police cars, only they were all actually boats on the water, with sirens and everything, going super-fast. So I just closed my eyes and steered my innertube inbetween them somehow. Eventually we all made it into a lagoon over to the side and waited out the tsunami in there. After it was over, though, we realized that Adam/Kyle was missing. For some reason nobody was worried except me. I got upset at the rest of the guys, but that's when they told me I was in love with him. And they were right! Then we got word that he was found and he was alive and we were all happy again, even though our hotel was busted to pieces.

Ok. that's it. I promise no more dreams for a while. I really gotta stop falling in love in my sleep....

06.June.2005

2005-06-06T23:23:00.000+02:00

The big day - presentation day.
So I got the final 'corrected' draft of my speech from my group mate last night at about 9:30pm... but actually he hadn't changed much at all, so I was pretty proud of it. Not that I was really worried either. Well I had to sit through two different classes until the presentation class. The first one was alright - I got a paper back with a lot of the words "gut" and "genau" on it (meaning "good" and "exactly" btw), so that was gut. I don't know what it is about that second class though. The stuff is interesting I guess, but I always seem to want to crawl under the chairs and take a nap. If only.

So anyways, the moment had come for the presentation. Ok Jen, your part is only 8 minutes long, you can do it. And yah, I did. I made some random jokes at the beginning about how if they didn't understand me they could just ask the other guys in the group to explain it. I got a few giggles. And before I knew it I was done. I realized that I had gotten a lot better at reading German stuff than I was when I'd done my last presentation in January. So that's good. I think they got it and the prof really liked the whole presentation too. I even got to answer one of the questions that somebody asked. Oh the exciting life I lead.

I want to see Star Wars again.

What? Oh.
Yeah, I actually think that is what was running through my head the whole time...

So. Back at home I ate pizza buns. And then I went running. And then I watched TV and made salad. It was great, there was this reality show about how like 5 German boy-band guys take a trip to that fat O-Town producer guy's house and do like their own "Making the Band in America" kind of thing. Man, was I hooked right away. First of all, it's music, second of all, they're cute, and third of all I can understand everything everybody says in both languages and it's watching Germans encounter American culture. It's great! The one guys' girlfriend came to visit this time. She was SUCH a bitch - and I was like - genau!

So even though I have a few papers to get started on now, I'm taking this finishing-of-the-presentation as an excuse to do no more work this evening. I know it's lame, I know I have like 5 days of the week off anyways, but hey, why not? So yeah, after watching MTV it made me want to play music so I just played guitar for like an hour. Still got it!

Well, yeah that was today.
Oh - I had a strange dream last night...
(Ok, I know I'm just rambling at this point but it's my night off and you can stop reading whenever you want!)
Ok, in the dream I was at work at the conference centre, in the basement as usual wearing my read stewardess dress, only it was green and black for some reason. There was somethign really important going on in the main theatre and suddnely it was my turn to go in! So I pick up somebody's camera for some reason and I go in. And there's a huge craaaazy concert going on in there by Fred Durst and Lenny Kravitz and like Korn or Tool or somebody all together. Suddenly Fred Durst body-surfed over to where I was standing and took my camera away and told me to turn around. I was like "Hey, Fred Durst, don't take my camera away, I'm trying to talke a picture of YOU!" But he insists that I turn around and I turn to see Johnny Knoxville standing behind me, all bareback with aviator shades on and messy hair. And Fred Durst wants me to take a picture of us. That was fine with me, I like Johnny Knoxville better anyway ;) But then I had to go. I don't think I took the camera with me either. So then I go out the door to the room where the hotel caterers were working, as if I was supposed to supervise them or something. So I supervise for a while but then this German police officer comes in wearing his very cool leather-and-fur POLIZEI jacket. He sees me and takes of his hat. He's in love. With me. And I'm in love with him too. He comes over and puts his arms aroud me and says in English that it's too bad we can't be together because he lives in Toronto. (I didn't bother to ask him why he was wearing a German police jacket...) But then I was like - oh my love I'm only here on an exchange semester - I actually live in Waterloo! And he was so happy. And so was I. And then I woke up - happy. Those are the good kinds of dreams, nicht wahr?

...Lou Pearlman.
That's his name.
The fat boy-band producer. Lou Pearlman.
Imagine THAT one with a German accent!

05.June.2005

2005-06-06T23:03:00.000+02:00

Okay. The plan today was to go to Heidelberg and find the bubble tea place that Steph and I ran across a couple weeks ago. Well, we found it but of course it was Sunday and it was closed. (I was kind of expecting this, but the guys - the guys being Chris and Eddie - wanted me to show them where it was anyway). So we walked a little further and got samosas and sat by the river for a while taking random pictures. We wanted to climb up Philosophenweg (scenic trail) but first we stopped in at Starbucks for coffee and peeing. It was a short hike up the hill, we had a nice view of the city from up there and took more random pictures (you'd have to know these guys and their infinite pictures...). Then we just hiked back down. Then we went back to Mannheim. Then we ate Döners. Then Veronica met us at the Döner place and the four of us actually got down to discussing our little Berlin trip that we have planned for Canada Day (Entschuldigung, wissen Sie vielleicht, wo ich Feuerewerk kaufen kann?). Vernoica and her rad new bike (get it?) walked me half the way home and we got ice cream too from Mr. Blue Eyes at Fontinella. At home I went jogging with both Hanna and Borislav. You should have seen the three of us. Well ok, just imagine, well - me with my white shoes, (some of you also know how I look when I run...) and a Chinese girl about my size with a bright green shirt on, and a huge Bulgarian guy with a thermo-belt on, all stumbling down the river path, laughing and racing and pushing each other around. Priceless.

Well, so back at home I practiced my presentation for tomorrow a little bit and watched TV a little bit more and chatted on MSN even more. (That would be you, Sarah!) An interesting day in all, and a bit of a change from the typical Sunday.

04.June.2005

2005-06-05T18:06:00.000+02:00

Slept in again.
Not feeling top-notch today. I wrote emails in the morning and ate salad and read. Then I went back to bed for another couple hours in the afternoon. Before I knew it, though, it was evening and I was meeting Nat and Chris and Eddie at Pizza Hut for dinner. It was good. Still not feeling super-hungry, though. The plan for the evening was to go to this really small independent theatre to see a musical parody on the works of Schiller - as a part of the Shiller-weeks happening right now in the Mannheim theatre community. The sad part was, none of us had read up on who this Schiller guy was at all. He had written plays, we knew that much. We also knew that on of Chris' language teachers was acting in the play and he had gotten him tickets. We got there nice and early, there was a little complication about the actual week that the reservation was valid for, but yeah chalk another one up to Germany and we still got in at the last minute on the waiting list so no problem.

The play. Was frickin hilarious.
Amateur, sure. But incredibly hilarious. It was basically about a sausage (wurst) company that hired an American theatre director to create a musical production that they would be able to put on in different supermarkets in order to promote their new type of Bratwurst - and the company employees were to be the actors/singers. The actual 'love' story involved was also apparently based on one of Schiller's plays. I don't think I am able to describe it more than that...

Afterwards we hung out and got drinks, talked.
It was a fun night.

And in other news, Grace was wonderful and sent me all the great pictures she took at my birthday party. It's kind of late tp put them in the blog, but they're now in my online album, just like the other ones from Steph.

And in yet other news, speaking of pictures, these are some of the party on Thursday!
(Yeah, the one that wasn't so fun... but hey, the people still look good!)
They were actually taken by one of those party-website people, but y'all would have to log in and all that jazz just to see them, so I'm not gonna make you "find me in the german internet" game today...

The crew from Hafenstrasse - Jenny, Tushi, Timo

Dorothy, Susi... no Hanna?

I dunno, the last time I saw her she was with this German guy.... wooo!

03.June.2005

2005-06-05T00:34:00.000+02:00

I slept in, it was nice.
In the early afternoon my group members came over and we went through our presentation. My part really sucked. I have a hard enough time ad-libbing in English. But I told them I'd write my stuff out and just read it, so it will be fine.
I went grocery shopping after that. It was a hot day again and I was having fun. I think I was in a total of 5 different stores today gathering food. The cheap pineapples were small and green. But seeing them had just put pineapples in my head, so when I saw the big nice ones in the last store - for twice the price - I picked one up anyway. A few more days on my shelf and it will be perfect. I look forward.

So then I went home again and put together my presentation piece. It didn't take too long. I got into writing emails and then watching some TV. I also listened to the ripped cd of Shakira that Amber gave me for my birthday. Shakira is crazy. In a good way, I guess.

02.June.2005

2005-06-03T10:33:00.000+02:00

Quite a day!
The most fun would have had to be rowing in the morning. There was an odd number of people today so I got a boat all to myself! Just me, cruising down the river on a sunny sunny Thursday morning! Back home I showered and ate. It wasn't long before I was on my way to school for another group meeting. This time we met with the professor too. Fun. So after sitting there and listening for a while - and arranging *tomorrow's* meeting, I finally made it out to the international fair where most of the exchange students were volunteering. I had wanted to help out too, but by the time I'd gotten there all there was left to do was cleanup. So I did a little of that, got a free T-shirt and a free BBQ dinner. Hmm, that food was good. Maybe rowing wasn't the best part of the day after all!

So I hung out there for a good while, but before long went home to change for the party tonight. Stopped in at Jan's place on the way back to town first and he gave me a supplemetary birthday present of "one of the best German movies ever made" it's called "Schule" and it appears to be something similar to "Mallrats". I look forward.

The party was a really big cool-looking one in the huge courtyard of the business faculty. It was packed, though. (I don't really think North Americans will understand what the word "crowded" can mean until they come here.) So it wasn't long before I lost all the people I had come with. I didn't really care, though. I wasn't really in a partying mood anyway, so I just got myself a beer, found a little personal space on a step and stood and watched. No matter how many people, though, the usual big pack of exchange students is not hard to find. So I found some friends later. At the end I ran into Timo and we biked home together. On one bike! That probably ended up being more fun than that party ;)

01.June.2005

2005-06-02T14:24:00.000+02:00

Ohmygoodness. It's June.
Can somebody just find me a job in Waterloo already?

Well, as for Germany.
So much for my "day off" today. I spent the whole morning reading and making sense of Sociology stuff, and then writing a piece about it. I sent it in without even getting it proofread... I don't really know if I was ballsy or lazy ;)

In the afternoon I went to medt with my presentation group again. The girl had a cool apartment. The three of us basically sat in the kitchen, and the two of them with their computers, making kind of a wall so I couldn't really see them. *We* worked on the slides and stuff for the presentation. And you think group work goes slowly when you all speak the same language! Three hours and two cups of coffee later we were arranging the next meeting. Tomorow. Looking forward to it.

On the way home I bought lettuce and just ate salad all night. Oh, I guess I went running too and chatted with a bunch of people online. That was cool.

31.May.2005

2005-05-31T22:50:00.000+02:00

So I decided to give this sociology-turned-math lecture one last try this morning. And yeah, it did end up being the last. In fact, it was more like only half a try. In fact, I was so succesful at un-motivating Chris as well, that we both left at the break and made a little trip to Kaufland to bring back the beer bottles from my birthday instead. Because we had gotten up so early to go to this class, we were ready for lunch already at 11 and we got mediocre but really cheap döners on the way home.

I made it home and back to school in time for grammar class. Which was painfully show, by the way. There is no middle ground here. I don't get it. After class finally ended Veronica and I grabbed ice cream and we took a lesiurely stoll through the city home. There I read a bit and made some food a bit and ate it a bit and chatted a bit. After trying to read Weber, this contemporary sociology is actually really really easy! Good to hear that MVP made it back from Serbia, btw. And that he got to party a bit.

p.s. Sorry about the photo-album privacy setting. I fixed it now. http://photos.yahoo.com/astronott enjoy!

30.May.2005

2005-05-31T12:00:00.000+02:00

Back to school after an eventful weekend.
Needless to say, school was rather UNeventful. In the big lecture, those eyes of mine were really struggling to stay open. So about 5 hours after I got there, I was done with class for the day. First thing I did on my way home was pick up some noodles at the Chinese fast food, because I was starving! Then I went to the store to exchange the really-cool-but-a-little-too-big sandals that I had gotten from Moni, Laura, and Timo for my birthday. They had even given me the receipt to make it easier for me in the store. I was like - oh guys, I don't need it. They were a gift, and all I need to do is exchange the size... But I guess Timo knows how this kind of stuff is supposed to work in Germany better than I do, so he insisted that I take the receipt with me.

Boy, was he right. First of all, the lady spent like 5 minutes inspecting them and came to the conclusion that they had been worn and damaged and that she couldn't take them back. I made like I couldn't speak German so good and I all I said was like - Present. Too big. Birthday Present. To big. (Haha that was fun)
And then, even though I had the receipt in my hand, she said she also needed the actual tags and the plastic string that were on the sandals in order to take them back.... I just kept saying - Birthday present, I don't know, need smaller.

Eventually I was like - I take these. And picked up the smaller ones.
She had never actually looked me in the face at all, by the way, but at this point, she just said, ok, I'll do it this time, but normally this is not possible - and then repeated the 'rules' again as if the next time I get too-big sandals as a birthday present I will - without trying them on (and getting them "dirty") go over to my friend's house and dig through their garbage until I find the receipt and plastic tags just so I can get a smaller size from the store. Sheesh.

I spent the afternoon writing emails. I love email. It had cooled down a lot in the evening and by 8pm it was perfect jogging weather, so I went. After that I was pretty tired and just uploaded pictures till I went to bed.

THE PICTURES, however, were from my sister. I wasn't able to send them to my regular photo site, so they are in a special YAHOO PHOTO ALBUM at http://photos.yahoo.com/astronott
Let me just say that they are all really really beautful pictures and they're worth a look. Go Steph!

29.May.2005

2005-05-30T08:35:00.001+02:00

Another Sunday, another question - what do you want to do?
I spent the morning reading and uploading pictures my sister sent me. (Album coming soon!) That took practically forever so the afternoon rolled around and the day was so nice and I just had to go outside. It was still too hot for working out, so I thought - why not just go chill out by the river?
Well, I'll tell you why not.

It was about 12:30 or 1 by the time Amber and I got out there. Yeah, still just the two of us - nobody was around this weekend! We hadn't been there for more than half an hour when this 40-ish year old guy with shorts and a baseball hat comes up to us and asks if he could sit with us. Umm, the bank of the river is pretty huge, but if you really want to sit here, that's fine. Maybe we had taken his spot or something. I honestly thought he wanted to do some fishing. Boy was I wrong.

Sure no problem, guy, I said as I put my earphones back in. I wasn't in the mood to pay attention to much of anything. But about 5 minutes later Amber (who is on the other side of me) hits me and points over to the guy - in nothign but a blue checkered thong! Wow, a hardcore sunbather. So we laughed. Whatever he's into! And I put my music back on and close my eyes.

Whatever you're fishing for, I don't want any!

Another 10 minutes go by and she hits me again - even harder this time. I look up to see the guy again, only this time he was in the process of rubbing sunscreen all over Amber's legs! She tells me later he had just come over and started to do it and she was totally disgusted, but saw two options: I kick him in the face right now, or I actually prove to Jen that this is happening and we havce a story. Hahahaha. She chose the latter.

So just to document her bravery I got up and secretly took this picture:

Ewwwww!

So when he had finished with the legs and started to move a little higher, she decided it was enough of a story and pushed him off. On his way back to his place he squirted me too, right in the back. I just gasped and shrieked as if it had surprised me and he quit, thank God.

I think he had tried one more time while we were out there to go over to Amber, but she'd said that she'd had enough. That's when he pulls out his camera and snaps a picture of us - both hiding our faces. Boy were we giving each other strange looks by this point! And that wasn't even the most disgusting yet.

It was about 3 I think, when we got up to leave. So I turned my music off, stood up and bent over to pick up my shoes, only to realize that this guy had actually taken off the thong as well! Ok, halfway, but we both saw plenty more than we had wanted to, and I was not about to snap more pictures. In a subtle state of shock, we walked across the bridge home. Only to see this nasty guy from the bridge, getting up and scouring the riverside for the next victims of his perversity.

In the evening I made salad and uploaded more pictures. Boris and I watched a documentary on Islam, but I fell asleep. It was kind of all repeat info for me anyway. Tomorrow is back to school. It has definitely been a weekend full of experiences.

28.May.2005

2005-05-29T15:43:00.000+02:00

First thing today, grocery shopping.
Yes, again. All the food I had been buying lately was for the party, and well - it's gone now! So today I bought real food. Then I had a little meeting with my group members for our presentation. I let them talk and stuff. I tried to listen. I had actually read and understood the text this time, though, so I was doing ok. They were talking about this one major theme at one point, and I wasn't exactly clear what they meant, so I just said, well isn't it like 'this'? So they both stopped, looked at their papers, and both looked up at me with big eyes and were like - Wow, you're RIGHT! We would have done that totally wrong! I don't even know if I was sure of what I said, but at that point I felt at least a little more useful to them. Then the guy made us espresso. It was nice.

The meeting went a little longer than expected, but I met Amber in the city for ice cream afterwards. Then we wandered around a bit because the Stadfest (your basic city festival) was happening this weekend, the roads were blocked off and there were vendors and bands and stuff out. It was really hot out, and we were loving it. Later on we stopped in at the Spanish restaraunt for their all-you-can-eat fresh salad bar. So we sat outside at one of the tables on the street, drinking our bubbly water and eating salad. Our conversation was getting really great too, and before we knew it, 3 whole hours had passed and the sun was down! Man, they probably think we're eating a LOT of salad ;) Well, we were, I guess! But then we ordered some drinks too.

See, you look great in pictures.

And so do you, salad.

This is the Stadtfest.

This is the Stadfest on Radler.

After dinner we walked maybe 100m and found a huge crowd by a stage. The woman singing was really quite good, so we stopped to listen. Turns out this was a professional studio group that was supporting different acts from the pop music academy in Mannheim. All the different acts were really great. (And you know how critical I am!) The best by far was the guitar player (of course) but it wasn't even his guitar playing - which was also awesome, that was the best - it was his rapping - freestyle! - in Spanish! He also did this crazy bongo-beatboxxing thing. Coolest ever. And then there was this cute German rapper who came up and then they battled - in two different languages, beatboxxing for each other. Amber and I were freaking out. Big props to the pop academy tonight.

Note:

2005-05-29T01:05:00.000+02:00

Great new pictures and captions just added to post 20.May.2005

27.May.2005

2005-05-29T00:36:00.000+02:00

Well.
I guess I read more this morning. I'm getting the hang of Weber now I think.
The afternoon consisted of some more shopping for the...
... PARTY!

BECAUSE TODAY'S MY BIRTHDAY!

Haha, yeah, so I went and got a bunch of the more 'perishable' things that I didn't want to buy on Wednesday. I then met Chris out by the big-big grocery store to pick up beer. It was so hot out and we were really sweating carrying this crate down the street. But so were all of the Germans in the parking lot doing the same thing ;) I think some of them even took breaks to "lighten the load".

Back at home, we got down to work. Hanna was there already and ready to help. And since Chris couldn't be there in the evening, he wanted to hang out in the afternoon and help cook too. Smart guy - he knows it's the best part anyway ;)

And did we cook! All my favorites, of course. Those two were chopping masters by the end of it! I don't think they know how awesome their help was.

Thanks so much guys!

Even though the party only 'officially' started at 7, more people started coming already at 6 cuz they wanted to help too. How great ?!?!

Getting ready was really the most fun of all. I finally got out of the kitchen at about 7:30, and I chilled out and talked to my family on the phone before I changed into my skirt (*gasp! - it was hot, ok??) and joined the festivities. So we ate and ate and drank and listened to music and danced - even though the weather had made it a little to hot in the kitchen for too much movement :P It did, however, make the water guns more fun.

So this little exchange student is not the most popular girl in her apartment block, there were in total probably 20 people or so that showed up. That's a lot smaller than the 'typical' Hafenstrasse 'party', just so you know. But I am not typical. And I actually knew personally and liked everyone that showed up - which is probably more than most partythrowers around here can say ;) They all brought adorable little gifts too, even thought I had told them not to, of course. Lots of chocolate and flowers and loads of MUSIC. Yeah, I guess they know me pretty well :)

So beautiful I can almost smell them.

Oh wait, I can. They're right beside me on my desk!

And as my little atypical party had started at 7, it was pretty much over by 12. Now that's my kind of bedtime ;) And of course, the girls still cleaned up the entire kitchen before they left. What more could I have asked for?

Thanks for coming, guys! Best birthday ever!
Can somebody send me pictures?

26.May.2005

2005-05-28T12:15:00.000+02:00

Does it surprise anybody that today is another public holiday?
It's like once upon a time somebody in Germany just took every single event that happened in the Bible said it was illegal to work on those days. Well, thank God for Islamic people and their stores, otherwise I would have starved in this country.

Well anyways, I just kept on reading this presentation-stuff today. I went running before it got too hot. (That's right, hot. And I love it!) It didn't take much time, though, before the evening rolled around. Well, 4:30 anyways. That's when we left to meet the others at the movie theatre to pick up the tickets we had reserved for Episode III. So we 4 nerds - Me, Ed, Boris, Chris - are ready for the movies. But first we need dinner. Chris brought us to a real great and real cheap (for here)pasta buffet and we filled right up.

Get your energy up boys, I heard it's a long one!

Next, it was off to meet Veronica get into that theatre!

Well I had a lot of fun. I was on the edge of my (super comfortable German-movie-theatre) seat the whole time. I don't want to launch into a big long review here, but the light saber fights were soooo cool. Especially the simultaneous ones. Palpatine has to be the absolute best actor of all the Star Wars films ever and Obi Wan the second best. Padmine has to be the absolute worst. I mean, Anakin was even a lot better in this one. (And MAN! A lot hotter!). But the scenes when they have to act... together... ugh. Like, it was so bad, I am almost tempted to think that they did it on purpose, like, to somehow be all postmodern about the essence of science fiction movies and how they are traditionally and fundamentally enjoyed from a technichal and/or imaginative point of view...
... or then again maybe they really do suck.

Oh yeah, and for the first time, we all did the 'beer in the movie theatre' thing. Just because we could.

And to prove it:

The evening was really nice still and we all walked around in town for a while, talking about... well, what else would we have talked about?
It was a great day.

25.May.2005

2005-05-25T23:08:00.000+02:00

The wonderful Amber helped me first thing this morning go shopping for some preliminary party supplies. I don't know if I've mentioned it yet - but I was born 23 years ago this Friday. And when your birthday is on a Friday (and you are an exchange student in Germany) you can't NOT have a party. So I'm excited anyway, basically just to see a bunch of my favorite people, cook a bunch of my favorite food, and listen to a bunch of my favorite music, all at the same time :)

So this morning was really fun. We even went out for *coffee* before dragging all the stuff home. In the afternoon I had to meet two kids from my class who I'll be doing a presentation with in a couple of weeks. I was so nervous. It sounds wierd, but I was just somehow really nervous to try to plan a presentation with these people. I guess my record of communicating with Germans has just not been that great. The meeting was ok, I guess. I hadn't really read much of ths stuff yet, and they had read it all. They were comparing it to other German literature and I basically just sat there. In the smoking section. At the end I was like - how bout I do the introduction to the topic? They thought that was a good idea. We're meeting again on Saturday. I've got a lot to read.

... But I don't need to start right now, do I?
No. So I met with Amber and Alicia in town and we shopped around randomly and drank stuff and ate stuff and at about 6:00 I finally found my way home. So I've been reading since then. It kind of makes more sense now that we've talked about the themes and stuff. What I'm not doing tonight is being at the party that at least five people had asked me today if I'd be going to. It's beautiful out and I'd sure like to be there, though. If I'd remembered to pick up tickets, I probably would be. But it's probalby better that I'm not.

Oh well, tomorrow is a waaaaaay bigger deal anyway.
That's right.
Episode III.

24.May.2005

2005-05-24T22:34:00.000+02:00

More class today, only these classes were the ones that I had actually missed three times in a row. They're already talking about exam registration and I only have one page of notes from the first lecture. And now the one prof is pulling out math. I have serious doubts that I will be writing this exam. It would probably be better for my Deutsch anyway to focus on my Seminar classes and the writing of papers instead of trying just trying to memorize junk for exams.

In the afternoon I went to language class - an hour and a half early. Haha, it's been so long I'd forgotten what time it started! But luckily I ended up meeting Veronica out there and we got some food and hung out in the cool bookstore until teh class actually started. Even thogh I had been gone, though, the class was still painfully slow.

I went straight home afterwards to finish that little paper I had started writing last night. I gave in and did it in English because I wanted to get it over with. Everyody at this school is drooling to read stuff in English anyway. I made it nice and complicated for her ;) I must say though, that I managed to spit out some really great postmodernist comments on the topic - racial and genetic differences on cognitive ability - woooooo.

I had been dying the entire day to go outside. So as soon as I sent off that paper I went for a run. Then I ate leftovers and read more junk for school. Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call Max Weber junk, but the English translation I found in the internet is kind of junky, not that I could make half as much sense of the German...

I also managed to call work for those darned shifts again this month. So I say hello this is Frau Giesrecht and I'd like to ask for the shifts for June. The lady on the other end was like, "okaaay, umm". That's it. Then she put me on hold. I could just SEE her giving me that "could you get more stupid?" look I always get from them. Hello deutsche ladies, I can't read your minds, ok? And I'm really just making due here with the words you actually say...

So then another lady comes to the phone, and I had to spit out my stupid practiced introductory sentence again. I have no idea if my adjective endings were right. Frau Giesrecht can you work on Tuesday the 14th in the morning? No, I have school on Tuesday morning. Every Tuesday morning? Yes. That's how school works. I am free every single second of every single day of the week escept Monday and Tuesday mornings. Well, Frau Giesbrecht, there are only two shifts available to you at this point and they are both on Tuesday mornings. Area you serious? Yes, I'm sorry (she actually says this again to me in English, as if it made her look even more sorry). Ok, I'll call again next month, bye. Click. I hate you.

Well, there goes June. There must be some trick to this.

23.May.2005

2005-05-24T16:00:00.000+02:00

Back to school. I don't think I've dreaded anything so much in my life. My first class was interesting, I guess. I forgot my pen. My second class was huge and lonely. My third was interesting again and I met the nice people that will be doing a presentation with me in three weeks. We are meeting on Wednesday in the Cafeteria. In the smoking section. I still have to read the text.

I went shopping after class and met Kelly in the DM. We hadn't seen each other in a LONG time, so we went out for coffee, with Amber too. Then I bought groceries. I like groceries. Even though I can't seem to find the special edition Star Wars paper towels anywhere. Then I cooked eggplant and pasta for dinner. In the evening I tried to do some homework, I guess. A paper that I should have handed in last week. I didn't really finish it. I couldn't really sleep either, even though I had a class early the next morning. So I downloaded music. I like music. I went to bed finally with a stupid stomach-ache because this dumb school stresses me out.

22.May.2005

2005-05-23T17:58:00.000+02:00

I still couldn't really sleep in today. Somehow that all-nighter just didn't seem to affect me at all! Well, not yet anyway.

So today was another good ol' Sunday. I think I read a little bit, I went running, and I ate fishsticks. Amber was bored in the evening because the internet was still down, so she stopped by too. We watched more TV. I don't want to go back to school tomorrow. It's been almost three weeks :(

21.May.2005

2005-05-23T17:55:00.000+02:00

It’s a good thing after all that shift of mine was cancelled, I guess. I slept from about 7:00 till noon. And why only till noon? Well, before hitting the sack, I managed to send a quick email to my good friend, the champion of staying up all night and my personal hero Isaac. And since at 6:00am Ontario time, he was still awake (big surprise) he reads my email and decides to congratulate me, on the phone. So at 12:00 Germany time, I get pleasently woken up. Duuuuude!

Once I had actually opened my eyes and realized who it was, we talked for like an hour too – it was great! Man, do we have fun stuff planned to do when I get back there! I ate a little breakfast after that, did some shopping – the weather was nice and warm today finally. I did some reading before the internet busted again, and before I knew it, it was “dinner” time and Amber (who had also been travelling with her family for the past week) and I were catching up in the kitchen over some zucchini and eggplant curry. Mmmmm. In the evening we somehow just ended up watching MTV, but it was nice just to chill.

20.May.2005

2005-05-23T17:53:00.000+02:00

Got up nice and early today to go to work. My only shift this month, since they called me during my vacation to tell me that they had cancelled my other one.

I had no problems getting up, though. The shift was also shortened to four hours, by the way (from five) so by noon I would be done already! I was in the basement again. This time though, it was simply because I didn’t understand the guy quick enough when he was asking for volunteers to work the front door outside. That would have been nice. Oh well. The Frau wasn’t there today and by 12:30 I was done and picking up lunch for my way home.

I managed to sleep a tiny bit in the afternoon, but by 5:00 I was on my way out again, ready to experience “Culture Night” till 2am in the museums and galleries of Speyer! It was me and Chris again, mostly because we’re the only ones nerdy enough to want to spend the whole night in museums. We had dinner first, at his favorite Italian place in Speyer. (As if I had not had enough Italian food lately!). But it was actually really really good, huge servings, and by the time we actually found it I was good and hungry ;)

The first actual museum we went to was the technical museum. This place was huge! The cooles thing about this place is that they have a bunch of huge airplanes out in the yard, up on 30 foot stilts, with staircases thaty ou could climb go get up into them. They were sitting up there, too, at different angles so when you walked around inside, it just felt crazy. You could even get into the cargo bays and out onto the wings. And as if we didn’t feel enough like little kids playing around up there, on a bunch of the planes there were slides coming out of the exit doors that you could slide down right back to the ground!

Okay everobody, just pretend like you're "cargo"...

May I present the man with rubber ankles...

And his beautiful assistant

There were lots of really great old cars and boats and vehicles like tractors and firetrucks in there too, along with an Imax theatre. My favorite of all, though, had to have been the old German submarine. For some reason I have just seen a lot of German or Russian war submarine movies lately, like “Das Boot” or “K19” so it was really cool for me to actally climb down into one. The inside of it was so incredibly tiny – mostly to make room for giant torpedoes. But yeah, the beds, the toilets, the instruments and everything in there was exactly like the movies. It was awesome!

"Torpedo tube"

Oh yeah - and this is the gunner's chair under the cockpit of an old Russian cargo plane. Can anyone say Millenium Falcon?

Our next stop was the historical museum. It was kind of boring in compaison, but they did have the world’s oldest bottle of liquid wine. It looked so nasty. Also a timeline of how the graves of a bunch of old German kings and queens were unearthed and restored in the early 1900s in the Speyer Cathedaral. Yumm.

Oh yeah - I guess Chris was enthralled a little mor by the historical museum than I was. He had found this helmet and shield in the museum's kids section and decided to wear it through the entire place. So embarassing.

... just kidding.

And since it was next door and we were really wanting to rest our feet at this point, we stopped in the cathedral itself for a while. There was a choir singing in there tonight, though. And well I guess the choir was allright, but what was simply incredible was, to hear the acousitcs in that place. I really can’t describe how enormous this cathedral is, but it is all made of stone and glass, and the sound lasted for literally 15 seconds after the voices would stop. Sure beats the stairwell at Miller!

Choir was done, back to it. Next stop, the Jewish baths. Now, neither of us really knew why Jews needed their own baths… because nobody wanted them to bathe in the river with everybody else, maybe? Well, you’re supposed to learn stuff when you go to museums, right? Right. Well, the whole exhibit was outdoor, actually, we first walked through the ruins of a really old synagogue, we thought maybe some baths had been in there?? Nope. Out beside the synagogue was a little staircase made of stone with a rounded stone roof over it, so we went down… and down… and down… At the bottom of three levels the stairs wound over to the side and ther was this opening in the wall where you could look down into this deep pool of water. It turns out the Jews constructed these underground pools for ritual cleansing purposes. Requirements of the Torah were that they needed absolutely fresh water, i.e. pure rainwater or groundwater for cleansing, and so in many places in Europe they had built these amazing undergound caverns for that purpose.

But Rabbi, I don't WANT a bath!

Next stop, considering that it was already 11:30 – coffee. We got in just before they closed, too! After a bit of a rest out there (it was a beautiful evening!) we headed off to the contemporary art gallery. Like usual with contemporary art, about ¾ of it was junk, but the stuff that was good was really really good. My favorite was a bronze sculpture called “Icarus IV” of perfect arms and legs attatched to a melted/destroyed “body’. And then there were the baguette photos… I do not believe I have the litereary means to describe these. They involved grass, shopping carts, light, lots and lots of baguettes and topless people. I will have to leave it at that.

Now, to find a livingroom to put it in...

By this time it was nearing the end of the Culture Night. We had set out to see one last gallery but couldn’t exactly find it in the city, so at 2am sharp we were on our way back to the train station. Only… to find out that there wasn’t another train to Mannhein until 4:30. Wooops. I guess that’s one thing we had forgotten to check! On Culture Night in Mannheim the transit was running on special schedules. We had no problems getting around. But inter-city transit. That’s another story.

There was nothing left to do but wait. So we waited! It had started to rain a little too, but we were safe under the train station overhang. We played hackeysack a bit, played with the luggage racks a bit, sat around a bit, talk to some drunk German teenagers a bit, and before we knew it we were on our way back to… Ludwigshafen.

This time I'm not kidding.

Yeah that particular train did not go to Mannheim. But we were a lot closer now. And at this point the sun was up already so we were feeling pretty awake again ;) We ended up waiting another half an hour at the Ludwigshafen station for a train to Mannheim. When we finally got to the Mannheim station we immediately went and got breakfast. It’s not like another half hour awake is going to kill me now ;) When I finally walked in the door at 6:30am, with the sun bright and shining, Hanna was slightly surprised. Oh, the things I do for culture.

19.May.2005

2005-05-20T13:31:00.000+02:00

And I'm still blogging.
I hope yall didn't get too bored reading about our little trip. I am really waiting to get a copy of steph's pictures. They'll tell the story better than I ever could.

So after missing almost three weeks of class, I figured it was time to get back down to business. Although I was set and even had the current homework ready for my Thursday class, I found out the teacher had taken this particular day off. So still no class till Monday for me! There was still rowing today. Now, that was awesome. I got in the 4-person boat and we just plain rowed for a good couple kilometers up the river! The weather was just perfect for some physical activity, we got going good and fast too, and even thought I'm not really strong enough to lift that darn boat into the water by myself, I think I might be getting the hang of it!

I made a huge lunch when I got home, but made sure not to fall asleep in the afternoon. Gotta get up early for work tomorrow! Otherwise, I basically worked on documeting the trip and up loading my pictures. Which takes for-freaking-ever on this computer!

Hanna and I watched that old Tom Hanks movie "Big" on TV yet before bed. We had both seen it before at one point. But it was even better than I had remembered :)

The Awesome Sister Trip

2005-05-19T22:17:00.000+02:00

Steph got here on May 03 and left on May 18. We spent that time in four different countries and I went to exactly one class. And now I have to write about it, not to mention catch up on homework. I have no idea how I will do it, but here goes.

The pictures included are the ones I took with my little camera-phone, like usual. Steph is the pro. She took the “nice shots”. I took the funny ones that she didn’t want to use up memory with. I don’t even have any from Barcelona, which was the most beautiful of all! (I left the phone at home, for fear of it getting stolen, and because we were with friends the whole time. But hopefully she will post hers somewhere yet too.

03 May 2005

Vernoica came with me this morning to pick up Steph at the airport in Frankfurt. Her plane landed at 7AM. That means we got up at 4:30 to get there. But I was prepared. I had my room all clean, had packed breakfast for everybody and was ready to see my baby sister for the first time since Christmas 2003. I found the arrivals gate easily too. And then we waited. And waited…. And Waited. And about an hour after her plane landed and there was no sign of Steph, we started to ask around. Even got the information desk to call out her name! And sure enough, after about 5 minutes of waiting for her in front of the information desk, I see her. Not coming out of the arrivals gate of course, but coming down the very same escalator that we had used to get there in the first place! Where were you? It turns out she had met a nice girl from Israel on the plane and, instead of following the “stinky German guy” to the arrivals gate, she had decided to see how a person connects to a flight to Israel, exactly. As interesting as that was, however, after she had said goodbye to Israel girl, she couldn’t seem to find the way back to customs. After enough wandering, though, we found each other at the bottom of the escalator.
A bit of breakfast and another short train and bus ride later, we’re safely in Mannheim and I’m tucking my little jet-lagged sister into bed and heading off to my last language class for a long time.

I’m heeere!

Together in Mannheim

When I got back from class, it was time to wake Steph up and start the Germany experience. And since we were already there, we started with Mannheim. Not that there is all that much to see, but we took a nice long stroll around town, introduced her to a little friend I like to call Alanya Döner, and made sure to stop at all the different historical buildings and pretty fountains.

This was topped off, by a dinner at the Kung Fu Chinese Buffet.

We get enough German food at home!

Then after all that walking and eating and not enough sleeping, it was early to bed.

04 MAY 2005

Today was a big one. The first thing we did was hop on the regional train out west, just to experience the “scenic route” and visit a typical undisturbed German village. We picked Eberbach, mostly because the train just felt like ending there. It was incredibly cute, and we even found the perfect present for our Mom, right away, a wicker bicycle basket. There really isn’t all that much to do in these little places except stroll around, though, and after an hour or two of taking pictures we were on our way to our next destination, Heidelberg. And thanks to our early start, we got to the Nordsee in Heidelberg just in time for lunch. After that delicious experience, we made our way up the hill to the famous Heidelberg castle. We hung around up there for a good couple hours, just imagining that we were princesses strolling about in the gardens, looking down at our kingdom :)

Then it was back to Mannheim for another Döner, some grocery shopping, and of course for Steph to experience of the German version of a grocery store. Good packing, Steph – we made it out alive!

Welcome to Dönerland. One day and already wearing my clothes again. Careful with the Scharfesoße!

But were we finished with the castles? No! After putting the groceries away we headed right back onto the streetcar direction Weinheim! Now Weinheim’s little castle is a small one compared to Heidelberg, and not nearly as popular, but when you’re practically the only ones up in the huge tower, and it’s dusk and starting to thunderstorm, it’s pretty darn exciting too!

05 MAY 2005

How can a person experience Germany without surviving one of it’s many public holidays? Luckily the grocery shopping yesterday had prepared us for today – Ascension Day – where all the stores shut down and the public transit is practically nonexistent. We slept in but still managed to visit the cathedrals in Speyer and Worms and most importantly eat more ice cream. In the evening a bunch of the Canadians came by to meet my sister and eat some curry one last time. Even Isaac called and was in on the party! It wasn’t long though, before Steph and I kicked everyone out in order concentrate on perfectly packing our backpacks.

Hiding in the Speyer Altpörtel

Yes, those are four pigtails you see.

06 MAY 2005

And now began the real journey. Waking up at 5AM was a piece of cake, considering how pumped we were. It was a bit of a hike to the shuttle bus stop, and the ride to the airport was awful, considering how bad I had to pee, but before we knew it, we were on the plane to Venice. About 1 hour and 15 minutes later we were getting off the plane outside the smallest airport we had ever seen. But we were NOT complaining. We immediately got rid of the sweaters and pulled out the sunglasses. It was hot. Considering that it had been raining cats and dogs in Frankfurt that morning, we were very happy girls. The plane had even been quite early and we ended up having to wait for about an hour for the ride we had arranged to the campground. Considering also that my stomach had not enjoyed that flight too much either, it was a nice break.

Steph enjoyed the bus to the airport.

I, on the other hand, was about to burst.

Finally there. Can you spare some sun? I’m from Canada.

Suddenly Steph noticed a little old man walking around with a paper and asking people stuff. She glanced over his shoulder and noticed our names on the paper, turns out he was our driver! He didn’t speak English but he was really nice and even gave us a bunch of maps and info about Venice and also Rome. Our campground was adorable. Our cabin was a little box with two beds in it and a front porch. It was still early in the afternoon, we ate the lunches we had packed but just hung out there by the pool all day. Our campground was on the mainland anyway, and we had decided to do the actual Venice (island) thing tomorrow. Compared to the rain and cold in Germany, there was nothing we would have rather done but lay around by that pool in the sun. For dinner we just ate pizza and lasagna – of course! - at the Italian restaurant… beside the pool! Loving it so far!

07 MAY 2005

Thanks to the fact that our noisy German neighbors did shut up after we banged on the wall a few times, we were up early the next morning and on the first bus across the bridge to Venice. This city is unbelievably cute. It took us the whole day, but we walked around the whole thing, taking pictures an d eating pizza, ice cream, panini and calzones and stopping and chilling out on the coast whenever we happened to run into it. It was the most beautiful weather we could have asked for.

Yup, those are blue, blue skies.

Which are bigger? The eyes or the stomach?

Oh come on, Venice isn’t THAT big.

h

08 MAY 2005

Good thing Venice was doable in one day, because by 8:30 we were checked out and on our train to Rome. The train ride was beautiful, and a nice change from the trains in Germany. First of all, it was more comfy, but best of all it was full of people smiling, talking, and laughing! Even the businessey-looking guy with the laptop would chat with us!

Jaffer, dooooon’t…

A very short 5 hours later we arrived in the giant central transit terminal in Rome. But us country girls were not at all intimidated. We made our way directly to the subway, bought passes for our full 3-day stay, got right onto the subway train and transferred smoothly onto the bus that dropped us off directly in front of our campground.

Our cabin was even better than our last one, not only was it cute, but it was brand new and had a shower, sink, and toilet right inside!

Here’s one picture. But I think something got in the way of the camera…

And then she turned it on me. Of course I had chosen the bed with the space-sheets.

There are those cool sheets again. Right there beside the nice white shoes… oh just stick with your own camera.

Even though the cabin was great, after sitting on that train all morning, we were still not in the mood to stay in it for the rest of the day.

The closest major attraction to our campground was the Vatican, so we hopped right back on that subway and took a stroll around the outside of this “country”. Before long we were hanging out in St. Peter’s square! Then we followed some people through these metal detectors, and suddenly we found ourselves in the catacombs of St. Peter’s Basilica, tiptoeing around crying people and looking at John Paul II’s grave! We snapped a quick picture we went back upstairs before we made some kind of wrong catholic gesture or something. Then we wandered around the main part of the Basilica – the hugest and most massively decorated church I have ever seen.

Girls, behave yourselves, this is the Vatican.

By the time we had picked up some breakfast groceries – most importantly Pringles, and got back to the cabin and showered in our own very exciting little shower, we were quite tired and fell right asleep in our very comfortable little bunks.

09 MAY 2005

Breakfast, anyone?

Today was a big one. We were back on the subway nice and early, and before we knew it we were coming out of the subway station directly under the shadow of the Roman Coliseum itself! Now that was impressive.

We walked halfway around it, and just had to sit on the curb and look up at it for a while. We were thinking about getting a guided tour, because honestly neither of us knew much more than the movie Gladiator had been able to provide. Instead, though, we just went to one of the many souvenir stands out there and picked up a really cool book, with all the best stories and “now-and-then” flipping pictures :) So we went through that first, and when we thought we had gleaned enough knowledge to deserve to go inside, we set out to find the entrance.

So we walked around the thing a ways further until we found a long lineup. Steph pointed ahead to a sign, though, that was split into two and said that tour groups should line up on the lefthand side, and individual persons should line up on the righthand side. Well, we thought – groups are a lot bigger than individual persons, aren’t they? And there is a big gap on this righthand side here – we should walk up past all these people and find the single persons line… so that’s what we did. Before we knew it, though, we were right up against the ticket desk and the guy was asking us how old we were and if we wanted an audio tour… umm… where are we? Umm… no thanks, just two entrance tickets please… And that’s when we looked behind us and noticed a lot of dirty looks and people looking at Steph’s Canada-flag backpack and muttering things about giving a good name to your country and stuff. Yeah, that might have been the singles line after all… woops! But it’s too late now! Yet another sign that I’ve been in Germany too long.

For the first couple minutes we were just feeling too guilty to enjoy the place, but we soon forgot about our little mistake and started to explore. This place is just as amazing from the inside. All the stuff that Adam had told me was coming back now too. The fighting floor of the Coliseum had been made of wood, and was long gone, but that was really cool, because we were able to see the remnants of all the animal cages and hallways and staircases that they had built underneath! The actual seats were also long worn away but the main structure was still there, and we were able to walk around on two different levels. It was so incredibly cool, Steph thought I was kind of stupid, but I really felt like I could have been there watching the gladiators or something. At the very least it reminded me of the animal fights in in Star Wars Episode II. Okay, maybe that is a little stupid ;)

Lucky kids. Nice field trip!

I think we were in there for almost two hours because by the time we came out again, it was time for lunch! We sat around beside another ruined temple and had some apples, and then walked a little further and got little pizzas on our way to the ruins of the Roman Forum, just across the road.

And these ruins were just as great. It was really just a huge mess of crumbling buildings and pillars and statues and stuff. And there was a lot of it. It was cool in itself, but thanks to our picture book, we walked around inside, being able to read about and see pictures of exactly what had been where. So we walked a bit, stopped and read, and walked some more, and stopped and read some more. Its like we were our own tour guides! When we findally got to the end, we climbed up this one road for a great view of it all, and when we turned around, we were in this big fancy modern square with galleries and statues with a huge staircase that led right back down into the city.

One thing my little phone can do that Steph’s camera can not. Panorama! This one was really hard to take, too, considering how sunny it was and I could hardly see the screen even though I was taking three separate pictures!

There must be something about round buildings, they’re always the ones left standing!

Another nice panorama. This one’s actually the view from the Coliseum

Next stop – Pantheon!

We found it no problem, thanks to the umm… signs…

It was quite amazing to see it too, considering – as our book told us – that it was the most well-preserved of the major Roman constructions (another round one), and still had the origional domed ceiling. The fountain outside was nice, but we were a little disappointed with the interior. It was probably never that decorated, we thought, and there weren’t really any statues of interesting gods inside anymore, just lots of paintings and stuff about Mary.

So that was the Pantheon, where to now? How bout this big fancy square on our map here – called Piazza Navona? Why not?

Well, I’ll tell you why not.
There was an unbelievable number of people in this square, probably the biggest of the open spaces between the buildings in this jammed-together city. There were two relatively nice fountains in the middle, but you could hardly see them. We decided just to cut across the middle to the other side and go back out. But no sooner had we stepped into the main square were there nasty street peddlers coming towards us. The one guy had a string with a loop in it and told Steph to put her finger into it for good luck while he chatted with her. Also known as: occupy her hands while his buddy tries to pick her pockets from behind. Well she saw it all coming, and so did I. It’s not like we had anything in our pockets anyway. But when the third guy came up to me with another string I just looked at him and said – I don’t think so, buddy – and I grabbed Steph’s hand right out of the other guy’s string and we both ran away.

So we didn’t like that square very much.
The next stop was the Treviso Fountain. At least that’s what I think it is called. I just always called it the Trevor fountain. Steph was more intent on seeing it than I was anyway, haha! Well, it was cool. A big white series of statues beside a huge pool of water, but loads of people were there and all the other gross buildings were squished right up against it, and you just couldn’t get a good picture. I stayed in the back of the crowd, clutching my backpack, while Steph went down to get a closer look..

Already mid-afternoon, we grabbed our daily serving of Italian ice cream and headed out to our last stop, the Piazza Spagna, or better know as, the Spanish Steps (we still liked calling it Pizza Spaghetti). As I learned from the sign, this was a huge staircase built to connect a huge fancy church at the top of this hill to the common people on the street below. It was pretty big, I guess, and there were nice flowers on it, but it was also surrounded by huge squished-together buildings and covered with tourists. You couldn’t even see the stairs themselves. Oh yeah, and the church itself was entirely covered in scaffolding. Not so impressive at the moment.

But the ice cream was good. And I still really just liked the palm trees growing in front of the hotel across the road!

What a day! Even though it was only like 5:00, we figured it was time to head back. The campground restaurant only opened at 7:00, though (oh, Europe), so we played around in the hot tub for a while, resting our little feet. Then we finally sat down for a nice big Italian dinner with appetizers and all, and afterwards went straight to bed.

10 MAY 2005

Exactly one week since Steph had landed in Frankfurt. And what were we up today? We weren’t done with Rome yet – back to the Vatican! This time we actually went inside via the offical Vatican and Sistine Chapel museum. Well, the Sistine Chapel was really my only goal, but the rest of it was pretty cool as well, and we had to walk through it anyway, just to get there. We started in a big courtyard, then a hallway with more sculpted busts than I had ever seen.

Steph liked the one of Constantine a lot.

Then through rooms and rooms of art and scupltures and more art (none of which my camera could do justice), and then lots of little hallways and big hallways and finally into the Sistine Chapel where nobody was allowed to take pictures but everybody was taking pictures anyway. It was beautiful,though, and totally restored. Steph couldn’t seem to get the shot right, so she made me stand still so she could set the camera on my head, then she came around in front of me, and her nose was practically touching mine, only she was looking up through the camera and opening her eyes real wide and sticking out her tounge and breathing on me and making her picture-taking face. That’s when I started laughing. Me with a camera on my head, and her getting all frustrated because I was shaking. Then she started laughing too. We couldn’t stop. In the Sistine Chapel of all places. I’m sure the guard would have told us to “shhh” if he hadn’t already been busy saying it to everyone else.

After the Vatican we got some greasy gross pizza down by the subway station and found our way from there to the castle of Saint Angelo on the bank of the Tiber. This castle had also been begun in the Roman times and was originally a burial monument. It was basically a huge circular wall with a really wide spiral ramp in the centre from bottom to top. Over the centuries it had been repeatedly added to, though, until it became a huge fortress with defense towers on four corners, a huge statue on top, and a bridge across the river and also a long wall with an overhead passageway that connected all the way to the Vatican. There were also lots of cannonballs and armour inside and from the top there was an amazing view of the whole city.

Orlando! Come save me!

The Tiber

The Vatican

When we were done seeing the fortress, we walked down the bridge which had really great angel statues lined up on both sides. We walked down beside the river, a narrow sidewalk lined entirely with peddlers on one side and their pickpocket friends all lined up waiting against the railing on the other side. We got down that street as quickly as possible. We soon came to this other huge palace thing. It took up an entire city block, but there were no tourists there and we had no idea what it was for. It was big though. We then went and sat in ths park with more beautful palm trees, and on the way back to the subway we stopped for the most amazing Italian ice cream that we had had in the whole trip.

Yea, tho I walk through the valley of pickpockets…

I just love 'em!

Dinner was at the campground restaurant again, we figured how much different could it be than the thousnads of other pizzerias that lined the streets of every city in Italy? Seriously, we never found anything to eat other than pizza and pizza-related foods while we were there. But that’s ok – tommorow we’re off to Spain!

11 MAY 2005

So on our way to the Vatican yesterday we had made sure that we had figured out the airport shuttle system and had bought all the necessary train and bus tickets that would take us to our 12 noon flight to Barcelona. We were finished with Rome, but Steph made me sneak one last pictrue of a nun in the train station. We had never really seen nuns before either.

We had asked the day before about a shuttle service from the campground, and they were telling us prices like 50 Euros each or something, so we decided to get up early and go with public transit. When we were checking out of the campground at about 7 AM, however, this shifty guy with a cigarette approaches us and asks us if we are going to Ciampino Airport. Yes… we say, and he points to his big van and says – 30 Euro for both, I’m going there anyway. It turns out he was the big expensive shuttle driver, but some old Americans had booked the shuttle last night (for the 50 Euros) and now he was just picking up some extra passengers. Sounds good to us! So we wasted a few bucks on bus tickets, but this is worth it now.

Turns out this old American couple from Texas or something had just come across the Atlantic on a cruise, and they were just basically brimming with money and we chatted with them in the van about the places that you just HAVE to see when you’re in Europe, haha. And suddenly we were there. “Ciampino Aeroporto” the driver announces. Right on – we made it with loads of time to spare! But then the American guy just starts saying “Champeenyo? No No NO! I said Fumcheenyo Airport, our flight is from Fumcheenyo! (Fumicino – the international airport in the other direction from the campground as we had been driving. Turns out they were flying to America, and NOT with RyanAir). So he was a little mad. While he got out and started yelling at the driver, Steph and I quietly said goodbye to his wife and quickly disappeared into the airport before anybody could turn on us! If those Americans would only learn now to pronounce things… !

But we were not done with Americans yet today. Even though the flight into Spain was probably not more than an hour long, it seemed like an eternity considering what we were stuck listeninig to. At first we thought somebody had brougyht their pet chipmunk on board… but then we peeked through the seats behind us and saw an acutal person. We didn’t spend the whole flight peeking through the seats, but we had no trouble listening. The whole plane had no trouble listening to her. From what we overheard, she was from L.A. and just partying in Europe for a few weeks. The best part, though, was that she was sitting beside a guy from Canada, and simply talking his ear off. “Ohmygod, I can NOT believer you don’t have MTV up there, I would die. I would so totally die… chatter chatter… EW. This drink is disgustging. Ohmygod, it is the most disgusting drink I have ever had. Ever. Stewardess – disgusting drink over here… chatter chatter… It was, like, like, being in the huge Vatican, almost made me believe that some of that religious stuff… could be like… true! It’s like, I could FEEL something in there, you know? Who was in that big popular painting… Adam? No, that wasn’t his name… you know – like the first man that was ever, like… created. I think his name was Arthur….”

There were times that we actually had to contain our laughter. The poor guy beside her.

Well one more shuttle bus later we were meeting Kevin (my friend from high school and Steph’s boyfriends’s brother) at the main bus station in Barcelona. We recognized him a mile away, can’t miss a Janz. We first went to see this big Gate, called the Arc d’ Triumph. There were plam trees there too ;) Then we went to a big open-air market, with all the fruit and veggies and cheese and meat and fish you could imagine. It looked great, and Steph simply loved it in there. Unlike Germany’s open-air markets, this one was actually cheaper than the grocery stores too!

Then with our bags of tasty looking groceries the three of us hopped on a train to Kevin and Rosella’s apartment on the campus of Universitat d’Automat on the other side of the hill from Barcelona. I had never really gotten to know Rosella before, but Steph knew them both quite well and there was no probem at all, because she was simply great. She started cooking as soon as we got there too. Old fashioned hamburger soup, just as if we were at home on the prairies again. After our big trip, it was awesome. It ended up being quite late too, by the time we were done, and we all just went to bed. Got lots of sights to see tomorrow!

12 MAY 2005

And did we ever see the sights! Bright and early we were at the giant cathedral called Segrata Familia. This massive thing was designed by a very famous architecht named Gaudi who was apparently inspired a lot by the structures and designs in nautre. Like the columns in the cathedreal looked like giant trees with branches and towers that look like giant stems with seed pods on the ends. The coolest part about it is, that Gaudi’s designs were so massive that the cathedreal had still not been completed when he died. And they are still working on it today. The first thing we did was climb the towers that he had actually built. There were four of them there, all with stiarcaises that winded between them. My favorite parts were the facades plastered all over the outside like a nativity scene, in amongst some trees made of stone, or fish or flowers or just human feet sticking out of the wall! We finally found our way back down, and after touring around the inside for a bit more and actually watching the builders working on different parts of it, we met Kevin and Rosella again (they had been at the antique market – because they had seen this church a bunch of times already, of course). They whisked us right off to the next attraction in Barcelona, Parc Guell. This huge park was also built by Gaudi, carved into the side of a huge hill, with lots of different kinds of stone passageways, fairy-tale looking buildings, sculptures and paths. It was quite crowded, but still big enough to accommodate all the people and really interesting. We actually all just sat down and had our lunch right up there.

While we were enjoying one particular paonorama, some (yet more) Americans wanted to know where we fellow English speakers were from. So we say Manitoba, and they say, like they always do… oh, umm, that’s great. Haha. The best part of it was, though, that the people on the other side of us sai – oh – where in Manitoba? Kevin takes a leap and just says Lowe Farm (the smallest village you have ever seen). And the lady actually knew where it was! Turns out she was from Morden! They asked us what we were up to out here in Europe, and when I said I was in school in Germany, her husband pipes up and says oh, where in Germay – I’m from Germany! Haha, the world can be small, even on the top of a mountain in Barcelona.

After lunch Rosella had to go to class, but the three of us came back down again and continued on the tourist route. After passing the art museum by (Steph had had enough art already in the Sistine chapel to last a while, she said) and stopping just long enough to make a quick boyfriend-phonecall, we came to the next attraction, I forget what it was called – a recreation of a typical old spanish village, with the most adorable little craft shops. We had fun looking at all the cool stuff, but since the entire village was a reacreation, it wasn’t all to special, considering that we had just seen the actual Roman Forum. We strolled back down the Las Ramblas street, stopping to look at various of Barcelona’s famous human statues, also stopped for more Italian ice cream (can’t get enough of this stuff!) and eventually found our train home again. And sure enough, Rosella was back home already, cooking up a rabbit for dinner! Tastes like chicken. Really does.

13 MAY 2005

So yesterday was our only touristy day. We wanted to get it all done at once, not because it was bad, but we were ready to do some real vacationing. Today, for example, we had planned an entire sea-kayaking trip along the coast just for the four of us. Unfortunately, though, we got a call on our way into the city, saying that some strong waves had come up and the guide had to cancel. We went out to the shop anyway, just to see if there was anything else we could do instead. The guys there were really nice and incredibly hilarious surfer-dudes from California. There was still really nothing else available to us for that day, but they did give us direction to the very same coast that we would have gone to that day, and said there was a beautiful hiking trail that lead all they way along the coast for a good four hours. So that’s what we did! We grabbed some lunches and hopped on the bus. An hour and a half later, we found it. This hiking trail was even more beautiful than he had described. “Cliffs and Coves” is what they called it (dude). We took so many pictures, played around in the water, and even met a dog.

At the end of the trail we found a town where we assumed that our returning bus stop was in. It turns out, though, after asking for a few directions, that it was in the next town over but we had no way of getting there! We found a differnt bus stop there, though, but after waiting there for a while, we thought maybe this bus wasn’t going to come at all! That’s when two ladies come out of the house across the road. We asked them of they knew the bus schedule at all. Then she asked us where we wanted to go. Well, we need to get to the next town to catch our bus back to Barcelona. Oh! She siad – in English – I’m just going to the next town myself – hop in the car, kids!

Now nice! So there we were, the woman and her daughter in the front, all four of us in the back of her Toyota SUV. It turns out she was from Bulgaria and had lived in Spain since she had gotten married. We even had a good chat with her before they dropped us off just a few blocks away from our bus station. We were even early enough to grab some food after our long hike before we got on the very last bus back home.

Now that bus ride was not the most enjoyable for me, however. The driver was insane, the bus was tipsy, and after hiking all day and then eating a bunch of ice cream and chips, I was NOT feelign well. Even Kevin was getting motion sick. Good thing I had my trusty pills with me, otherwise Amber’s backpack would probably not look (or smell) as good as it does ;)

We made it back safely, thank God. But we still had a train to take to get back to their apartment. I was kind of groggy from the pills at this point, and I just wanted to go to bed. In the tunnel, though, I felt something tugging at my backpack. I turned around and there was a guy right behind me, suddenly taking his hands away. What the heck? I immediately took off my backpack and noticed the front zipper ¾ of the way open! He was trying to pickpocket me too! Well, it’s not like I ever keep anything valuable in the front (and most obvious obvious) pocket of my backpack, and if he would have actually gotten inside, all he would have gotten is a roll of toilet paper and a bottle of sunscreen (not that those things aren’t valuable, but I could buy more with money if I needed to ;) Still, though, I was feeling pretty uncomfortable in that subway after that. And just plain violated too. Both of these experience have just taken a little chip away from my trust in mankind, especially Europeans! What makes people do stuff like that!?!

14 MAY 2005

After that hike we all slept quite well I’m sure. The next morning was quite relaxed. After breakfast we just went back into the city and strolled around for a bit. We visited a museum of the Roman ruins that were uncovered in Barcelona – really cool remnants of buildings that were apparently laundry houses and wine storage buildings. These Romans were everywhere!

After the museum we went out for a real Spanish lunch of Paella (a dish of baked rice and fish or meat) and a bit more gift shopping down Las Ramblas. Then we ended up at the beach! There were really no water sports or lessons availabe to us for just the one day, so we decided just to chill on the beach for the rest of the afternoon. And was it beautiful! Totally sunny and warm. The water was refreshing too. It was salty though. Like we knew that it was saltwater – but we Manitobans had never expected to taste it so much! We realized that we had never actually swam in saltwater before! Quite an experience.

We left just as it was starting to cool off, and just in time, too, because we were all starting to look a little pink! Rosella broke out the pot and pan again when we got home and made another amazing tuna dish, with fresh fish from the market! It was a great evening, too. We were all just totally relaxed from lying on the beach all day. We figured the sound of the waves just put us all into some kind of trance.

While supper was cooking, Steph and I played outside with our new hackeysacks that we had picked up in the city. Well, we were playing with mine. And, well, beside their building is this big hole in the ground where cats live. And of course, the hackey sack goes down the hole. The cats were not friendly enough to bring it out for us, and even though one of their neighbors even lent us a broom to reach it, the flashlight reavealed that this little hole was actually the entrance to a giant cat-cave in the crawlspace underneath the building. Even though we could see it, the hackeysack was a good 15 feet away and totally unreachable.

So before I even started whimpering, Steph gave me hers. Now, that’s what sisters are for.

15 MAY 2005

Today we have to leave Spain. And in order to do so we have to wake up at 3:00AM.
It’s not like we slept that well anyway, but sure enough at 3:00 we all rolled out of bed and Steph and I strapped on our backpacks. Since the trains at the university weren’t running yet, we hiked a good 4 or 5 km to the next town and caught one there. But. It was Sunday. And the trains were on weekend schedule. And we ended up waiting at this particular train station about half an hour longer than we had planned, and when we wree going to arrive in the city with exactly 5 minutes to spare before our only bus to the airport drove away. The challenge was to get out of the subway tunnel, out onto the street, across it and down into the bus depot in those 5 minutes. So even though it was 5 in the morning at this point, we were all out of that train car in a full sprint that tapered off only when we saw that the bus was still there and the driver was still loading suitcases underneath. What an exciting morning. The rest of it was rather boring. We slept on the bus, got to the airport, waited, slept on the plane, got off the plane, got on the other bus and eventually made it back to Mannheim by mid-afternoon. Well what do we do now?

We had a dinner at my place, of the pasta and sauce that we had bought the week before we left, for this very situation. We weren’t exactly tired for the rest of the day, but neither were we up to doing much other than sit around. So we decided to sit around in the movie theatre snacking and watching Orlando Bloom melt the screen defending Jerusalem in “Kingdom of Heaven”. It was quite good. It was about the Crusades and although they probably really butchered the historical facts, it still made us think.

16 MAY 2005

The plan today was to go to Strasbourg for french fries in France. We didn’t make it, though. Partly because we wanted to sleep and didn’t set any kind of alarm. Partly because it was yet another public holiday in Mannheim and the trains werer running at odd schedules.

So we just got döners and went to the park. We were still kind of beat from all of our adventures, and we just ended up eating and playing frisbee a bit, and playing with our remaining hackeysack a bit, but mostly just lying on the grass, like the Germans do. It was no Bercelona beach, but it was ok.

And this is when I broke out my camera again:

In the afternoon we were bored again and there was another English movie playing, so we went to see it. It was “Unleashed” with Jet Li playing this brainwashed death-fighter slave to this Scottish mafia boss, who meets Morgan Freeman a blind Ray-Charles-looking piano tuner and his annoying white teenage stepdaughter, all of which live in Glasgow for some reason. The fight scenes were cool. Jet Li is adorable. The story was entirely ridiculous.

We went home and played guitar for a bit afterwards, but then we were hungry again.
Since we felt we missed out on “tapas” in Spain, we decided to get all dressed up nice go grab some chicken wings and stuff at another one of my favorite stops in Mannheim. We also got a Flammkuchen and carbonated water. Talk about cool. We also met Chris out there. Now, I had told Steph that he looks kind of like her boyfriend – and when we got to the meeting place, she recognized him even before I did! I think they got along pretty good too :)

But after the Flammkuchen we were not finished. Next stop, Cocktails! Now Steph kind of freaked out when she saw that the cocktails were almost 8 Euros each. (“that’s like 15 bucks Canadian!”) We would have normally gotten the 2 for 1 deal because it was a Monday, but we found out they don’t do that on holidays. Of course. So we got Nachos. I still ordered a non-alcoholic (cheaper) Cocktail, though. And when Steph tried it all she said was – Wow. Cocktails do NOT taste that good in Canada. Haha! So we ordered her one after all. Prost! It’s all part of the experience, babe!

17 MAY 2005

Ahh. Back to normal. Well, the trains were at least. I still didn’t go to class today. Steph and I headed off first thing to Schwetzingen to see the castle gardens. What’s the big deal about a garden? She wanted to know. Well, it’s behind a castle… and it’s huge! You’ll just have to see it.

And did we ever see it. The day turned out to be quite beautiful despite some threatening clouds in the morning, and there were hardly any people in the gardens on a Tuesday morning. Sure enough, Steph had a great time there. We must have spent an hour just taking pictures of different ducks and birds and even fish. We also sat down to have some lunch in the middle somewhere. But it sure is a big place, and by the time we had admired all the fountains and sculpted trees and flowers and found our way through all the hedge mazes, we were pretty tired!

The afternoon we had dedicated to cleaning up and packing and shopping for gifts in Mannheim. I can’ t believe how much chocolate she bought. For supper we finally made it to the Brazilian pub where the exchange students hang out. We were pretty hungry already but had to wait until 6 for the restaurant to open for the evening. We stayed there till after 7 and were still the only ones in the whole place. I think we got special service, though. They know me there as Maria’s friend. I think Steph liked the waiter too ;) One last thing that we also had to do before Steph left Germany was have a beer. So we ordered a big one and shared it. Well, she tried it. “Mann. Ist das ein Bier.” It was hilarious.

I’m working on it!

We had planned to swing by Chris’ place on the way home to watch the movie Gladiator (because we were still pumped from having been in Rome). But because I had to drink all of Steph’s beer at the end of the meal too, it was getting kind of late. Besides that movie is really long and considering that we had to get to Frankfurt bright and early the next morning, there just wasn’t time.

So Chris came over for a bit in the evening instead. And he brought his schnapps. One last thing for Steph to try before she went home. And not just any schnapps. German schnapps, and that means at least like 50% alcohol. Oh man. I didn’t really want to but I took part, just because she was set on telling everyone that we did it. We even took a video. Needless to say if you know Steph, it’s hilarious.

18 MAY 2005

The lovely Veronica accomopanied us to the Frankfurt airport again bright and early this morning. She had her new glasses on too, which are really hot, by the way :) We had breakfast at the train station, and got a quick ride to Frankfurt on the fast train with all the stuffy business people. Before we knew it we were sending Steph through the security gate.
It was a great time. *Sniff * thanks for coming babes! I’ll see you again in August!

05.May.2005 Es kommt die Zeit

2005-05-05T23:19:00.000+02:00

Well, I've been neglecting the blog for a few days now. That is most definitely due to the fact that my sister has finally arrived and we have been exploring the southwest corner of Germany nonstop for the past three days. It is now 11:18pm on Thursday night, we are done packing and we have the alarm set for 4:00am tomorrow. By 1:15pm we will be in Italy. Then comes Spain. And there probably won't be blog entries for the next 9 days, but have no fear, I'm sure we'll come back with some great stories.
Bis dann!

02.May.2004

2005-05-05T08:23:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was Sunday and I slept in. It was beautiful out.
But today was Monday and the longest day of my life. Steph will be hetre TOMORROW! Class started at 10 and went until 3:30. I almost fell asleep during the second one. The last one was the interesting one, thank goodness. The one where I sit on my hands. So at the end it was ok. After class I went with Vernica to buy train tickets to Frankfurt tomrrow and then it was time for some major grocery shopping - this time for two people! After dinner I did a bunch of laundry, went running with Amber and cleaned my room. One more sleep!

what year is it?

2005-05-01T12:00:00.000+02:00

Hi. I was going through the blog and I just realized how often I've written 2004 instead of 2005 this year. Wow, haha. Yesterday, for example. If my computer was faster I'd change it. But it's not, so y'all are going to have to know what I mean.

30.April.2004

2005-05-01T10:37:00.000+02:00

Veronica still needed glasses. So we decided to try Heidelberg today. We took the train in the late morning and tried on glasses for a good hour before I started getting hungry and cranky. We grabbed samosas from my favorite little Indian bakery store and ate them by the river. The weather today was even nicer than yesterday, I didn't think that was possible. 27 degrees, apparently, and calm and clear. So after lunch we went back to it, and actually found a nice pair, which were actually quite cheap in comparison with a lot of the others we tried. After that it was time for clothes shopping. So I finally got those tank tops that I'd been meaning to pick up for summer. And *sigh* I bought a pair of jeans too. But that means NO more clothes in Europe. Jen... no more.

In one store, though, the lady gives me my credit card back and tells me it's "invalid". I wanted to tell her no - try it again, but I've been in her shoes before and nobody ever believes that their credit card is bad, so Veronica lent me some cash and we left. I immeditately called Mastercard service, which is NOT toll-free from Europe, btw. Afer typing my number in like 6 times, I finally get a person and ask her what is wrong with my card. She says nothing, it must have been the machine in the store. Thanks, Germany. You'd think the lazy store lady would know the difference between a bad card and a bad machine. Instead she just tries once gives me my card back and says it's bad. And then I spend the same amount on a phone call to America. Gruhh.

SO later on we got some more food from a cute little place called "Food Corner" and ate it by the river again. Then we found a grassy park on the other side of the river to hang out at. It was Saturday and because of the weather, there were a whole lot of people out there already, but we found a place beside the bridge to play frisbee and chill out. So relaxing. We even watched a guy jump off the bridge into the river. I guess he was hot! He climbed out again right where we were sitting and his buddies came back up to him with his clothes. We figure they had dared him to do it or something. It was really cool, anyways.

It was nearing 7pm now and we were still in Heidelberg. But we weren't finished yet. We met Chris and his car-full of Canadians at that point and made our way out into the other side of the city. Now, people in Mannheim had been talking about this event called - ... well, I forget what it's called, because there isn't really a translation anyways. Nor would anybody tell me what it was, exactly. Just - oh , we heard it's great, we're all going. So I had no idea at all. We just knew it was at the Thingstätte in Heidelberg - wherever that was. So we just parked the car beside the roadblock and started following people. The first thing we noticed was that the only people we could see on the way were between 15 and 25, and a surprisingly large number of goths. Hmmm, after the first half hour of pure uphill-hiking I started to understand the why the particular age group was present, but I also really started wondering what was at the end of this road (and also kind of hoping it wasn't a 100 meter cliff.) We had started out in daylight, but by the time we had gotten to the top it was totally dark - and what we arrived at was probably one of the creepiest and coolest things I've ever seen. It was a huge Ampitheatre, (not a cliff, thank goodness) just cut into the hill. I'm not so good at people-estimating, but I'd have to say that there were at least 4000 or 5000 people up there, no lights excpet torches and a big bonfire in the middle, and no music except people playing random drums. There were a bunch of people juggling fire torches and also doing that fire-eating/spitting thing. Very cool. We found out the whole party was because of the traditional pagan celebrations for May 1. So I guess you could call it "May Day Eve" or something. Of course the people who actually knew what this was all about had dragged loads of beer up the hill with them along with blankets and food and stuff, ready for the whole night. We called it the perfect German party - nobody had to play music OR dance, haha. Just instead just do their favorite things: drinking and BSing and pushing into each other ;) Apparently this Ampitheatre was not as old as we thought either, it was was actually just built by Hitler for propaganda rallies. Yikes, eh - Pagan festival in the Nazi camp - don't tell Grandma I was here! The weather was still awesome. Surprisingly we actually found a huge group of exchange students we knew and hung out with them for a while in the end. I even found Hanna! Probably a big reason why so many people showed up, it was a perfect night for this thing. Even at midnight we didn't need sweaters. I think we came back down the hill at about 2am and drove back to Mannheim. What a day - I think we were all out cold in the car.

29.April.2005

2005-05-01T10:16:00.000+02:00

The big plan today was to meet Kelly and Maria for lunch. Don't see them very much anymore, so it was good to hang out. I took them to a little Chinese place and then we got ice cream and just hung out in the sun by Wasserturm fountain. The weather was soooo nice. Later on they had to go meet their boyfriends so I made my way to the library so I could copy more texts and even if I don't read them I'll feel a little better about myself for missing a week of class.

It was still extrememly nice outside so after the library I gave Veronica a call to see if she wanted to play frisbee. Sure! And then we can cook dinner! Why not? So I gathered up some food and took the bus out to her place. We still couldn't find anybody else to play with us, so we threw the frisbee aorund on our own or a while and then made some dinner (leftover chili from Chris ;) While we were eating, one of Veronica's flatmates comes in and invites us to the Musikpark (music school by my house where he goes) where they were having a band competition. Sounds cool! So I go home and change and before I knew it we were watching adorable little German bands. Well, we were too late to hear the first band, but appartently they were bad. The second one was really tight and very cool but about as generic Nickelback-rock as you can get. The third one was the crowd's favorite, I think. But when the crowd is into strange 80's happy-german-funk-pop... maybe I just don't get it ;P They played one Latin American song though, which was really awesome. But why someone who has Samba in their blood would rather want to write German music is beyond me. And let's just say I almost went up and took the microphones away from the girls in the last band and threw them out the window.

One thing I like about that place, though, is it is like 100 meters from my front door. Ok, bye guys, I'm going home now.... ok, I'm home :)

One quick survey question: How many people actually yawned when they saw that picture of me yesterday? I do it every time!!!

28.April.2005

2005-04-29T11:24:00.000+02:00

When you know you have to get up early, you just can't sleep well at all - you just lay there and count the hours.

This is what one of the girls at work was saying today. It's so true.
Well, it wasn't so bad for me. I did get up with that 'no mommy I don't want to go!' feeling in my stomach, but I pulled myself out of bed and made it work with even enough time to grab a coffee and watch the *sigh* ...sunrise.

And this is my coffee.

And you know the coffee shop is german when:

The only three condiments available are liverwurst, nutella, and honey ;)

Ok, let's get to work!

Today was a massive gathering of all the shareholders of the BASF chemical company. Well, all the ones over 70 years old, it seemed. They were cute. There were about 8,000 of them. There was free food.

I got assigned to the basement again, with another really cool girl from Spain. Aha! the foreigners always work down here, I get it now. The Frau came down to us after a bit and told us both to take turns going to the break room to put on more makeup. That's right, she said it again today. Which actually made me feel better. She just probably goes around saying it to everyone! But it was especially cool when the spanish girl just up and told her - I woke up at 4AM to get there. I don't put on makeup at 4AM. :)

One girl had to go home later and I got out of the basement, and made my way all the way up to the main entrance. What I did was stand there and say "auf wiedersehen" like a million times. Yes, with the outfit on. Don't EVEN say it.

The place was crawling with security too, because of previous bomb threats and stuff, from environmental groups, I figure. Haha, I don't even think the 70 year olds with the free food noticed at all. But the BASF think they're Just sooo imoprtant. There were nasty dogs and metal detectors and just way too many security people walking around, hanging out, going through forbidden doors and stuff. I was having trouble telling them apart from the Guests, and basically they just made my job way harder. Too many security people is less security - that's my new saying. Back in the basement I did end up talking to one of the BASF Werkschutz guys for a while. Man, his accent was hard to understand. Other than that I probably old a few hundred people that the bathrooms were behind the blue door. Or I'd always find these old guys looking around confused - "are you looking for something sir?" And they would always give me a sly grin and say - "yeah - my wife". "Oh, *giggle giggle* I guess I can't help you with that, sir!
Best hostess ever.

We got out of work a little early and I got ice cream. I went grocery shopping and Chris picked me up from the store in the rental car that he had gotten for his dad last week. He had made a big pot of chili and we had planned on this dinner for a whole week. But then he asks me - so who else is coming?

I was like - Chris, you're the one who knows how much you're cooking. I didn't invite anybody! And then he was like - but Jen, it's your house - I didn't want to invite random people to your house! Haha, so much for planning - and now we have a whole pot of chili for the two of us! Well, we did make some quick phone calls - good thing I live in a big student apartment building - and we got a little dinner party together. It was really great in the end.

After washing up I was just about dead tired, but then Amber made me a cup of tea - and I got my second wind. We went back to her place and watched the movie 'Euro Trip'... which could probably have been better called 'Boob Trip', so nasty. But it's not like I've never seen those before ;P

27.April.2005

2005-04-29T11:17:00.000+02:00

Exactly 1 month till my birthday, wow. I got a lot of stuff to do before then.
This morning, for example, I handed in that paper that I had been workng on for like two months. 18 pages of German genius. Haha, well - we'll see what they have to say about that. After that I spent about an hour in the library with a little friend I like to call the photocopier. Then I took all of my wonderful photocopied texts home and started reading. I even went and wrote a one-page comment paper for my Monday class. I have to do four of them in the semester, so I figured I should probably get one done before the trip.

And before I knew it, it was time to go running and cook dinner and go to bed. Got to get up at 4am for work tomorrow, blaa. But I'm glad I finally got some school stuff done today.

26.April.2005

2005-04-29T10:50:00.000+02:00

Because I got a shift at work on Thursday I can't go rowing. But because we're still starting out the rowing teacher is offering a Tuesday session too. So since my first lecture today was cancelled anyways, I skipped the second one and went to rowing. There were only four of us there today too, and I got so much practice! Before I knew it too, I was out on the water all by myself just rowing back and forth. I still wasn't allowed to use my legs though, and had to do all the work with my little arms. Wooo, they were sore afterwards, but it felt good :)

It was real nice this morning, but it had rained the night before, and we were all getting nice and muddy by the riverbank. Afterwards though, we didn't have time to go home and change before language class, so Amber and I just walked right back through town and grabbed some lunch and went to class. Now, that may sound normal to y'all, but to walk through the Mannheim's über-trendy inner city in muddy jogging pants is not really something that people DO here. So we got some interesting looks ;) And enjoyed ever minute of it.

After class we got more food cuz we were still hungry. Then I and my jogging pants walked right back through town and went home. Stayed there just long enough to relax and change, because I headed right back to school for choir. I think today was the worst I've ever heard us sing. After choir we had a bit of a "Canada" meeting where our contact person from the Waterloo program takes us out for drinks on the department. That was fun. She asked me how everything was going with the university, though. And I was like - honestly...? Haha. Grrr.

Aaand after that bar we headed out to the Brasil pub and met other friends. I didn't stay long, though, but it was still a fun night.