Aachen, City of Bizarre Animal Statues.

I went to Aachen for the first time today. My first impression was that Aachen sucked. I was planning on taking a picture of the first thing I saw in Aachen, but the train station was in a not-so-beautiful, kind of dismal part of the city, so I was too disheartened to bother. I also had no idea where I was going. I had planned to go straight to the lab, but it was around lunch and I didn't actually have an appointment, so I didn't bother trying to figure it out at first. Fortunately, the rest of Aachen did not support my first impressions of the city.

I began wandering around the city and eventually found my way to Charlemagnes cathedral and the surrounding Marktplatz. On my way, I saw this bizarre horse statue.

Keine Ahnung (no idea)

Soon after, I saw this cow statue and it was at that point that Aachen became the city of weird animal statues. This statue was in front of a Bio butcher. (Bio=organic and is pronounced Bee-o, not bye-o). I don't like it when animals advertise the eating of themselves.

Suicide cow

I stopped inside the Dom for a brief visit. Pretty breathtaking. To take pictures inside, you have to pay 2 Euro for a little wristband. Also, many of the prettier parts are only accessible to tour groups. It's definitely an investment worth making, but I may wait for the first person to visit me before I do. Who wants to hang out in a cathedral?

I am being kept busy here with horse riding, swimming, excursions, and visits to/from parents and friends. I'm getting to practice a lot of German and meet lots of different types of Germans, but trying to speak German all the time is making me wicked tired.

Tschüss Marburg, Hallo...Geilenkirchen?

My days in Marburg are finally over. My last few days were spent frantically packing, enjoying the company of my fellow Fulbrighters and scientifically testing the properties of different types of German beer. One of the highlights of my last weekend in Marburg was finding a German translation of Bruice's Organic Chemistry. At the same bookstore, Miya and I were sketchily given buttons with Goethe, Schiller, and Brecht on them. Wunderbar!



Friday, my last day in Marburg consisted of me waking up early and making sure my room was thoroughly cleaned only to have the housekeeper come in and very Germanically say "Gar nicht geputzt! Gar nicht geputzt!" (Not cleaned at all! Not even an attempt!) Then I received one last screw you from the hill that plagued us all during our time in Marburg. While dragging/being dragged by my heavy luggage, the handle on my big bag broke while the smaller one had a mind of its own, almost taking out a blind man.

After buying my BahnCard50 and ticket, I went to a cafe for one last meal with the Marburg crew. Very sad. Then my odyssey began. Marburg to Giessen to Cologne to Rheydt to Geilenkirchen. By myself. With two heavy suitcases to get on and off of trains. I was somehow mostly successful. No trains were missed, no luggage lost or stolen. I was greeted at the train station by my host "mother" and taken to the land of sheep, chickens, cats and bunnies. ("Mother" because she is too young to be my mother)

I've been here since Friday. Not speaking English. Hanging out with animals. My host family is great. Claudia is a really good cook and I've been enjoying some "typisch Deutsch" meals. Roger's mother and her boyfriend came to visit, so I got to practice my German on some more people. Yesterday, I got to ride Ronja, one of the horses.

Pferdereiten macht Spass! Horseriding is fun!

Tschuess!

Herkules

Sorry to leave you all hanging on that last one. This post will likely be less epic than originally planned (fortunately for you, dear readers).
The Herkules monument is the center of Wilhelm IX's Schlosspark. Our entire day...no, our entire lives led up to this point.

Germans sit with their lovers at the feet of giant monuments
on Saturday afternoons. That is the life.

Normally, water cascades the whole way down--about 250 meters. Due to it being fall or the construction, the water was unfortunately turned off. Luckily, we weren't there for the water. As we began our ascent we were enthralled by the view of Kassel. However, everytime we reached a new level, the view was even more amazing.
Zum Beispiel:



The steps just kept going. Even the Germans were a little out of breath, so you know it had to be hard. We kept ourselves motivated by singing "I Can Go the Distance" from Hercules. And by we, I mean Katie, Matty, and Halley. Due to Mama Davis' Verbot on Disney movies, I had no idea what they were talking about.

At the top, the view was even more amazing:


We were greeted not only by a spectacular view, but also by Herkules himself.



This post was indeed not as epic as planned, but I must move on and document the rest of my German adventures.

Ein Schönes--nee, ein Magisches Wochenende

Yesterday I, along with fellow Fulbrighters Halley, Katie and Matt, embarked on a journey of epic proportions. We decided to purchase the Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket (Great Weekend Ticket), an offer so magical that we still don't believe it. The Schönes-Wochenende Ticket allows up to five people to travel anywhere in Germany for an entire day, for only 37 €. Our final destination was Göttingen, a quaint university town about 2 hours northwest of Marburg. Little did we know that far better things awaited us than a trip to Göttingen.

We managed to board our train, which left 10:21, an extremely early hour for a Marburg Sprachkurs Fulbrighter on a Saturday morning, and our journey was underway. But not for long. A mysterious problem with the doors caused the train to make several stops, two of which lasted about 30 minutes. At the second stop, in Treysa, we realized that we were not alone on this magical journey. In fact, we were accompanied by German youth headed to some sort of anime event.

After taking some pictures of the potentially troubled youth, we reboarded in hopes of eventually reaching Kassel. We reached Kassel at the time we were supposed to have reached Gottingen and decided to stay in Kassel for the day. I mean, all the anime kids were in Kassel, so it had to have been good enough for us as well. And oh was it ever!

Accompanied by Let's Go! Germany and some literature from the tourist office, we made our way to the Schlosspark Wilhelmshöhe, which contained not only a Schloss (palace), but also a "pseudomittelaltlicher" castle, fake Roman ruins, and a giant statue of Herkules. We ate a tasty lunch in the Schloss-Cafe, where we saw yet another group of anime kids, including a girl dressed in only white underwear and white boots. Our waitress even took a picture with her cell phone.

(This is how Germans do cafes.)

Then we made our way over to the palace. The palace and other grounds were built by Wilhelm IX, Elector of Hesse-Kassel in the 18th century. Apparently he had some money to blow.


The palace and surrounding gardens were beautiful and filled with couples and families sitting on benches enjoying a snack or strolling around. In my next life, I hope to come back as a European so that I can take my dog for a weekend walk to the local palace. It was a perfect early fall day for a stroll.

Wilhelm was apparently really into water--the park is dotted with various ponds, waterfalls, and fountains. Our next destination was an aquaduct, built in the 18th century to look like the ruins of a Roman aquaduct.

The aquaduct was followed by the Teufelsbrücke or Devil's Bridge:

The magic was only about to begin. Our next destination was the Herkules monument. A statue so giant, so monumentous that it will get it's own blog entry...

Verschiedenheiten

or my observations on differences between Germany and the US.

1. Die Partei der Bibeltreuer Christen (The Party of the Bible-abiding Christians):
A political party whose platform is nearly the same as the American Republican party. In America, the Republicans get ca. 50% of the vote. Here, the PBC gets around 2%, not enough to clear the 5% hurdle and actually hold office.

2. Germans in general are more Umweltbewusst (environmentally conscious) than Americans. One place this shows up is in the incredibly complicated trash sorting system. I haven't figured it out yet, but there are different colored bags for organic waste, glass, paper, etc. The kitchen in my dorm apparently doesn't use the system. German grocery stores (Supermarkt) don't provide grocery bags--you either have to bring your own or buy a plastic or paper one there.

3. Speaking of the Supermarkt, there are a few other differences. You have to pack your own bags. Trying to shove all your Lebensmittel (literally life means/funds) into your bag and pay before the next customer's stuff comes piling on top of yours can be stressful. German cashiers are naturally very efficient as a result of their being German and the process moves quickly. Trying to shove my Euro coins (see number 4) into my wallet and figure out what the cashier is saying when he says "Kassenband?" definitely intimidated me the first few times. Blank looks when the cashier asks if you want the receipt definitely identify me as a foreigner.

4. I often feel as though I'm getting ripped off whenever I get change. There are no 1 or 2 Euro bills here in the Eurozone, so if I pay with a 10 Euro bill for something that costs 6 €, I'll get two coins back instead of 4 nice crisp dollar bills. It always seems like less money to me, although it obviously isn't. My wallet actually broke from the strain of all the coins.

Auflauf, Knights and High School Students

Last Friday my German class went to visit a high school, where we got to participate in an English class. I was sitting at a table of 5 girls and got to field their questions about America. They asked interesting questions about the American dream, if all Americans are religious and eat a lot of fast food. They also asked me if Americans thought Hitler was still alive (apparently there are a few nuts who believe Hitler is still controlling things behind the scenes). We spoke in English half the time and German the other half. It was interesting to see what Germans thought of Americans and they were also interested to see what outsiders thought of Germany and what images Americans had of Germans.

It was also really good to actually speak German, which what I need to work on. My class doesn't give us enough opportunities to actually generate thoughts in German--we just do grammar exercises which are less complicated than the ones I did at Smith. (So thank you, Herr Westerdale, for gifts of Partizip, passiv, indirekte Rede und Unheimlichkeit. I am sorry that I threw out my notes from that class in a fit of rage.) My sentence structure was a little off but the girls understood me and were also really sympathetic to the cause of learning German. (Dativ, Genetiv, der, die, das...pretty schwer)

After receiving one of our cash payouts from Klaas, our fearless leader here in Marburg, we went out for dinner and some drinks. I decided to try one of the local specialities--Auflauf, a noodle casserole. My broccoli and salmon Auflauf was quite delicious.


After dinner, we went to the traditional Marburg student bar. It was a little dungeon like. Okay, actually it was pretty dungeon like. When the bartender brought us our drinks, he wrote the price on our coasters and at the end of the night, we had to bring our coasters up to the bar to cash out. Interesting. Do not damage the coaster in any way, or the Germans will become upset.


On Saturday, I went to the Mittelaltlicher Markt (Middle Ages Market) with several other Fulbrighters. It was amazing to go to a Middle Ages festival that was actually held in the vicinity of a medieval castle. There were performers, like the guy balancing a fire stick on his chin, and some delicious food. I ate something called a Krautfladen, which was sauerkraut and chopped up Speck (bacon-like meat) rolled up in a flatbread. Pretty tasty.


To see more pictures of Marburg and the Mittelaltlicher Markt, check out my facebook album:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2048712&l=193b0&id=5900900
(Facebook membership not required)