New pictures

Hallo alle! Just posted a new album from Nigel's visit. We walked down to a Federweissenfest in the little town of Diedesfeld last Saturday (the 21st), and it was very autumny and picturesque. Check it out! :)

Ciao, bella!

Wow, so much to update! Where to begin?? How about with Firenze...

In short, Italy was fantastico!! As the galleries would surely agree, pictures say a mille words. So instead of outlining every detail of our adventure here, I shall merely direct the Gentle Reader to the "Firenze" album in the Nix Pix link to the right...

A brief overview, though: Anna and I, being on Fall Break, found some ueber-cheap tickets on RyanAir from Baden-Baden to Pisa. Seriously, the whole trip, there and back, was 50 Euro! So we spent Sunday night through Wednesday afternoon in Florence, enjoying amazing food and cappuccini, exploring the Palazzo Pitti, climbing the cathedral, taking pictures off the Ponte Vecchio, roaming around the Chiesa Santo Spirito, and numerous gardens and shops and cafes. They were two and a half very laid-back days of wandering, while I attempted to exhume my rusty Italian from its linguistic crypt. (The Central Market in Florence, by the way, is great. It's filled with all kinds of goodies: silks and leather and jewelry and pottery and food; and the best part is, all prices are haggle-able. An excellent spot for some Christmas shopping! ;) )

Unfortunately, the hostel where we stayed -- beautiful and bemarbled as it was -- sat right on the side of what has to have been the noisiest street in the city. There were a couple of restaurants there, one of which was right below us; and so the entire night, it sounded like bulldozers were pushing piles of glass up and down the street while sirens from the nearby police station wailed out every thousandth of a second. Well, at least it wasn't crime-ridden! But as a result, Anna and I arrived back in Neustadt happy, but exhausted. It didn't help that I must have had a bad panino or something, 'cause I ended up with a case of Cosimo Medici's Revenge.

Luckily for Nigel, he got to land right in the middle of our hacking, snorting, hoonking mess for a lovely laid-back visit of clutching stomachs and complaining of our exhaustion. He was a really good sport about it, though: he arrived on Thursday afternoon from Fribourg, where he's doing an exchange year; and we spent the weekend eating, drinking a little wine, and wandering around Neustadt and its adorable neighboring village, Diedesfeld. It was really nice (although I think Nigel would make even going to the DMV fun!). On Sunday, the three of us hopped a train to Karlsruhe, and enjoyed a sweet, foamy Mass of Hefeweizen in a Biergarten and a Spaghetti Eis downtown, before we all headed back to our respective towns.

Oh! Speaking of drinking wine! Ivan and Nico repaid our Munich trip with a little visit of their own, the weekend before Anna and I took off for Italia. They arrived on Friday, and the three of us got half-crocked over a deliciously crispy pizza at a place run by (who else?) Italians in the Innenstadt. Two bottles of Pinot Grigio between three people makes for a very happy walk home, and we spent the rest of Friday night hanging out, listening to music, and polishing off three more bottles of the Rheinland's finest. It's odd to wake up the next morning in your jeans and contacts and not even remember lying down! Not to mention that Ivan, accustomed to Bavarian beer as he is, had no head for red wine and wisely opted to relieve his stomach of the majority of its burden before too much had been digested. Nico, only slightly less crocked, then also had the courtesy to remove his compatriot's wine-bedecked pants, rinse them out, and hang them out the kitchen window to dry. (My apartment, alas, has no dryer. But I'll see if I can find the pictures of Ivan's jeans steaming in the oven and post them online!)

In short, a good time was had by all. The next morning, Saturday (the day before Anna and I flew to Florence), Nico and I left Ivan zonked out while we tottered down to the trainstation to pick up Anna, jetlagged and sick, from her trip to Atlanta for a friend's wedding. Bleary red eyes met bleary red eyes, and Anna had soon joined Ivan in sawing logs. That afternoon, we poked around the Innenstadt in the daylight and got a coffee, and then the four of us sentenced our stomachs to a winetasting on the Weinstrasse. It was delicious! Even hungover! Everybody bought at least two bottles of wine. After that, Nico threw together a fantastic pasta & eggplant dish and foccaccia pizzas, and then we all trooped off to Mannheim to visit our buddy from the UofA, Jason. Then it was back to Neustadt for some much-desired zz's before going our separate ways late Sunday morning: the boys back to Munich, Anna and I to Florence.

So! That's what I've been up to all this time! How is everybody else out there? :)

Misadventures in soup

Ah, the first day back at school is a rainy one! The trees are bronze-colored and dripping brightly; a soft breeze stirs the autumn paradise and puts an assistant teacher in the mood to make some of that organic pumpkin soup that Shauna so kindly stocked in her cupboard.

Step One: Find the soup. It's in a little packet somewhere... under these half-finished bags of pasta? Maybe it's behind this empty Weetabix box. (What's that doing still in the cupboard?) Dang these German soups in their little packets. Maybe it slid between these bags of oatmeal...

Step Two: Add water. Easy! Pour a carefully-measured amount into pot and set on stove to heat. This is taking a while... lemme turn the heat up... think I'll check email while I wait.

Step Three: Suddenly remember boiling water, which is now merrily humidifying an apartment that already tends toward the damp. Much of it has boiled away; add more to make up for it.

Step Four: Dump in contents of packet. The second ingredient being dried milk, said contents quickly congeal. Look at directions again. Ohhh, is that how you say "lukewarm" in German?

Step Five: Industriously mash congealed orange lumps with fork. They don't dissolve; but they do become smaller and more numerous. If it's going to be lumpy, might as well add some vegetables.

Step Six: Scrape out random veggies from fridge drawer, hack up, plop in soup. Soup retaliates by backsplashing hotly.

Step Seven: Stick splashed fingers into mouth. Pick up glass cutting board by handle so as to rinse in sink. Handle promptly falls off. Glass cutting board barely avoids hitting tiled floor by hitting knees and shins instead. Feebly replace lid on pot so that carrots may cook.

Step Eight: Soup boils over. Orange encrustment of stovetop quickly ensues. Curse roundly.

Step Nine: Carrots are done! Ladle steaming pumpkiny goodness into bowl. Pick up bowl, which sloshes over to administer boiling liquid to previously-splashed hand. Teach Hamann family new American curse words through their floorboards.

Step Ten: Eat vengefully. Mm mm, nothing like that autumn magic!

Neustadt: a little about the town

It occurs to me that, just because German is the focus of my little universe, there just might be a slim chance that this doesn't hold true for everyone. (Even despite the lure of delicious beer and the promise of a glamorous waitressing job for those who study languages.) So! A little note on the name of the town, to calm those long nights everyone has doubtlessly spent wondering about it:

Neustadt an der Weinstrasse ("Noy-shtot on dehr Vine-shtrah-seh") literally means, "New Town on the Wine Road." Which is kinda funny, since Neustadt was officially founded in the early 1200's; but I suppose at the time, it was newer than the surrounding villages. :) The entire region around here is referred to as the Pfalz ("pfahlts" -- yep, you actually say the p before the f!), and, when not laid with vineyards, is thickly covered by nationally-protected forest. Hence the name of the state, "Rheinland-Pfalz": located in the middle of far-western Germany, up against the French border, this state encompasses both the Pfalz and a lot of the Rhein river valley. Historically speaking, it's been a much-fought-over area: Louis the XIV once set fire to the entire Pfalz to keep Bavaria from getting her hands on it. Only one town was spared: Neustadt. Everything else had to be rebuilt. So perhaps the city deserves its name, after all...

Neustadt is often referred to as the capital of German winecountry. It sits in the middle of a cluster of other cute, wine-oriented towns that also have their own festivals; but, being the biggest, Neustadt is the hub around which most activity rotates. The town is self-consciously aware of its own beauty: the five-hundred-year-old Fachwerk (wood beam facade work) is carefully preserved and painted, and the narrow, cobblestone streets are not only sparkling clean, but overarched with fluffy grapevines, twinkling lights, and, downtown, streamers of German and French flags. The historic German Wine Road (the Weinstrasse -- "vine-shtra-seh") runs right through the middle of Neustadt, and is lined with little shops and restaurants that serve their own wine, made from grapes grown right in the fields which lie mere meters away.

It's absolutely enchanting. Wanna come visit? :)

Italy and onion pie

Howdy out there! Just wanted to let y'all know that there might not be much new here until next week, when Anna and I get back from... dun da daaaaa... ITALY! Yeah! We found ueber-cheap tickets to Florence from Baden-Baden, so we thought we'd spend a couple of days exploring museums and lying on the beach. Sigh... it's terrible, trying to find ways to fill your time during a Fall Break. But I guess we'll manage!

(Gosh, what I am going to do when I actually have to start working again??)

We don't actually leave until Sunday afternoon, but tomorrow (Friday) Ivan and Nico are coming up from Munich to check out the Pfalz. The enchantment! The wonders! I'm excited, but I hope they don't mind that it's a real change from big-city Muenchen... well, I'll probably keep so much wine in them that, should they actually have any memory of the trip afterward, then that will be a sure sign of having missed the opportunity to fit in one more glass of ambrosiac, jewel-colored fluid.

Speaking of company, I finally met Conny's cousin yesterday! They're actually second cousins; but his name's Bert, and he lives/works in Ludwigshafen, which is about a 20-minute drive from Neustadt. We'd been meaning to get in touch this whole last month, and what with all this wild-and-craziness, I just never quite found the opportunity. So finally yesterday, we met up at Cafe Bassler in the Innenstadt (the oldest cafe in town, I might add!), from which we promptly drove to a winery in Hambach and sampled what they had to offer. Conny's right, Bert is a super-nice guy. He pretty much went out of his way to show me around some of the other Weindoerfer in the area; which are too far to walk to without making it a major expedition, but I just haven't taken the time to figure out the bus system, yet. So we visited Bad Duerkheim, a cute little town all lit up at night, and tried the Zwiebelkuchen (onion pie -- better than it sounds! downright delicious!) in a restaurant that's built inside an enormous wine barrel. Conny, I meant to take a picture for you; I'll have to do that next time! :)

Okay, gotta get this place cleaned up a bit for Besuch tomorrow. Hope all's well out there in Interwebland! ;)

updated Wohnung pics...

Hey all! Just took some better/cuter/tidier (ahem) pictures of my apartment, including a couple views of the outside. For the supremely interested, the link is on the right... ("Nix Pix"; the album is called "Wohnung")

Sunday, lovely Sundaaayy

Did I mention I feel more or less adopted?

Yesterday, after having been sick for a couple days, I was getting a bit stir-crazy and decided I wanted to go find a walking path or something. So, just as I'd made up my mind to do so, the bell rings: dingadingding! It's Brigitte, in her hiking gear! "We're leaving in 45 minutes," she says. "Are you coming?" Heck yes! I threw on my new hiking boots (ten bucks at a used clothing store in Tucson, yeah!), tossed some apples and a bottle of water in a backpack, ran upstairs, and ended up spending a beautiful bright autumn Sunday wandering through forested hills with the most fun family: Brigitte, of course; her husband, Gert, an Informatiker (systems analyst/software engineer); their son, Andreas, who's 26 and studying Physics at the University of Karlsruhe; and his girlfriend, Nina, who's also 26 and at the Uni Karlsruhe.

We got some great views of the Hambach castle from above and the wide lands beyond, dotted with red-roofed patches where Neustadt and little towns like Speyer and Ludwigshafen lay.

At the top of the hill, our path ended at the Hohe Loog, a little cabinlike restaurant where everyone sits at heavy dark-wood benches and can enjoy a half-liter of Neuer Wein in the sunshine, along with their Bratwurst or Leberknoedel with Sauerkraut.

The entrance is decorated with the "highest grapevine in Germany", elevation-wise:

Outside the Hohe Loog is a great view, with a cool plaque showing the directions and distances to a myriad of different cities in relation to the hilltop:

After we polished off our plates, Gert pulled out a Swiss Army flask and poured raspberry Schnapps all around! Mmm! This of course made for an even merrier hike back down the mountain, after which we all bundled over to Nina's mom's house for coffee, cake, and tea.

The whole day was just as cozy as could be, a perfect Sunday: great company, great conversation, great scenery & atmosphere. And all quite unexpected on my part, too, which made it even more fun! Thank you, Hamanns!!

Slowly realizing there just may not BE another shoe...

I don't know how it is that I lead such a bizarrely charmed life. But honestly, the longer I live, the more I realize that I somehow never fail to fall ass-backwards into luck and happiness. Seriously, I must have done something awesome in a past life.

To start with, Fulbright could have placed me in, I dunno, Mannheim or something. Nothing against Mannheim; but as beautiful as Germany is, the boringer cities are definitely out there: cement-covered, industry-oriented... or I could have found myself in, say, some small coal mining town like that place in "Schultze Gets the Blues". But do I?

Nope! I end up in Neustadt an der frigging Weinstrasse. A place that is not only perfectly situated (France, Austria, Switzerland, and Bavaria, not to mention several major cities and airports, are all within a few hours' travel), but is also 1) in a familiar area (the Pfalz); 2) head-scratchingly, hard-to-believe-it's-real beautiful; 3) the wine capital of Germany, for god's sake!; 4) in the middle of a protected national forest; 5) full of interesting history; and 6) populated with the highest concentration of sweet people I've ever encountered.

And then, as if simply being here weren't enough, I find the perfect living arrangements. I remember thinking, before I left, that I'd maybe like to live with a family -- but on the other hand, would I miss having my own space? Well, impossibly, I managed to end up with both! And as usual, it was just handed to me: a cute little self-sufficient guest apartment in Hambach, which is a village in the hills around Neustadt, covered with vineyards, scenic views, and expensive houses. In fact, the place is only one street over from the Weinstrasse! But it's still close enough to the gorgeously cobblestoned downtown and the school to be able to walk there; and the rent is surprisingly reasonable. Not to mention that the apartment is, thanks to its inestimable landfamily, completely furnished -- right down to the carrot peeler and dish-drying rack!

But of course that couldn't be all of it. The best part is actually said landfamily: the Hamanns. My apartment is a guest suite attached to their house, and they are just wonderful people. Brigitte, my landlady, not only went out of her way to make Shauna and me feel at home from the first day -- popping by to make sure we had enough of everything, taking us around the neighborhood to show us bus stops and grocery stores, etc. -- she's just personally the sweetest lady. On the Thursday that Shauna left, I was feeling terrible; and just when I kinda hit a low point, Brigitte shows up out of the blue, gives me a hug, and takes me upstairs to feed me sherry and chocolates and peppermint tea! And the whole family is like this! They're happy, funny, intelligent, comfortable to be around, and have just kind of taken me in. I really wish I could do something for them, too, but what? They'll just all have to come to Arizona some time and I can try to start to return the favor. :)

So anyway, I guess the word is just "blessed". I am bewilderingly blessed. How? Why? Don't really know. But I think I'm just going to stop questioning it -- or doubting it, or waiting for the other shoe to drop. That attitude just spoils the gift. So instead, I am going to wallow in it; to roll around in my undeserved fortune and laugh like a crazy person and be glad my name somehow ended up on the cosmic "To Be Lavished With Gifts" list.





(...and say to the wide Universe: thank you.)

A walk down the Weinstrasse

Just posted some new pics of the Deutsche Weinstrasse (wine road)! So much Octobery beauty. Check 'em out in the link to the right! :)

coziness...

did I mention I love my Wohnung? It's rainy and cool here... and warm radiator + fresh breeze + cup of homemade mocha + bundly sweater = must get sick more often!

A legal (if germy) resident!

Coooool! I finally picked up my passport and visa from the Auslaenderamt, and hadn't realized that the visa is actually pasted inside the 'port. It looks really sharp -- first of all 'cause it's pretty, all pink and green with a clean white picture, and also, it just looks so cool to not only have a stamp in Ye Olde Passeport, but an actual visa to live in another country! Hee hee. Maybe I just romanticize the "Ferne." Eichendorff and I might have got on swimmingly!

(btw, the numbers and stuff have been scribbled out, thanks to image editing. :) Back, identity thieves!)



So, things is goin' swimmingly around here. Er, actually, well... hm. Found out on Monday that the school thought I had agreed to sub for both of the weeks Herr Bachmann is gone, ew. But, looking back, I should have explicitly said, "this week, but not next week," so I was kinda at Schuld for that. Plus I don't have a set schedule yet, and we had a day off on Tuesday, and it's the last week before the fall break anyway, so there was no reason not to do it. So I just sighed and went, "okay."

However, I couldn't do it Monday because, thinking I'd be open that week, I'd already arranged to visit two other classes. Tuesday was a day off, so I told them I'd happily sub from Wednesday to Friday (but put my foot down at babysitting that obnoxious 9b class again! Blaugh!). After all, I am new around there, and wanted to make a good impression. I wanted to show that I can step in when they need me. So I subbed yesterday. The 6th graders were being rambunctious, so at some point I actually had to give them a little scolding: "I am not an official substitute teacher, you know; I am only here out of choice. If you guys keep acting that way, I won't want to come back and you'll just have a regular teacher next time." (But of course I fully intended to come back.)

Well... all this leads up to the fact that, last night, I actually did come down with a sudden bug or something! Gaah! My body is definitely not being a good sport about the lack of sleep and proper nutrition, and the travel and stress. Jeez! Bodies! But anyway, had a bit of a fever last night... I tried to sleep on it and see if it would go away, but nope. I had to call the office this morning and sheepishly tell them that I couldn't come in today. Well, this is just great! I mean, no one's going to believe me. Here's the new assistant, who nobody really knows that well, who didn't want to substitute teach in the first place, who even wagged a finger at one class and said, "I might not come back tomorrow" -- not to mention that it's the second-to-last day before a two-week Fall Break! -- and now she's calling in "sick." Suuuuuure. They're all just going to think I'm a malingerer! Fantastic, just the impression I wanted to give to my new school. Well, it can't be helped. I guess I could have just taken a bus in and shown that I really was sick; but I'm already feeling better this afternoon, so maybe I'll totter in tomorrow just to try to be a good sport.

Munich and Oktoberfest

3. Oktober

Hey all! Well, wouldn't you know it.... ready? here it comes.... today is actually the first day in over a month where.... (gasp!) I have NO PLANS!

Huzzah!!! (crowds swing handkerchiefs and throw hats)

Don't get me wrong, this last month has been amazing. But oh my goodness, it has also been, just... exhausting! Every day there was some reason to set the alarm clock, even on weekends. I was beginning to find myself running on fumes... I posted pictures from Anna's and my weekend in München yesterday, and boy, looking at those pics, I was really starting to get a bit haggard! But today is the nationally observed Wiedervereinigung (German Re-Unification), and so there's no school. And since it's the middle of the week, there is no traveling on the docket; and consequently, here it is one in the afternoon, and the only thing I've accomplished is to get up late, make tea, IM with Michael, go back to bed, wake up again at 12.30, and make some chicken soup and then more tea as I listen to the first rainy day of the season outside. Oh! And the second time I woke up, I woke up to the sound of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” flowing down from the Hamanns upstairs – Brigitte was watching a reunification celebration/address on TV, and so I got the pleasure of starting the day with the most beautiful music ever written. Ahhhhh! Take that, dark circles! (Not that I don't have *tons* that I should be doing today, but I can just do 'em all on my own schedule. :) )

But wow, what a weekend! Last Friday, Anna came up to Neustadt and we took a night-tour of the town in all its beautiful lantern-lit glory. Every day I'm here I fall more and more in love with this place! The tour was led by a very enthusiastic, dramatic guide in period clothing, and he took us around to all the major historical points of interest in the lovely Innenstadt. Some of the houses around here are 700 years old! He showed us buildings, notches in walls and engravings in arches, and even a couple of murals which I'd never noticed (or just never thought about) as I'd walked by, and told us the fascinating stories of their origins, and all about daily life of hundreds of years ago and major historical events that are now imprinted in the city all around us. Every corner and stone in this town is just singing with history! We walked down these narrow cobblestone streets, glowing golden and dim in the light of old-fashioned lanterns, closely flanked by asymmetrical Fachwerk buildings with light peeping from behind their shutters, all absolutely covered in bushy grapevines, while the dark sky above was twinkling with stars... and I had to just stop and touch a wall to make sure everything was real. I must have been wandering around with my mouth hanging open. It was... unbelievable. I can't believe my luck at having landed in such a magical place.

So anyway! That was over at about 9 pm, and on the way home, Anna and I passed through the Weinlesefest, the first night of a two-week-long Winecountry carnival held in the plaza outside of the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). It's fun, but not as neat as the preliminary celebrations we went to when Steve and Shauna were here. This is a bit more carnival-like, and so it looks pretty from afar but is just a bunch of bright lights and crowds up close. However, we did think it would be cool to stick around for the crowning of the Pfälzische Weinkönigin (Wine-Queen of the Pfalz); but what with having to get up at six the next morning, and having been running off an average of 5 hours of sleep per night for the entire previous week, we decided just to head home. It was a good thing, too, 'cause by the time we were actually asleep it was well past 11!

We got up, as planned, at six the next morning, and caught our train to München right on time. ICE's are so fast and comfy! We got there in about 3.5 hours! (And I should mention that we happened to sit across from Adonis on the train. He was an engineering student at the Universität Karlsruhe, and reading a biography of Einstein while he traveled home to the Bodensee. I didn't know Adonis was from the Bodensee!)

The Munich train station was packed! It was the last weekend of Oktoberfest, and so everyone was coming in and no one was leaving. A couple buddies of mine from Arizona are both doing an exchange year in Munich, and so it was one of them – Nico Cuevas – who picked us up at the Hauptbahnhof. He was such a great host! Nico is awesome; he was actually a former German 101 student who just kind of charmed the whole German department and became sort of our department pet. He's very much the gentleman and also a real riot to hang out with. He had gone to Ikea the day before to buy a floor mattress and some extra sheets, and he slept there while Anna and I yin-yanged on the bed. THANK YOU NICO!!!

But I'm getting ahead of myself – first, we dropped our stuff off at his dorm room (in a lovely part of the city) and then went to the main square, the Marienplatz, to rustle us up some Essen. Just like the train station, the Marienplatz was absolutely stuffed with people. We waited in quite a line to get a Bratwurst, Brezel, and Paulaner Hefeweizen (ahhh!), and then, finding no place to sit, we ate our lunch perched on some dollies lined up outside one of the shops. Did I mention the city was packed?? Later that night, we even saw heaps of drunken Oktoberfest celebrators sleeping on the ground, on sidewalks, in the train station, etc. – and no policeman seemed to bat an eye. The whole city seems pretty tolerant in general of the Oktoberfest crowds.

After lunch, Anna and I were just falling over from sleepiness, so Nico set us up all comfy to take a nap and then went and ran some errands while we snoozed for a good hour and a half. I mean, talk about sweet – here we were, coming all the way into Munich to hang out with him, and then we wanted to just crash in the middle of the day. But he warned us that we'd probably be out all night, and so a nap would be a very good investment. Plus he's a big supporter of the siesta, anyway – after all, the kid is from Hermosillo, Sonora! ;)

After a nap, we all munched on some Nutella and apples (mmm!) and got ready to go out. Nico, being part Italian, had just spent six weeks running around Italy, and so his Italian is terrific. (I should mention, the guys speaks just about four languages! Spanish and English like native; Italian almost fluently; and his German is getting better by the day!) He's also ultra-gregarious, and so of course he ended up getting into a conversation with a couple of young Italians on the train to the beerhall. They exchanged numbers and promised to meet up with us later (they were new in town; just here for the Oktoberfest and were looking for something to do). But first, we met up with Ivan, my other buddy from Arizona, at a tavern outside his dorm, and he introduced us to a heap of other cool exchange students – from France, Sweden, the States, you name it. One guy, Spencer, is working on his BA at the University of Washington in Seattle! Cool! He's also a really neat guy; one of those people you just get a good vibe from. We had invited Nico and Ivan to come visit us in the Rheinland sometime, and it’d be great if Spencer came up, too.

So anyway, the group of us got some fries and Hefeweizen at this tavern, and then went downtown to the Augustiner Bierhalle to meet up with a whole crowd of other students. The Italians joined us, too, and I got to have my first Bayrischer Mass. But you know, Bavarian beer is actually pretty weak – no wonder they can drink it in liters! The best part, though, was just hanging out with really fun people. I forgot how much I liked Nico's and Ivan's company, and it was great to meet so many others from a whole bunch of different countries. Anna and I had a blast. At some point, we all went to go find some dancing at a club in another area of town, and danced until what must have been 4 in the morning. At this point, I was just done for, and was falling asleep on Anna's shoulder on the train on the way home. We were probably in bed by 5 am, and slept like the dead until noon the next day.

After that, greasy and hungover, but game, we set off to see what Oktoberfest was all about. And you know... it was neat, and fun to see it "in the flesh" (so to speak), but it was so extremely crowded that it was kind of off-putting. It was awesome to see tons of people actually wearing the Lederhosen and Dirndl, though – young people, too, not just traditional older folks, the way you only really see "western wear" on the older generation in Tucson. But... eh! We had more fun at the beerhall and club the night before. Adonis on the train was right: Oktoberfest is pretty commercialized. I bet it would have been a lot of fun regardless, but we were there on the very last weekend, and there was no way we were going to get a table. So we just took pictures, checked it off our mental tourbooks, and headed for the Hauptbahnhof and home.

We didn't actually get home until well after 9 pm, though, and since Anna and I always have such a good time hanging out, even exhausted as we were, we still stayed up chatting and posting pictures until well after midnight. Then we had to get up at 5.30 the next morning for her to get back to Landau and teach, and for me to make my (always forgotten!) lesson plans, and so by the time I got home from school on Monday, I was just good for nothing. I tried to do a little housework and other chores, and then just fell into bed early.

So, hey! I guess that's our weekend adventure! There are pictures on picasaweb, all organized and labeled... check 'em out! :) In the meantime, our Herbstferien (fall break) starts this upcoming Saturday and goes until the 22nd, so I'm going to start checking out things to do during that time. Anna will be at a wedding until October 15th, but maybe after that, we'll go to Italy for a couple days! You can get really cheap plane tickets on Ryan Air -- something like 20 Euros apiece, round trip. But the expensive thing will be four or five nights in a hostel, so we're going to try to keep it short. (Short -- unlike this post!) Maybe I’ll visit Matt Johnson in Cambridge before that – I should give him a call!

Okay, enough rambling. Hope Oktober is treating everyone right, out there!

Slowly settling in

Thursday, 21. September

Hark, ye! For I bear great tidings!

Behold --

WE HAVE INTERNET AT HOME!

Yea verily, after nearly three weeks of disconnect, of loathesome internet cafes and unstable connections... we finally have cable!!! Huzzah! The guy was here for nearly three hours setting it up, but now everything is cleaned up and put away and I'm sitting here with my new laptop typing away with my new cable connection in my new apartment, and ohboyohboyohboy. Now we can finally set up a blog! I can send email whenever! We can webcam!!! *jumps up and down*

...And now Shauna just brought in the most delicious grilled ham-and-cheese-on-rye EVER, and so all is right in the world again. Ahhh... Ze life, she ees good.

Seriously, things are just terrific around here. The teaching is going fantastic -- one of the teachers is even gonna be gone next week, so I get to take over all ten of his ninth-grade lessons! The cool thing about my whole job is, I get to do whatever I want with them. Really, I get the best deal of anybody: since I'm not allowed to give out grades or teach formal stuff (like grammar), the students actually like when I visit. It's so easy: no grading, no frustrating grammar lessons or homework; just sail in like the English Class Savior and do fun stuff with them.

Yesterday for instance, I visited an eighth-grade class and gave them the text to a song ("Amarillo by Morning", have you heard of it?), which we read and discussed. It's your very typical country song -- one of the lines even goes, "I lost my saddle in Houston/Broke my leg in Santa Fe/Lost my wife and a girlfriend/Somewhere along the way." Ha ha! So country! But they were entralled, and I asked focus questions that required them to guess a little at the speaker and his situation. And they were so into it! A lot of them had some pretty profound ideas, too. Funnily enough, I kinda got the feeling that they're not asked very often to speculate or to give their own opinions; yet they really seemed to enjoy doing so, and took the task quite seriously. Then I played the song for them, and they really enjoyed it, commenting on how lonely the fiddle sounds and how different the singer's accent is from the British English they learn in school. After that, I passed out the text for this really current hip-hop song, "S.O.S.", and the students practically jumped out of their chairs with excitement when they saw which song it was. I taught them the phrase "to have a crush on someone", and teased some of the boys while we guessed at why the speaker is "going crazy." The whole time, they found every little thing funny and were all eagerly waving their hands in the air to be called on. I mean, imagine that! Can you possibly think of a more ideal teaching experience? The bell rang just as the song ended, and the kids all clustered around me and went, "Kommen Sie wieder?" "Wann?" "Was machen wir nächstes Mal?" and even asked if I could come chaperone their next field trip. Their regular teacher sat in the back and observed the whole time, and she told me afterward that, when the bell rang, a couple of the students even turned around and asked her, "Do we have to go on break?" Wha...? Whoa! Gosh, I hope everything goes this well in the future!

So, now I just got back from a grocery run with my super-nice landlady, Brigitte. My host teacher's name is also Brigitte, aka "Frau Griesemer." They're both terribly sweet – Brigitte Griesemer stops by on a occasion just to see how we're doing, to see if we need anything, etc. Last time she came by, she brought us a bottle of the Rhein wine that we had so enjoyed that first afternoon at her place, and then, upon hearing that the washer in my apartment is broken and can't get fixed until sometime next week, she gallantly scooped up a bunch of laundry and took it home with her! Whoa! And my landlady is awesome; she is funny and talkative, and has brought us extra towels, more dishes & silverware, and once even an extra set of bedclothes & cushions for when Steve came by for a visit. She also regularly piles me into the car so that we can go to Globus, this huge grocery store/Target-like place, where we can get household stuff and heavier items that we don't want to have to carry home from the nearer, smaller grocery store in the neighborhood. How can I repay these two?? I would like to bake them some American goodies or something -- rice krispies treats, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, apple pie, something like that -- but I haven't a clue how to cook with kilograms and milliliters instead of cups and teaspoons. Not to mention I don't have a kitchen scale. Well, I'll think of something... maybe we can do Thanksgiving! I'll learn to cook, and make them dinner! I dunno. Something.

But have I described my apartment yet? It's great! It's more like a guest suite with its own entrance, attached at garden-level to the back of Landlady Brigitte's house. The house is on a hill, so while the apartment's bathroom window is just a window-well, the bedroom has two large windows that look out over the garden and down over the tops of red-roofed houses. The kitchen window is somewhere in between, opening exactly level with the stairs that lead down from the front yard to the door. (So if you're in the kitchen and someone comes to visit, you see their feet first!) And since I started at the school last week, Shauna's been my Hausfrau; I get home around one, and she's got the floors vacuumed, dishes done, laundry hanging out to dry, and lunch cooking on the stove! Ha ha, how am I going to learn to live by myself again? :)

Well, it's a gorgeous afternoon, so we might go for a walk before loading pics and stuff and starting up this blog! Yay! Can't wait to show you guys!

Hope everything is going swimmingly on the other side of the pond. Love you all!

hugs,

(and wallowing in Bier and Bratwurst and Wein),

nik

Weekend Three: Neustadt

Friday, September 15, 2006

Grüße aus dem schönen Neustadt an der Weinstraße! Man, this week has just flown by. We arrived on Sunday, and my host teacher, Frau Griesemer, picked us up from the train station, took us to lunch, and afterward, took us on a little walking tour of the city. Whoa! This place is GORGEOUS! Its Innenstadt (city center) is entirely cobblestoned, and many of the houses/buildings are constructed out of original 16^th-century Fachwerk. It doesn’t look real… I keep expecting everything to be made out of gingerbread or something! Shauna and I have spent this last week pretty much just running around from office to office and battling beaurocracy in order to try to get me settled in and squared away, and it’s been like playing whack-a-mole!

But something we discovered in all this running around from office to office, is not only that we can actually handle all this official business in German (!!), but the people here are all just impossibly nice & helpful. Seriously, it's like they trip over themselves to be friendly and to work with me. For example, I had to leave my passport at the Ausländeramt (Foreign Resident Office) yesterday morning, and can go pick it up again along with my finished visa no earlier than next Wednesday; but then after that I discovered that I still needed it as ID to open a bank account! Oops! I asked if I could bring in a photocopy, but the lady at the bank said that it had to be the original -- of which she would then make a photocopy herself. Just as I began to despair, she suggested that we could just call the Foreign resident office and see if they could fax over a copy of my passport. Then she went out of her way to find the number, call them, figure out who I'd been speaking to while I was there, and then put me on the phone with him to verify that it was indeed me who was requesting it. The guy on the other end laughed, said he totally understood, and had a fax of my passport over in less than two minutes. And everyone is like this! And not only helpful, but also smiley and jokey the whole time, too; oftentimes, they're also not only patient with my limited vocabulary, they offer linguistic assistance, explaining things a number of times in various simple ways so that they can be sure I understand.

I think I'm gonna like it here. :)

Today, I had my first "real" day of school (since before, it was all following Frau Griesemer around and filling out paperwork). I visited Frau Griesemer's 5th grade English class in the morning, and when she introduced me as being from America, they all looked at each other and went, "Whoa! Coooool!" Hee hee, cute! I didn't realize the younger ones would be so easy to please. They were adorable. The extent of their English was limited to three questions: What is your name? Where are you from? and How are you? Then they got to ask me questions in German about myself and America, so that they could satisfy their curiosity instead of just practicing their English. They were so cute, and later when I saw them in the hall they'd wave enthusiastically and yell across the hall, "Hello, Nikki!!"

Then I spent an hour in the Teachers' Room, getting to know other teachers and planning the next lesson with an eleventh-grade English teacher. And wouldn't you know it, just like everybody else in this city, the faculty is so nice! And a lot of them are young; my age, in fact. One asked me if I liked to play badminton, since they place every Tuesday night. Yay! I'll have to be careful of my shoulder, but I definitely want to make friends, and love badminton! :)

For Imke's 11th graders, I discussed an article with them that they had read on American foreign policy. It went really well! Their English is good enough to hold a (somewhat simplified) political discussion. They were very engaged, and asked lots of questions.

I can’t wait to start planning actual lessons!

Weekend Two: Heidelberg

Saturday, September 9, 2006

Hi guys!! Oh man, I just had the loveliest of breakfasts -- a full, tableclothed buffet, set with all sorts of fresh fruit & berries, cereal, six kinds of rolls, cheese, yogurt, lox, coffee, a dozen different kinds of tea, eggs (soft-boiled or scrambled), four different types of toast, four different juices, and on and on... all gorgeously served up with silver and porcelain in a bright, cheery room. Jetzt fühle ich mich wieder fit! :)

Well, actually, not so fit. This danged body just doesn't seem to be a very good sport about my constantly pushing it with stress, travel, lack of sleep, time-zone changes, haphazard nutrition... it went from having a bladder infection to giving me a cold! A bad one! But luckily both Shauna and I thought to bring DayQuil and NyQuil, so I've been drugged up for the last day and a half. Wheeee!

Okay! So! What's been up with us? Glad you asked! :) It sounds like Shauna had a great time in Leipzig with Steve. She slept in, joined him for lunch, and then went back to work with him in the afternoons as a "computational linguistic consultant" for his project at the Max Planck Insitut! Cool! Then, in the evenings, sounds like they explored the city and ate some Leberwurst in a Biergarten and visited some of the sites that I got to see last summer, like the creeeepy Völkerschlachtdenkmal (ooooooh). I should probably let her tell you guys about it. :) As for me, backing up a little bit: on Monday, Shauna zoomed off to Leipzig in her comfy little ICE, and I joined the conspicuous throng of young people standing around with a year's worth of baggage blocking up the main entrance of the Kölner Hauptbahnhof. The whole group were just cool Leute -- funny and dorky and just as nervous as everyone else. So they loaded us up on busses and took us to the orientation at Haus Altenberg.

The place was LOVELY. Check it out! http://www.haus-altenberg.de It's an expensive hotel, restaurant, convention area, cafes, and of course Pension-like rooms, all centered around a middle-sized14th-century Gothic cathedral. Whoa!! The rooms we stayed in were the Pension, though, not the hotel. ;) I think someone said something like, this was where the monks or something stayed, and now the building has been fixed up into something like a hostel. It was a room, and the sheets were provided, but it was overall pretty, er, unfancy. But heck! Looking out your window at a 14th-century cathedral across the courtyard precludes the need for a soft mattress!

The orientation itself was... eh. I think the whole thing could have been accomplished in a day, maybe two. They emphasized the general teaching simulations a little too heavily (an opinion shared even by those with no teaching experience), but didn't dwell enough on our specific situation -- "is there a dress code in German schools?" "You'll have to find out from your school." "What grade levels will we be teaching?" "You'll have to find out from your school." "What can we expect from our host-teachers?" "You'll have to find out from your school." "Are there certain cardinal rules in the German school system that we really should know -- like how, in America, teachers must avoid all physical contact with the students?" "You'll have to find out from your school." Then they gave us an unorganized, vague list of public offices to visit in order to obtain a visa, to register our local addresses (you have to do that in Germany), to open a bank account, etc. I know! How about we forget the useless "teaching simulations" and instead let us go to our towns while these offices are still open, and get to our schools, where we can "find out" things from them? Instead, we were dropped back off at the Kölner Hauptbahnhof on Friday morning; which means that, for anyone teaching in a city that is a few hours away by train, they'll get there just in time for all public offices to close for the weekend. Overall, I am not particularly impressed with this program's organization. I love that I'm here, and I did glean a thing or two of useful information, but every valuable tidbit is packaged in a whole bunch of cloudy, repetitive, vague, beaurocratic bulk. And I'm not just being picky, here -- I realize that conferences, in their attempt to reach a widely various audience, are often unsatisfying or imperfect. But I'm talking about an organization that sends a letter urging us to "book our plane tickets by May 30th!", and the letter is postmarked June 6th. Or, which sends an official letter (including contract) to one Teaching Assistant, telling her that her assignment is to a school in Mainz, and for months all her documents list her assignment as in Mainz; and then, at the orientation, oops!, sorry, wrong school, we meant another school of the same name in a different town. When the girl's jaw dropped, they told her she should have discovered their mistake herself! And then, when they give her the new assignment, they ask, "Oh, and could you please give us the address of your new school when you get in contact with them?" Huh?? Wow, I'm glad I don't have to do a whole lot of direct dealings with the Pädagogischer Austauschdienst. I'm looking forward to getting to my school and getting all my real questions answered! ;)

Okay, so, anyway, that was the orientation... Friday morning, I hung out at the Bahnhof after getting dropped off, and met up with Shauna as she cruised in from her Leipzig expedition. We then wrassled our GINORMOUS, fifty-pound-apiece bags onto this tiny little Regionalzug bound for Heidelberg... which would take three hours, because it stopped in every tiny little Dorf along the way. But the ride turned out to be beautiful!! The train essentially just followed the Rhein river, and Shauna and I were glued to the window, watching sparkling water, adorable little towns, castles, cliffs, and ships cruise by in the bright sunshine. Wow! We arrived in Heidelberg around four, and took a taxi to our hotel in the very center of the Altstadt, maybe a mile from the castle. Yeah!! There turned out to be a little mishap with the booking, though, which left one double bed for three people -- since Steve was coming to join us that night. Hm... not that I mind yin-yanging on a small bed in a pinch, but... Shauna: "Hi babe! Happy birthday! Here's our romantic getaway nest -- and don't worry, my sister doesn't kick, but her cold might make her snore."

But the great thing about German Innenstädte is that all the tall, narrow buildings are crammed together on the cobblestone street. So we just walked out the hotel door; down three steps; took two steps to the right; and walked up the three stairs to the beautiful "Goldene Rose" hotel and booked me a single. I love it! I wanna live here! This is a nice hotel; more like a bed and breakfast. And my little room is gorgeous and bright and cozy, and I can snoot and honk and get up to take more NyQuil without disturbing anyone. In fact, this might be the first alone-time I've gotten in ages.

So anyway, thus I found myself at this gorgeous breakfast spread, my be-colded nose buried in a cup of peppermint tea, with soft classical music and bright sunshine. Gosh! Even when things go wrong with us, they still go right. I love Germany!! And today is Steve's birthday, so we're gonna go see the castle and get some lunch and celebrate!

Later that day:

Oh man, I am beat. Today was perfect, though. Perfect weather, perfect company, perfectly breathtaking German city and Schloss and Brücken, everything. Steve and Shauna and I went tramping around just looking for fun stuff to do and see. And eat! We started out down the picturesque Hauptstraße in the beautiful sunshine, bought cappuccinos and then ice cream, moseyed on down to where the street meets the path that goes up to the castle, and explored the dickens out of that thing for the rest of the afternoon. Ran around the battlements, took pictures, sat on walls and fountains, took a nap in the grass, bought a Wurst and Apfelstrudel, poked around the gardens, headed back down... at which point, we promptly found an Eiscafe and enjoyed Spaghetti Eis in the shadow of this huge church that had an organ/choir concert going on inside! Then we crossed the bridge, took a walk down the river, and came back for Jaegerschnitzel, Rösti, Paulaner, chicken soup for me ;) , and this amazing dessert called, uh, Kaisersarmen or something. Then we walked back up to the castle at night, and gazed at the city lights below until we were just too tired to stay out anymore. It was a marvelous day. And now to bed!

The beginning: Köln

Well, so I think I might just catch this here blog up by posting all the emails I sent over this last month, documenting our adventures. Looking back, some of them are extremely long and excruciatingly detailed; and though I know a lot of this probably won't be interesting to anyone but me and Shauna, I still didn't have the heart to cut anything out, since I may just look back at it all in five years and be glad of all the little details. So... I did promise it would be droning! Here's to excruciating detail! :D

Monday, September 4, 2006

Hey everybody!!! Grüsse aus dem schönen Köln! Shauna got wireless up & working in our room (she's a magician! Or a thief: we're stealing it from the fancy hotel across the street), and so I am taking Fritz on his maiden voyage. This is awesome, to just plug in our little five-pound computer and be able to sit at the tiny desk next to an open window, listen to the rustling leaves outside, and connect to the outside world. Thank you for fixing him, Michael!

Oh, but this hostel is really cute. I'm used to hostel stays consisting of not much more than a saggy army cot in a room filled with snoring strangers, in a sparse, old building with surly desk clerks and one working toilet. But this one is a small, brick structure on the outside, and the lobby is cozy with a low wood-beamed ceiling and bright breakfast nook; and the rooms are highly reminiscent of a comfy dorm room. Shauna and I got a private room with two twin beds and even its own sink & mirror! We have a view of the Rhine right out our window, with bicyclists and joggers along the promenade, as well as any number of little outdoor cafes and restaurants with umbrellas outside promising -- oh boy! -- Paulaner. 5 Euro buys breakfast, with cereal, yogurt, coffee & juice, cold cuts & cheese, and, of course, Brötchen with Nutella. :)

Ooh, so, we've been here just two days, and already we've had lots of adventures! We sat next to the strangest young man on the plane, who unwittingly provided hours of entertainment, while I certainly amused the other passengers by having to get up and pee literally every 20 minutes. Plus I was really thirsty all the time. And had these strange pains in my abdomen. So, excited to see the city, we thought the best way to do so would be to get a bladder infection and take the scenic way to a hospital! (Jeez, Shauna & Amy both have kidney infections in Hawaii, I get a bladder infection as soon as I step off the plane to Germany -- it's the sisterhood of the traveling UTI!) But the whole thing actually wasn't bad at all: we were giddily tired, and so feeling quite intrepid; and Köln is not only gorgeous and easy to navigate, it's filled to the brim with the nicest people! Seriously, every single person we've met has been friendly, jokey, and extremely helpful. We just kinda followed the signs with red crosses on them, walked in some door and said, "uh, ich denke, ich brauche einen Urologen," and within fifteen minutes I was merrily offering a cup of pee to the young male nurse. ("Prost!" I said as I handed it to him. "Gross!!" yelled Shauna from the waiting area. Ha ha!) But man, when they say "German efficiency," they mean it! I was so impressed with the clinic -- everything was clearly marked and accessible, clean and modern, and I wasn't kept waiting at all; the staff was concerned, thorough, and yet had an easygoing manner that made me immediately comfortable. We were in and out of there, antibiotic in hand, in an hour and a half!

But anyway, so later, we set about getting settled in and finding some food and keeping ourselves awake until bedtime. Yesterday (Sunday, September 3) was super-spiffy. Köln is just wonderful. We walked out the door with a camera, umbrellas, and zero plan, and found ourselves at the top of the Dom, greeted by a spectacular view. We hadn't been at the top long before the deafening ringing of humongous bells drifted up from below. It was incredible! We heard them start, and bolted for the staircase to see if we could find them. With every step lower, the sound got louder and more sonorous, and pretty soon the very stones of the narrow passage were ringing with the deeper tones, while the higher, brassier ones pinged off the walls around us. We emerged into the bellfry, where these huuuuge things were swinging mightily and we had to yell in each other's ears to be heard over the melodious din. And then when we got back down below, there was a service going on, and our punished ears got to enjoy echoing organ music and a choir in the lofty, stained-glass-adorned nave. I love cathedrals!!!

We also visited the Schokoladenmuseum and got to watch chocolate being made (with samples aplenty, of course!), after which everybody was set loose in the place's devilish chocolate shop. I mean, this place was evil! There were shelves and shelves filled with anything from jars of fudge sauce intriguingly labeled "Körperschokolade" (“body chocolate -- replete with paintbrush!); to bars of dark chocolate flavored with cinnamon, mango, and chili powder; to Asbach brandy-filled truffles. We did end up buying a couple of things... ;o)

The day was wrapped up with Shauna coming to the rescue with the hostel's computer. It was cool! She's like the technology expert in those heist movies, who jumps in and is all smart and wizardly while a group of anxious onlookers stands around, watching her flying fingers. The computer is downstairs in the bar, and so there was this dim, goldish lighting, and she was spouting off all this technical terminology while the owners wrung their hands and made appreciative noises. The young bartender was watching her the whole time, and afterward he called her over and gave her a free rum and coke (with waaay too much rum!) and seemed really interested in starting up a conversation. But Shauna, oblivious as ever, pounded down the drink in four impressive gulps, thanked him, and tottered off to our room. I was so proud! She was awesome!

But you do meet some cool people, staying in a hostel. We learned some French from a Moroccan and a Parisien at breakfast, and last night a guy came by and knocked on our door 'cause he was rounding up people to go to a club. We were way too jetlagged to go, but what a neat little culture! Just young people hanging out and looking for a good time.

Okay, this email is getting pretty mammoth. But there's just been so much happening this weekend! I'm so excited to be here -- and Shauna and I are not only having a blast, she also pointed out that Germany just doesn't feel like a "foreign country." We had both rather expected it to, but we have to keep reminding ourselves that it is one; we both just feel so at home. In fact, the language barrier (which should have been the biggest hurdle) is turning out to be hardly anything at all. We've even had no less than three people act surprised that we're not German! Cool! I guess it is rather reassuring to realize that you can comfortably discuss medical stuff with a doctor, and have no problems understanding or being understood. Whew!

Well, I've gotta get in the shower and get our stuff packed for checking out. We'll set up pictures soon here -- we've taken a ton! Hope everybody's been having a great weekend back in the States, and we can't wait to see you -- either at Christmas, or right here in Deutschland! :o)

ich blogge, du bloggst, er/sie/es bloggt...

Well hey there, wide wide world of web! Friends, family, random folks who might have googled "Weinstrasse" and come up with the boring ramblings of an assistant English teacher... willkommen. :)

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this thing a-goin'. I wonder if some of this German beaurocracy is rubbing off, and so it will now take me sixteen times as long to accomplish anything here as it would have in the States. Seriously, I've been here for a month now, and am still getting the basic settling-in stuff squared away: "Go to this office, so you can be re-directed to that office, which is only open from 2-3.30 on Wednesdays, to get a form that you will take to a different office to get a stamp, and in 3-7 business days they will send you an application for access to the online form..." I am not kidding!! It's been quite an exercise in organization and keeping on top of things -- to the point where I was on the phone with Anna the other day, and informed her that I would pick her up at the Bahnhof at "two-twenty-four pm." Ha ha! What's next, will I be counting the granules of sugar to put in my coffee? (But only between six and ten a.m. on Thursdays.)

All right, but, back to blogginess! I figure, I send enough long droning emails, why not just post them online for all to enjoy? Cure the insomnia of the world! Let the blogging begin!