A Weekend in Gießen (November 27-29, 2010)

So this week Tyler came to visit and we had a traditional Thanksgiving with all the AYF people. Everyone brought a dish to pass. I made 10 lbs of mashed potatoes --> Never Again. We used all four burners on the stove top trying to get them done on time but in the end it turned out well. Cliona and Anne-Marie came too! It was so cool to share it with them because it was their first Thanksgiving EveR! Then we went out as usual so I wasn't feeling too hot the next day but I spent Friday showing Tyler around Freiburg.

Saturday we traveled to Giessen to visit the Orths. It was such a fun time! So nice to actually spend some time with a family. Felix picked us up from the train station and we drove to Lollar. We had a really good lunch that his mom had made and then that evening we went to Wetzlar. I had been there in 2006 so it was kind of a blast form the past. We sat at the Christmas market for hours drinking Gluhwein and talking. Felix's whole family was there and so was Lena's - his girlfriend - and her whole family. This Christmas market was so much different than the one in Freiburg. It had wood chips on the ground and heaters to stand by. It had much more of a cozy feeling to it. There was people singing Christmas songs and so much food you can't even imagine. here was also a guy there making ornaments form scratch! He had a blow torch that heated up this ball and then stick this straw-like thing into it, blow it like a bubble and WALA! There was a glass ornament. Of course I'm a sucker and had to buy one. :)
After sitting there for a few hours and having steak and wurst sandwiches we left and went back to Lollar to a bar called the "Alabama." This place of course I have heard many stories about so I was excited to go. A few of Felix's friends came and we all had drinks and an amazing feast! It was such good food except that we had been eating all day!! After dinner we got the tour of the whole thing. It had a bar area and a place to shoot pool and play darts. Then there was a back room that Ollie had just added on, it was this huge elaborate dinning room that was all white and had a piano on the stage in the back. So cute! Then off of that room was an area for smokers and another bar with a dinning room. We spent the rest of the night there having a few drinks, smoking the Shisha, chilling and playing pool. It was a blast!

The next day we got up and had a feast of a breakfast like the Germans usually do. Then Teresa had sent some presents for the family so they opened them and i took pictures to show her. Then I was off to have lunch with Fee, my GAPP partner from four years ago. Talk about another blast from the past! She picked me up and we were off to lunch with her mom and Tom (who was five the last time I saw him- we never really talked the last time because I was terrible at German and he was so shy so we played some soccer but that was about it.) NOW! The kid never stoppedtalking!! He was so cute! We had lunch and Fee filled me in on her job. (so crazy) She goes to school part of the week then flits all over Germany planning and organizing huge events for car companies and TV shows like "Germany's Got Talent." It was so nice to catch up with them!

After lunch the Orths picked me up and we were off to Frankfurt to the Christmas Market. The one was HUGE!! I had Apple wine for the first time and I have to admit I like it a lot more than Gluhwen. We bought heart shaped cookies which double as ornaments and are the size of a magazine. Very German I have to say. We spent the rest of the evening there and then traveled the hour back to Lollar where we had dinner.. at a CASTLE! The food was Amazing! I had chicken with this really good salad and of course bread which was always amazing as usual. Im telling you you haven't had bread until you've had German bread.
We left the following morning and I got back and had class as usual. One crazy fun weekend I had so much delicious food and so much Christmas Gluhwein. The Orths were beyond nice and really wined and dined us. I had a blast!!

Weinprobe in der Sonnenbrunnen-Strauße

So past week I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a wine tasting!!! ---> Amazing!!

The Freiburg-Madison Sister City Association set up a wine tasting that was only for people in our program so it was very personal and cozy. We took two trams and a bus to get there, so it was still in Freiburg very far east in a part called Freiburg-Opfingen.
Here's their website: http://www.weingut-sonnenbrunnen.de/
The man on the page is the owner of the vineyard and winery, his name is Jörg Scheel - very German. haha. He has been in business for 20 years but before that he was a kind of therapist so in the house there were tons of pictures on the walls that his patients had painted for him. It was a very rustic old building, it was very picturesque - set up all like fall, the woodwork was very old, and the building was made of stone. When you walked in there was a wood-burning fire. It really made me a bit homesick, we have one just like it in my living room at home.
We sat at two long tables and after a while started the wine tasting. It was so fun! Herr Scheel had 8 different wines to try; 4 different white wines (Freiburger Rivaner, Grauer Burgunder, Rielsing, and a Pino Noir, Blac de Noirs), a Rose (Spätburgunder Rosé), and 3 different red wines (Rotwein0Cuvee "Freiburger Bobbele", Regent Rotwein, and Spätburgunder Rotwein). I really liked the white wines, but I'm not a huge fan of the reds. They really aren't too dry here so it was still really good. During the wine tasting we got to eat bread and listen to him tell all about each wine and how he made it. It was so much fun! He even taught us how to properly taste it by swishing it around in your mouth and making a gurgling noise... apparently you need to do this so you get the real taste of the grapes. I don't know.. I tried.
At the end of the wine tasting we all just sat around in this cozy stone room and talked for a while. Then Herr Scheel brought out loads and loads of Flammkuchen. - it is some what similar to a pizza but it has a very thin crust and instead of tomato sauce it'd made with creme fresh and it had cheese and schinken on it. They just kept bringing them out I swear we must have ate 20 of them. Everyone was stuffed!! At about 9:30 we left, but not before busying tons of bottles of wine. haha.
We all walked back to the bus stop and made our way home. It was an awesome Tuesday night!

Barcelona and Ibiza

So... once again I'm slacking with this....

So I finished my three week intensive learning course and Shelbi and I went off to travel for 8 days.

First stop: Barcelona, Spain.
We took: 3 trains, 2 buses, and a plane to get there.. we flew with Ryanair which in general wasn't bad but they are huge jerks about your luggage. Everyone gets 1 carry on that has to be less than 10 kg and has to fit in this damn carboard box that happens to be skinny and tall and I had a dufflebag that was bulky. SO pretty much this meant that for all of our flights I was wearing 6 shirts and 2 sweaters and for the flight from Barcelona to Ibiza, and Ibiza home I had my pillow stuffed up my shirt(!!!!) so that my luggage would fit in there damn box. (if it doesn't you pay like 40 euros to check it which is usually at least double what you paid for the flight in the first place) ... anyway!... we finally get to Barcelona!
We stayed in this really sweet hostel the first two nights, it's called Kabul. It was off of La Rambla street - the main street of Barcelona - which also is apparently the number one place in the whole world to get pick-pocketed (luckily we made it out with everything). Anyway, our hostel was in the Plaza Real right off La Rambla - so it was very convenient. We stayed in a room with 5 sets of bunk-beds and you got a locker to put all your stuff in. It was pretty sweet because we met people from all over the world: Australia, Italy, some guy from Milwaukee, some guy from 39 year-old guy from Indiana who ended up later telling us the saddest story you could ever hear, and our favorites - girls from Virginia Tech who we ended up spending a lot of time with. At Kabul it was sweet because for 20 euros a night they fed you breakfast and dinner and they got you into a different club every night for free!

Now the night life in Barcelona was crazy!! Literally we would eat dinner at 8:30 and then nap for a few hours get up and we all met downstairs to go out at 1:45 am. SO CRAZY... this obviously means you weren't to bed until like 6 am but it was so fun!
Shelbi and I got up early both days we stayed there and the first day we went on this hop-on-hop-off bus tour that ended up being the best way to see the city! it took you to all the sites and it had an audio guided tour so we knew what we were looking at. The architecture in Barcelona is absolutely stunning! Its mostly influenced by this guy named Gauldi who had some crazy ideas (very moseque -->).
He had a house there and a park that had multiple levels and when you got to the top you could see all of Barcelona. We spent the next few days exploring the city we saw so many different sites: the Plaza del Pi, the place where Christopher Columbus was met by the King and Queen, the Old Jewish Quarter, the Plaza de la Constitucion, la Sagrada Familia, old Roman Ruins, Camp Nou where FC Barcelona plays soccer.. .and so so much more!





















Our last night in Kabul we ate dinner and met some awesome girls from Virginia Tech, they invited us to come downstairs to see a flamenco show with them. It was pretty cool but not at all what I was expecting. There was a group of 4 Spanish men who sang and played traditional Spanish music in the background of the small stage. It was really impressive. The dancing was kinda lame to be honest, one girl, one guy who danced together. But I had never seen flamingo dancing so I guess I have nothing to compare it to. All I can say is it is a very emotional dance.


After the show - we went back to the hostel to nap and get ready before we went out for the night. We went downstairs to hang out in the hostel bar until they took us out to a club in Barcelona -- the Cat Walk! We danced All night!! It was a blast because we were just one big group of girls. We were given a bottle of free champagne from some of the club management - because they were giving drinks to pretty girls... it was a little random but you know.. you roll with it. It was really cool because they took us straight to the bar, and handed us fancy glasses and all.. Ahh the men in Barcelona. Very grabby, very over the top, and very very forward. At the end of the night aka 4:30 am. we went home, mostly because you get sick of being touched so much. Kinda nasty... oh well, dancing is always fun!







After two days we moved to a different hostel that was literally 20 steps from the beach.
This hostel- not as cool but it was on the beach and we still got breakfast every morning. The rooms there were crazy because although you got 9 people in your room, for some reason the walls didn't connect to the ceiling so you could hear everyone in the room next to you and the room next to them... and so on. So yeah there were 9 people in your room, BUT you heard 41 people. Aka LOUD!!! But all was good, we met a guy from England who was studying in Valencia named Roger, and a girl named Zoe who was backpacking (alone) through Europe before she went to college back home in New Zealand. I was really in awe by here because she was 18, just living out of a back, no direction really, working odd jobs here and there, and just generally enjoying being free in life. She ended up getting crazy drunk one night but it was still fun.
During the day on the third day Shelbi and I found this AMAZING market off of La Rambla street, it had all this fresh fruit, home made candy, sea food, meat (i'm talking full legs, heads, etc) and all this other amazing food. We tried a traditional dish from Spain: Seafood Paella, it was like rice with some green vegetables and all different kinds of seafood, some still came with eyes and claws :/ needless to say we were a little out of our league. but it was really good! Walking back to our hostel one day we found that guy who was from Indiana - he had checked out of Kabul after we met him because it was what he called "hotel MTV" (hey... I loved it). anyway we found him when we stopped to listen to this guy singing and playing guitar by the port and he ended up telling us his whole life story. SO SAD!!... he was married, had three daughters who were pretty young..like 11 i think. His wife left him for some guy who made more money than he did and he was backpacking around Europe trying to sort out his life after his wife essentially took his everything. I couldn't believe how willing he was to just tell two 20-something year-old girls about his life like that. Just shows that you can meet anyone and everyone here..
All in all Barcelona was an amazing city with beautiful architecture and amazing people! We spent 5 days there, which I have to say is a little long but still... totally worth it!

So we took another Ryanair flight to Ibiza, we got there on Sunday so pretty much everything was closed. But we hiked all across Ibiza town to find this hotel that we had been moved to. (our other one canceled on us like 5 days before we got there because they were closing for the season - shady i know.) so we get there and the guy at the desk tells us that we have to go back to where we started and go to their other hotel which ended up being the shadiest place I have ever stayed IN MY LIFE!! the woman at the front desk was a huge jerk and she seemed to think that the hotel she was working for was absolutely fabulous!! later I realized how much lower the standard of living was in Spain... I'm such a spoiled American, and I like it that way.
So our room, two beds, one nasty bathroom that I would eventually discover a cockroach in, and a kitchen that was in a closet. I have mixed feelings about it, we used it a ton, but also managed to blow it up once too. Anyway..
So the first night we were there we managed to find some little old store and bought stuff for dinner and while we were eating we heard this parade sort of thing outside, we followed it to the beach of course! It ended up being like 10 different groups of dancers that were dressed in amazing colorful Spanish-style clothes and they each did a different dance on this stage that they had set up on the beach. It was so cool! Ibiza had so much culture. Pretty much no one spoke English which was different, usually we could get by with German or English, not here!
One day we took a bus across the island to this cave that was in the side of a cliff, it was amazing! I've never seen anything so beautiful. This cave was used by smugglers and robbers to stash all their findings way back when. It even had a waterfall! From where you walked along the cliff to get to it you could see everything! It looked out over the Mediterranean and you could see Majorca in the distance. Ibiza had beautiful beaches and an amazing coastline. We spent part of a day walking around a part of town called Dalt Villa. It was an old fort that you hiked up and it overlooked the whole city, you could see the port, the city, and the ocean. Google it- words don't do this place justice.On the Tuesday that we were there we didn't do much, it was a Holiday in Spain so everything was closed and it was seriously like a tropical storm outside so we couldn't go lay on the beach. By this point I was getting sick of this place and their lack of hygiene. But we still had one more day and we spent it just walking around and enjoying the sights one last time. All in all Ibiza was gorgeous, but I don't think I'd ever go back.
On our way home we spent like 5 hours in the airport in Ibiza, flew to Frankfurt-Hahn airport, took another bus to the train station in Frankfurt (by this time it was Thursday morning at 2 am) we splurged and payed 50 euros to take the good train at 2:30 and we were back in Freiburg at 5 am. So exhausted and happy to be back!

I had a blast while I was gone but Freiburg is now like home and this trip really made me appreciate the things I do have here. So recommendations: skip Ibiza unless you're going during the high tourist summer season, and Definitely go to Barcelona.

First Month in Germany

Hey all, I FINALLY am getting my act together and starting my blog like I promised.
So I thought I give you all the quick run down of what went on the first month that I was here....

I'll start with the program I'm on....
The AYF Program: Academic Year in Freiburg. Its a consortium. So I'm here with about 40 people, 17 from UW-Madison (WOOT) and the rest are from U of Iowa, U of Michigan, and Michigan State. And so we're all here together for a year, living in apartment/dorm kind of buildings throughout the city of Freiburg. The program is amazing, they hold your hand through all the paper work and busy crap that I could never figure out on my own all while giving us complete freedom. AKA AMAZING!!!!

My living situation...
So I live in an apartment kind of thing. aka: my WG. It is somewhat like an apartment complex with lots of "Houses" and each House has different letters (A-F) and each House Letter has different floors with one or two different WG's on it. So I live in House 20 in C on the third floor.
My apartment or WG is amazing!!! at first I wasn't sure about it because people were moving in and out and the place was an absolute mess but I love it here now. I live with people who are so chill and fun to hang out with!
My roommates: Fabi and Matze are brothers. Desi, Simona, Max, and Yvonne who are all from Germany, Miguel who is from Spain, Victor who is from Mexico, and Me aka "are you the American?"
MY WG is cool - it has a super long hallway, kitchen is at the end - the kitchen is huge and I love it. not to much to say about it. We have a living room and a room with two showers in it, and then a bathroom that has like stalls which i thought was odd at first but at the end of the day I'm thankful for it. My room is big, the ceilings are really tall, my view is breathtaking, we are in the north of the city so it overlooks the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) its so amazing. The rooms here all come with a sink which is lucky! We have no closets, just a "Shrank" - aka HUGE downsize for me from two closets at home to this little half chest thing that hangs like three shirts and a pair of jeans, while on the other side there are like 5 tiny shelves. But I'm dealing with it.
The place I live is called Haendel and it has a court yard kind of garden thing which is lovely, and it has a bar. aka the Haendel Cafe. Student run, University Funded. (genius) Its open every Thursday, just a fun place to go and get some cheap drinks and have some fun. I like it a lot more now because I recognize people and I feel like I fit in a lot more now than I did before.

So...thats pretty much the basics.
I spent the first week getting my feet on the ground. aka going out a lot, sleeping a little, going to many boring although helpful info sessions.
We went to Basel for the day on a Sunday --> Basel = Boring. and EXPENSIVE. We walked around, saw the city, and went to an art museum where there was an Andy Warhol exhibit, that was pretty sweet.
Also one thing that I'm not sure I'll ever get adjusted to is the fact that on Sundays everything is closed. No joke. It sucks but at the same time it is something I enjoy about Europe. Here is isn't all "time is money!" and "go, go, go" all the time like it is in America. Its totally common to go get a cup of coffee with a friend for three hours and just chill and enjoy life. I'm trying to learn to be more like that.
We also went to France for the day one day, it was cold but beautiful. We saw a castle that sits on top of this big mountain so it overlooked the whole city. (see fb for pictures :P ) then we had lunch in Colmar. first, it was the best food I had had since I got here, chicken with salad. (I spend most of my life here living on pasta and bread bc its just so damn good) But its always fabulous when I have my occasional encounter with meat in Germany. BUT second, the French are HUGE jerks! Literally appallingly rude. Pretty much if you don't speak French you're going to get ignored. So... if you speak German they are jerks, if you speak English you might as well not open your mouth. The bottom line is, I'm going to Paris because its Paris and then I'm donezo with France. enough said.

Starting the second week I had a three week long intensive learning course. I went to school 4 hours a day 5 days a week from 3 to 7ish.... german, German, GERMAN! 2 hours of grammar, 2 hours of conversation. Although some days were beyond long (Friday at 6pm...Eww!) I actually really enjoyed it. It was really helpful.

So to recap, my first month was filled with a bit of traveling, meeting a ton of new people, and school and to sum things up I really really love it here. It feels like home, just like Madison. Freiburg is a big University town with a ton of fun people from all over the world.