As I wait for my plane...

So I'm waiting for 4 am so I can get on my subway to get to my train to get to the airport to fly back to St. Louis for Christmas. (well, hopefully this is all happening... the snow storms in Chicago are a little worrying since I'm flying through Chicago...)

Anyway... the last two weeks.
Salzburg was a lot of fun. We were a group of four. We got there around noon and wandered around the city and the Christkindlmarkt. Definitely smaller than Nuremberg and Munich, but it was nice. Also a lot less food at this one. But did they make up for it with their glühwein choices! Munich and Nuremberg basically just had glühwein or (Kinder)punsch (non-alcoholic). Nuremberg had blueberry glühwein as well. Salzburg had peach, wildberry, apple, orange, chocolate, etc. We kept stopping for a different flavor every time we got cold. Also went up to the castle. Then took the 5:00 train back to Munich and decided to go see "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (in English). This time we bought the tickets together so we could officially sit together.

Monday's Christmas party was also a lot of fun. Typical Christmas party. Every brings food. Everyone eats and talks. I enjoyed it a lot though. They all were extremely schocked when I started explaining that no, we didn't have Christkindlmarkt. And no, we didn't have glühwein. And no, we didn't have Lebkuchen (I explained gingerbread...). Someone suggested that it wasn't really Christmas without glühwein.

Tuesday, Rob (Georgia Tech) and I met up with a guy trying to get into Georgia Tech next year. I'm not sure why I was there. I'm a chemE at U of IL. Rob is a chem major at Georgia Tech. This guy was a chem major at Georgia Tech. Rob had it covered. Then I met up with Erika to go watch the Christmas film. Feuerzangenbowle is actually a drink they make by soaking a cone of sugar in rum and setting in on fire over a pot of glühwein so that it carmalizes into the wine. Interesting concept. Tasty. (sweet!) The movie has nothing to do with that (except they are drinking it in the first and last scenes). It also has nothing to do with Christmas. A bunch of men are talking about childhood memories and find out one of them never went to school. He was homeschooled. So they fix him up to look like a student and send him to school to get the experience. It was good... but hard to understand since the sound quality is not so great. The movie is from the 1943 or so.

Thursday I went to Hall. That was a lot of fun. The Christkindlmarkt there is gorgeous. The city is an Advent calendar with numbers lit up on the buildings (colored for those that have passed, and white for those yet to come). I got to meet up with a friend in Innsbruck and see that market too, as well as Andrea's in Hall. And I got to taste her homemade glühwein and orange punsch. Yummy! Met up with two friends from school one night and we went to a cafe that night where 5 other people from the class came! So I got to see 7 of the 11! That was really neat. Several of them didn't recognizes me. (didn't you used to have glasses?) Obviously that was my key identification factor two years ago. The irony is that one of my classmates, Michael, didn't have a clue who I was, even though I was sitting next to Vera and Manu, my two best friends from the class. They had to tell him. He spent 5 hours a day with me the entire semester. When I was on the bus coming back from Innsbruck, I got approached by a girl who asked if my name was Kelsey. Turns out she was from the parallel class I was in. (same grade, different class... if you remember, each "class" is a group of 15-20 students who are together in their lessons for all 8 years.) I was in 6B, she had been in 6A. She recognized me even though she saw me completely out of place (why would she expect me to be sitting on a bus coming from Innsbruck. She had no idea I would be anywhere but the US right now) and we'd probably seen each other once a week for an hour in gym class, since that was mixed. I was really impressed with her though.

Back in Munich now. Monday was my last day of class. Today was my last day of Christmas shopping. My bag is packed. My plane leaves in 7 hours. I leave in 4. Hoping the journey is no longer than it's already scheduled to be and that I'm safe at home in St. Louis 24 hours from now.

I'll be back in Munich the morning of January 6th. Write more then!

Pictures:
Hall- the city as an Advent calendar
Innsbruck- The Golden Roof and the Christkindlmarkt
Andrea and Lisa in their Christkindlmarkt booth
Munich- the main Christkindlmarkt
Christkindlmarkt and the Rathaus at night
The subway ticket machines... this one's there for mom and grandmother. After all the trouble they had trying to figure out tickets, they replaced all the machines several days after they left... as you can see, the machines now give a very detailed explanation in both German and English of exactly which ticket does what and which ticket you should buy in which situation and which ticket will get you where.

It snowed in Munich!!! and it's gorgeous!!!

It started snowing last night. Well, afternoon, really... I went to Marienplatz to go Christmas shopping at the Christkindlmarkt and it was 4:50 when I got there but of course it was already completely dark. But it was snowing! And it was soooo pretty! And then I woke up this morning and it was still snowing and everything was pretty white! I'd say we got 3 inches or so and it's still flurrying so maybe more will accumulate.

Anyway, if there are any specific requests for gifts from Germany, you should make them now. It's only the 12th of December, and I realize this, but I've pretty much got a plan laid out for the rest of the year and it's gonna start speeding up starting... tomorrow.

Here's a little idea for you.
Saturday (13th): Salzburg Christkindlmarkt with Nick and Nicole!
Sunday (14th): Day to learn! And possibly visit a museum if I get enough learning done.
Monday (15th): Normal classes followed by Christmas Party for the Cafe workers
Tuesday (16th): Presentation in my Religion Sociology class, followed by German class followed by either meeting with a student from the TU who wants to go to the US next year or going to a "typical Christmas movie" (apparently the equivalent of "It's a Wonderful Life"... as in everyone's already seen it 100 times and watches it every year anyway)
Wednesday (17th): Normal long Wednesday followed by two hours (8:30-10:30) of free dancing "practice" instead of a lesson
Thursday (18th): Catching the 9:30 train to Innsbruck to be there at 11:30
Friday (19th): Hall! Hopefully meeting up with friends from school
Saturday (20th): Hall!
Sunday (21st): Hall! And back
Monday (22nd): Normal full day of classes
Tuesday (23rd): Both classes have sense been canceled on me, so an entire day to do last minute shopping and to paaaaack
Wednesday (24th): Waking up at 3:30 (thanks for booking this one, mom... we really didn't think this out too well), to catch the first subway of the morning (they stop running at 2) at 4:17 to make it to the airport at 5:17 for a 7 am flight through Frankfort and Chicago and eventually getting to St. Louis (hopefully) some time that evening.
And then obviously, two weeks at home! :)

120 Euros later... 120 plates of Thanksgiving DInner

So, we did it!
Friday, Nicole and I met at 12 and spent the next 3 and a half hours shopping. We visited a total of around 10 stores and ended up spending 119 Euros of our 120 Euro budget. My mother taught me well. Of course, we ended up carrying everything we bought all around Munich too. Thus I had 3 turkeys in my backpack for most of the afternoon. Here's the full list:
4 turkeys
4 pumpkins
4 cans of evaporated milk
1 bag of sugar
2 bags of flour
10 "cubes" of butter (the equivalent of 20 sticks we found out later... don't ever mistakenly think Thanksgiving is healthy...)
6 boxes of potatoes
4 liters of milk
5 baguettes
4 jars of cranberries
2 cans of whipped cream
1 can of raisins
2 bags of walnuts
1 bag of green apples
1 bag of onions
2 clusters of celery
1 packet of chicken bouillon
6 packets of gravy powder
120 paper plates
120 plastic forks

Then we dropped it all off at Nicole's place and I went up to school to meet with Erika, Dr. Conrad and Jack. Jack was a student here last year from U of IL, and has been working on my behalf at Dr. Conrad's request to try to smooth things out for me. Well, he was in Munich for a conference, we we had a "group meeting" where I got some good news about classes and credits. They're willing to "bend the rules" for me on this side if it will give me credit on the other side. The question will be how naive UIUC is about it...

The other fun part is, I get to decide which grades I want to send back... that means, after the final, I have to go pick up my "Schein" (certificate?) that has the class and my grade on it, basically, the proof that I took the class. Well, there's no official transcript until Dr. Conrad puts it together. That means, I can give Dr. Conrad only the "Schein"s that I want to get credit for. So if I end up with a pretty bad grade in, way, Linear Algebra, I just don't pass that one along. :)

Saturday was St. Nicholas' Day. There was a little festival in the "village" I live in. They had music and free gifts for kids and were giving away cups of Glühwein (at 10 am...) and forms of lebkuchen. I spent most of Saturday studying.

Sunday I met Nicole at 10 am and the day began.
Pumpkin pie completely from scratch means washing, slicing, baking, scooping and mashing pumpkin into puree before making the filling. We started with that and the pie crust. Pie crust was especially fun because we were a little short on kitchen materials... as in, no whisk or masher for mashing the butter into the flour for the crust. Fingers, luckily, work just as well. The recipe had called for one pumpkin per pie. We'd been planning on 4 pies, and thus had 4 pumpkins. By the time the 4th pie was finished, however, we were only halfway through the pie mixture... but luckily had plenty of butter and flour so we ended up making 8 pies and enjoyed one for ourselves at the end.

Turkey... so we had four semi-frozen turkeys sitting in the sink and I was in charge of removing the "bags" from inside. Right... how the heck do you get inside a turkey? After a good 20 minutes of fumbling around with the poor bird, Amelia finally came over to help me. She was equally confused. Eventually we figured out... we were reaching around in the wrong end. Ah... we found and removed the bags and wondered why the heck people would bother to put that stuff back in after they took it out in the first place. How about attaching it on the outside? We prepared the oven to bake. Luckily we were able to borrow an oven in the building next door, so we could have all four turkeys going at once. Nicole and I stuffed them with "fake stuffing" (just onions, celery and carrots), the idea being that they still soaked up the flavor of stuffing, but didn't take as long. Problem number 2 with limited materials. We had no string. The whole "where the heck are the bags?" had resulted in a little bit of abuse to the poor turkeys so if we wanted the turkeys legs to stay together such that the stuffing did not spill out everywhere, it was indeed necessary to tie the legs together. Well, turns out cutting a string of fat from the turkey works very well as string. It holds and it ties.

We had stuffing going on the stove. We started cranberries as well. The turkeys finished. Nicole, who'd watched a 15 minute YouTube video on carving turkeys became the expert and carved with Ashley's help. The stuffing finished. The last pies were in the oven. The cranberries finished. The kitchen was a mess. It was 8 pm... so then we cleaned. And by 9 pm, 11 long hours after we'd started, we were finished. Nicole and I split up the food. I took half of it home in my backpack, side bag and a big plastic bag. On the subway I was informed by a middle-aged man that he thought I was running away from home. I explained that I was not.

Monday, both of us dragged all the food to the church kitchen... and both were very glad when we finally got there. Hans was there to help. We started mashed potatoes and gravy on the stove (just add milk/water), cut the pies, warmed the meat and stuffing, thinned the cranberries to use as a glaze for the turkey. The British guys showed up as did Amelia and Ben (New Zealand), and then we loaded up 120 plates of food. We had the perfect amount. And we got a plate too! And it was good!!! It tasted like it was supposed to! All of it! We were extremely impressed (and a little shocked...) Cleanup of that kitchen afterwards was just as fun, but worth it based on the comments we got. One person mentioned that they had been expecting hotdogs from the Americans. Another said they'd always heard about "Thanksgiving dinner" and now knew what it was. Another informed us that the "pumpkin cake" had been very good. Another asked if we could please explain what the heck was in this (pointing to stuffing). And finally, the comment that it'd been the best meal yet. Which, for Nicole and I, made the combined 3.5 hours Friday, 11 hours Sunday and 2 hours Monday worth it. :)

No, I'm not doing that again, btw...

Pictures:
Me starting on the pumpkins
Nicole and Amelia at the stove
Nicole and I stuffing the turkeys
Nicole and I looking really surprised that the turkey actually looks like a cooked turkey!
The plates, ready to go out...

The weeks go by...

Sorry about the lag. As most of you probably know, it was a busy week. I had visitors!

So I'm not really sure where I left off. The week before last involved a lot of errands and trying to stay motivated to sit down and learn stuff. that's the biggest issue right now. then the trying to figure out classes part, but I'll get to that.

On Saturday... my mom and grandmother came to visit! And it snowed! They weren't too pleased about the second part. Saturday we toured Olympia Park and they suffered from jet lag. Sunday we hit museums (some of the art museums are 1 Euro on Sunday), so we went to the Alte and Neue Pinakotheken (Old and New art museums... so like 1300-1600 and then 1600-1900? something like that).

Monday was my birthday! After my class, we toured the Alt Stadt (old city... main cites), I went to class again, and then got a birthday dinner complete with cake, a candle and presents! Tuesday we did the other half of the city tour. Wednesday was my long day they they kept themselves busy. Thursday my morning class was canceled (teacher was sick... subs don't exist in Germany) so we went to Schloss Nymphenburg (the Nymphenburg palace)and then I went to my other class. Friday we went to Oberammergau. It's famous for hosting the Passion Play once every ten years (next showing: 2010...) and for it's painted houses. See pictures. They are pretty neat. Friday was also the day Kristkindlmarkt opened in Munich! Kristkindlmarkt is the open Christmas market. It's really, really pretty. The square has a lit Christmas tree. Little wooden booths are everywhere selling ornaments, candy, chocolates, glühwein (heated, spiced wine... mulled wine in English, if that means anything to you), toys, carvings, lots of food... etc.

Saturday we went to Nuremberg. Nuremberg is home to the biggest Kristkindlmarkt (and most famous) in Germany. The train was packed. We toured the city, stopping back to the market everytime we needed something warm to eat. Fresh lebkuchen (like gingerbread), glühwein, chocolate covered fruit on a stick, roasted nuts, are the big sellers. Then one more walk around Munich's Kristkindlmarkt when we got back.

And Sunday I sent them off to the airport... and started working on my German presentation!

The presentation on a topic of my choice (which the teacher chose for me because it interested her) was on the relationship between Germany and America... she wanted me to focus on Obama. For my "three main points" I chose Bush, Angela Merkel (Germany's leader if you don't know) and Obama. And put together a powerpoint on it. The interesting this is that this is my grade for the class. This one presentation in the middle of the semester. After this I just have to keep doing homework and showing up to class. Well, after a week of speaking straight English I was a little worried about my ability to conduct a 20 minute presentation while being graded on my speaking ability in German... but apparently I did great, because she was really impressed and gave me a 1,6! (the German grading scale ranges in decimals from 1-6 with 6 being failing... 1,6 is really good. It's a solid A). This is great news! One less thing to worry about!

After the presentation, I went to the student run movie again... they were showing Arsenic and Old Lace! In German! It was great! I managed to catch about 75% of this one. They talk pretty fast at times! Especially Mortimer. The jokes all got translated really well though. I was impressed. The Germans were rolling on the floor laughing which was also really funny.

For the rest of the week: Tomorrow is apparently a university holiday. Or so I found out today. Doensn't matter all that much for me. I have two classes on Thursdays. One meets every other week and this is the off week. The other is at LMU, the other University... which does not have a holiday. Way to waste a day off...

Tomorrow night I'm working at the cafe again. They have stand-up comedians coming in so it should be a really busy night! And entertaining too, which is cool.
Friday I'm meeting with the study abroad adviser here to work on classes again... I think I'm getting somewhere... every so slowly. Hopefully I'll finally have it all figured out by the end of the semester. Just in time to start over again!
Either Saturday or Sunday I'm hoping to go to Salzburg to see the Kristkindlmarkt there. We'll see though... that might get pushed to next weekend because Monday is going to be a big day. We're cooking dinner for 120 people... Thanksgiving dinner nonetheless.

Every other week on Monday there's a "stammtisch", a get together for the international students. Each week a different nationality gets a budge of 120 Euro (it's one euro per person basically) to cook for the 120 people. We got assigned around Thanksgiving so figured we'd go for that since that's about as typical American as you can get... since you can't find the ingredients anywhere in Germany. Luckily in the meantime we've made some progress. And recruited some help. Nicole and I were originally recruited. We've pulled in another one (possibly two) Americans, a Canadian, a New Zealander and a couple of English guys. Canadians have Thanksgiving too, and well, we were English once. The New Zealand girl just happens to know how to cook...

So my Friday and Saturday are possibly going to be spent buying frozen turkey, pumpkin, cranberries, and stuffing (the mashed potatoes will be the only easy one...) and my Sunday will probably be spent cooking. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Now for the pictures: as I have no idea what order they get posted in, use your imagination please!
me and the life-sized nutcracker
mom, grandmother and the life-sized teddy bear
a blue painted building in Oberammergau (it's a very religious city... see the bit about the Passion Play)
the Cinderella house! (look for evil stepsisters and a shoe)
the Four Musicians house! (look for the four animals... that one's easy)
the Little Red Riding Hood house! (look for a wolf?)
the Hansel and Gretel house! (um... the scene where they push the witch into the oven is on there)
the Pontius Pilate house! (they're at the top of a staircase and Jesus is being sent down it)

Hope you figure them out! More next week... after the cooking experience!

A continued list of differences

So, we made it to the Toy Museum on Sunday. A lot smaller than expected, but still neat. It had a lot of old teddy bears, train sets, soldiers, cars, barbies... all from a long time ago. We then went to go see James Bond. There was a showing in English, which was surprisingly more crowded than I would have expected. We learned something new about German theaters which is the actual cause of this post... See below. We then went to dinner... MEXICAN! Nicole had actually eaten at a Mexican restaurant. One of the members of our foursome is half-Mexican and the rest of us were craving. I hadn't had Mexican in 6.5 weeks. It was good! But, like all other food in Germany, even the "spicy" was not spicy. Germany, by the way, has two tastes that they use. Sweet and Salty. Sour does not exist. Spicy definitely does not exist. Their spicy is my mild and we all know my mild...

Anyway, other new news is that I have a "job". It was suggested to me by another international student I know in my dorm. It's not really a "job" per se, but it's work. I'm working in the cafe in the building next to me. It's student-operated and open for students. It basically sells drinks- coffee, tea, apple/orange/banana/cherry juice, beer, hot chocolate, coke... anyway, it's volunteer basis on time and I only have to work 3-4 times a semester and I get all my drinks half-price (and then free when I'm working). My first night was Tuesday. It's a good opportunity to meet people, and it was actually a lot of fun even thought the night was slow. I met three other people in my dorm.

Anyway, the purpose of the post:
I've been continuing my list of differences I've noticed by means of writing myself a text and saving it as a draft on my phone whenever I note one. Since my drafts are now getting relatively full, I thought I'd post them.

Though this is actually a list of things I find annoying in Germany...

1. Movie Theaters: you get assigned seats on your ticket. We discover this when Hans buys his ticket. Then I ask for the exact same thing as him and the lady at the counter actually starts close to yelling at me for not telling her ahead of time (Meanwhile, Ashley had bought her ticket earlier). If you don't buy them together, you don't sit together. Now we know. We got around this by sitting in the empty rows in the front where none of us were assigned.

2. Water fountains: they don't exist. Anywhere. At least in Austria you could find them in the school. Not here. You don't have water and you're thirsty you either buy it (and individual drinks here are so overpriced it's ridiculous- think 2 Euro for a small bottle of coke) or you wait.

3. Faucets: Cold water. That's it. No hot water knob, just one for cold water. This is going to get very annoying in winter, because it's really, really cold.

4. Text books: At first I liked the fact that there wasn't a required text book to buy for each class. Certainly cheaper anyway. In the meantime it's become annoying. There are suggested books... usually a list of like 2-5. You can buy them or check them out of the well-stocked libraries. The problem is, without one required book, the teacher does not in fact teach out of a single book. So if you're trying to catch up or read ahead on your own, good luck trying to figure out where and when the information is.

5. Lines: Germans need to learn what a line is, that's all I can say. They clutter. The lines they do make are 3 or 4 people wide.

5. Exception to above: The exception is when you're in a line to get information or go into an office of something. In this case, you are all lined up outside the (closed) office door. The doors here are all closed, even during office hours, just so they can make a point of how much they don't want to talk to you even though they are required to have open office hours. So there are 4 people in line outside the door. Then someone comes out. One person goes in. There are one or two people standing inline inside the very small office while the first person is being helped. It's kinda weird.

6. Pause: Germans love their "Pause". Pause basically means "break" in context. Germans need breaks. Quite often. There is a pause in everything. There is a Pause in the middle of the day for all the shops for lunch. This is conveniently on everyone's lunch hour so you can't do anything on break. It covers some range of the hours of 12-2. Pause also occur in the middle of any class 2 hours or longer. Now, you'd think you'd take like a 5 minute break maybe to stretch, right? My German class is supposed to go from 3-6. At 4:30 we routinely take a Pause (the teacher likes her Pause. We aren't allowed to ask her questions during the Pause). The Pause generally lasts 30 minutes. Aaaaand... I went to go see Juno at the school movie showing, if you remember. Juno is like a 90 minute movie. In the middle of said 90 minute movie we take a Pause (okay... otherwise known as intermission, but the movie was 90 minutes!!!) for a good 20 minutes.

7. I've mentioned before that the store hours in general are mildly annoying? All stores are closed on Sundays except for bakeries which are generally open till 2 or so. Otherwise stores open at 9 or 10, take their 1-2 hour break in the middle of the day, and typically close at 6. We are in Munich, though, which is an advantage since it's so internationalized. Most of our stores actually stay open till... 8! Which is fun on certain days when I don't get home till after 8, such as Wednesdays. This also means stocking up on food for Sunday beforehand or you'll be eating a lot of bread.

Oh, and on another note, I saw a shop that amused me. It's called "American Apparel" and it's a store of clothing made in the USA. I found this amusing because I was pretty sure all of our clothing actually wasn't? No?


Anyway, today was dance class and I learned to tango. Tomorrow both of my classes got canceled (well, the morning one meets every other week and this is the off week), and I have no class Friday so I'll be doing a lot of catch up learning both days and running some errands. Saturday, my mom and grandmother come to visit!

And Monday I stop being a teenager... scary, no?

Nuremberg

So I kept pretty busy this week. Monday was the biweekly TUMi gathering. The French cooked for us. It was tasty. Tuesday I stayed late at school to go to the TU Film (they show a weekly movie) in the most uncomfortable lecture hall in that school most likely as the seats were straight up and very hard wood, such that after about 30 minutes of sitting you were starting to wish you could not be sitting anymore). I watched Juno. I figured since I'd seen it, it would be good. Not the case. If you haven't seen it, Juno is very much spoken in slang. This is hard to translate into German. I caught about 30% of the movie, and that only because I knew what was coming. But still, it was fun. Wednesday was my dance class again. We learned the Wiener Waltz (Viennese). Thursday, Nicole and I went to dinner with Eli, the TUMI person who picked us both up from the airport. We went to an Asian place. Quite good. Nice change of diet, too! Haven't had Asian food in 6 weeks... And then Friday was our dinner party! Nicole organized and hosted. I went over early and she made a salad, we cooked spaghetti, later some guys brought garlic bread. We had nine internationals and two of Nicole's roommates (well, there are 7 of them that share a kitchen/living area and have separate bedrooms) joined us for supper and dessert. It was quite fun! Today I've just been hanging around, actually "studying". Hoping to keep busy tonight though. Tomorrow the plan is to check out another church, go to the Toy Museum (100 Years of Teddy Bears exhibit!) and then go to the James Bond movie (we found an English theater).

But back to Nuremberg. We were about two weeks early for catching Christkindlmarkt (a Christmas open market throughout advent), and Nuremberg is home to the largest in Germany. But there were still a fair amount of Christmas decorations up. I met Tao's penpal. Story behind that one: Tao has a German pen pal (they write in English) who lives right by Nuremberg. Tao gave me a gift he brought back from China this summer for said pen pal, Felicia. I had written Felicia once in German at Tao's request, so let her know I was coming. We met up, I handed off the gift, and she took us around Nuremberg. We went to the city center, the two big churches, the golden well (there's a ring that was supposedly inserted in teh gate around the well without cutting the ring- as in, keeping it in one piece... now it's good luck to turn the ring), the farmer's market (where Christkindlmarkt will be), up to the castle, past the Rathaus (town halls...), etc. It was quite fun. It's a gorgeous city. It's also home to Lebkuchen, which is Christmasy and similar to gingerbread.

Pictures:
The castle
One of the churches
Another church
The view of the city (look at all those red roofs!) from the top of the castle tower
The inside of one of the churches- one of my favorite in Germany. It's really different and I like it a lot.
The golden well with the second church in the background

My week

In case you were wondering.

Monday:
Wake up at 7 to run out the door at 7:40 to catch the 7:45 subway to Garching. My stop is near the start of the line so there's always empty seats. Have to switch lines though. Second subway holds all the students going to Garching. Usually don't get a seat. Hover over a group of seats in the hope that someone gets off at a stop. Grab seat. Get to Garching. Determine which day it is. On Monday lecture is in the Mechanical Engineering building. On Wednesday it's in the Computer Science building. Go to lecture. 8:30-10:00 Get out of lecture. Trek over to Computer Science building to turn in homework in a mail box. Chill/work/internet in a library/at a table until lunch. Eat lunch. Return to Computer Science building and chill/work/internet until "Central Discussion section" where another professor works problems for us. 2:15-3:45 Run to catch subway. Take subway across Munich to my main campus stop and walk 12 minutes north to random group of buildings with all the psych/sociology classes. Go to Developmental Psych lecture. 5-6:30. Head home. Every other Monday a nearby church opens its doors as a meeting place for all the exchange students from 8 pm until late. A different country of students takes turns cooking for 200 or so. Every other Monday I attend.

Tuesday:
Wake up at 7:45 to catch the 8:35 subway to get to main campus stop at 8:45 to walk 12 minutes north to Religion Sociology class which 9-10:30. Attend. Have probably read the 10 pages or so of sociologists' writings in Germany but not understood a word. Trek 17 minutes back to main campus and chill in library till lunch. Nxt class not till 3. Intensive German as Foreign Language. Study German grammar till 6. Class should to till 6:30 but teacher continuously lets us out at 6. Dinner. Studying.

Wednesday:
See morning same as Monday except Linear Algebra is in a different building. Hang out after class with laptop. Run to eat early lunch at 11:30 to get back for the TA Discussion section from 12:15-1:45. Homework in library. Head to chemistry building (the only class I'm there for...) for 4-7 pm Bio lecture. If lucky, the assistant is teaching the class in which case I pay attention. If not, the mono-tone professor who does not like speaking loudly or clearly is teaching in which case I read the slides on my own and multitask on computer. Hope he lets us out in time to catch the 6:50 subway. If not, leave early. Take subway back to Olympiazentrum. Get in at 7:20. Grab a sandwich at the bakery on way to dance class (held in sports center). Go to dance class. Learn how to: (as of now), dance the blues, disco fox (apparently a European thing?), fox trot, cha-cha-cha, international waltz and viennese waltz. Class 7:30-8:30. Walk back with Oana, an international student from Romania who's studying here all four years and lives in my building.

Thursday:
Every other Thursday wake up as Tuesday to get to Basic Sociology class that meets every other week in same building as all other soc/psych classes. There are five of us in the class including a girl who was born in the US but has lived in Germany since she was like 5 or 6. We discuss the 23 page article in German over sociology we read over coffee and cookies. Actually, quite a fun class. Head back to main campus for lunch. Head to LMU (Ludwig-Maximilian University, the "liberal arts college" that the TUM (Technical University of Munich) kids look down on but is actually also an extremely good university) for my Economic History of the New Worlds, a class taught... in English!... by a professor from New Zealand. That one is fun. Class 2-4. Done for the day (4 is my early day...) and for the week. No class on Friday.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday:
Explore Munich and the surrounding area, hopefully hang out with friends at night, and at some point fit in reading the combined 30 pages of sociology in German and doing the linear algebra homework. Eventually I'll also get around to learning the material for psych and economics.


Coming up- We went to Nuremberg last weekend!

Dad came to visit!

Okay, so many of you know my dad was here last weekend to visit. He was working in Germany and came down for the weekend.

Friday we hit all the main Munich spots again. BMW World, a large circle of all the main buildings/churches/towers in the Alt Stadt of Munich, the English Garden, the three city gates, and then Olympia Park. We went up in the tower. Wow! I wish I'd gone up sooner. You really can see the Alps. Quite impressive, too! And obviously a lot more besides that!

Saturday we took the train to Salzburg. There's a Bavarian Ticket here that's good for up to 5 people to travel with. It takes you anywhere in Bavaria for a day. Salzburg isn't actually in Bavaria, as it's in Austria, but it's on the border, so it works.
Salzburg was SUNNY! That never happens from what I hear. We were expecting cold and rainy and thus took coats and umbrellas... then got there to find it was 70 degrees and sunny. We started up in the Fortress on the hill, which we did not see the last time we were in Salzburg. It was pretty neat. Awesome view, and it's pretty big. There's a lot to see. Came down, ate sausages and then did a quick tour of the city. Went out to dinner that night at a nice little Bavarian restaurant in downtown Munich.

Sunday we went to the Deutsche Musuem, which is HUGE. Seven floors. We were there from 10-2:30 or so and didn't see everything. We skipped a couple of floors and a couple exhibits on floors we did look at. Later that evening we went to visit the Munich stadium, Alianz Arena, where Bayern (soccer) plays. It's a huge stadium and made up of individual pieces that light up individually. (Wikipedia it, it's kinda neat) Would have been nicer if the fog hadn't decided to settle in right before we left. I'm pretty sure dad didn't believe me when I said we were actually walking towards it... you couldn't see anything! Then we realized the sky in front of us was red (the stadium lights up red/blue/white depending on the colors of the home team). Once we got within 50 feet or so we could actually see it. Right as we were walking away, it turned blue. That was cool.

Anyway, since then, my dad has left. It's lonely without someone to go out to dinner with every night! The elections are tonight, as you all know. A Canadian, some of the Brits and I are going to a cafe/bar with live coverage for a couple of hours once the poles start closing. I guess that means I'll be up kinda late tonight.

Tomorrow I got invited by my Religion Sociology classmates to a party for the Sociology students at the University at 9. Since my Wednesday goes from 8:30 (class in Garching... I get up at 7) through 7 (Biology ends) and then I have my Standard/Latin dance course from 7:30-8:30, I'm going to have a long day tomorrow!

Thursday Erika, Nicole and I are getting together for dinner.
Saturday Nicole, Hans (Fulbright student from Texas) and a couple of his friends are going to Nuremberg for the day.


Pictures:
Olympia Park: View from the top of the Olympia tower. One is of the BMW collection (Factory, Museum, Offices, BMW world), the other a not as good as in real life view of the Bavarian Alps and part of Munich
Salzburg: The Alps from the top of the castle, Me with the mountains, Salzburg from the top, Dad with a canon (to prove he was there), the castle from the ground
Alianz Arena: close up in the fog

Wow!

So a lot has happened in the past week and a few days. Sorry for the lack of post. The one night I set aside time to post was the night that Blogger decided to be down for maintenance.

Anyway. In the third week of classes and have finally narrowed it down to the classes I'm hopefully taking. I have 18 credit hours if I want to compare to UIUC, of which I hope I'll only end up taking 16 credit hours worth of finals. Basically here you go to class and then sign up for the final exam and then take that and get credit. It's quite different than the US but works in my favor because it gives me time to decide what I do and do not want to take a final for. Which at the moment is quite helpful since U of IL is being quite unhelpful in approving my classes abroad.

Anyway! Austria was gorgeous. It was great to see my host family again, especially Lisa since I hadn't seen her since I left! It was also good to have a home cooked meal! I also got to meet up with a friend from school there and explore a little more of Austria. And see the MOUNTAINS!!! (pictures soon... I haven't uploaded the last week's yet).

This last weekend was also quite insane. On Saturday, TUMI took a train to Regensburg. Regensburg, like every other city in Germany, has a church. It's a large church and it's a pretty church, but it is just a church. It also has a really, really old bridge. They started building it in the 1100's and it took 800 years to build. At that time it was the only bridge over the Danube in that area, so it was really important. It's a pedestrian bridge now.

Then Saturday night was the "Long Night of the Museums" which is a yearly event in Munich where all the museums in the city (and there appear to be over 100) are open from 7pm-2am. You buy a 15 euro ticket and you can get into any or all of them all night. A group of 7 of us started at 8:30 and went till 2. We hit 9 museums. We started out with 20 minutes each... so it was more of "glance at the museum". It was quite fun though. The downside is that they are pretty crowded because of all the people, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Then Sunday TUMI went to Lindau, on the Bodensee. Bodensee is the largest lake in Germany, and it's on the corner of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. We took a train down to Bregenz in Austria, 15 minutes away and toured the city, then took an hour long boat ride around the Bodensee and then toured Lindau. It's quite the pretty city once the fog goes away! The mountains and the lake are really nice. That was almost 3 hours away.

Pictures:
Lindau- Bodensee with the Alps in the background, Bregenz's church (sorry, forgot to rotate!), the city hall of Linda (colorful house) and the only lighthouse in Bavaria with the stone lion
Austria- the Alps (x3 because they're gorgeous)
Regensburg- Regensburg's big church and the 1100 AD bridge

Austria!

Going to Austria for the weekend! Post when I get back! Life has been insane with classes this last week!

So, the first weekend we spent touring the city center with TUMi. The second weekend, Nicole, Nick and I decided to explore a couple of the other highlights of the city, those not connected with old buildings. On Saturday, Nicole and I went to the Munich Zoo. It’s huge. One of the first things we noted was the lack of fences… Instead there was a knee-high fence and then you watched the animals either through a grove of trees or beyond a pond/stream. It was kinda cool. We were pleased to see that the lions and tigers were caged in though. The other thing we noticed was that the animals are really, really friendly and interactive. Some of them (monkeys in the inside part of the exhibit) were literally trying to play with people through the glass. The polar bear put on a show diving into the water and splashing. It was cool. It wasn’t till we were leaving that the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful day. We walked around the city for a bit and went to the famous market. It was a little expensive (tourism) but fun to look through.

The next day, Nicole, Nick and I met to tour BMW. BMW is located across the street from where I live. There are four buildings, the office building (tall and constructed like “four cylinders”), the factory (which offers tours Mon-Fri), the museum (bowl shaped), and the BMW Welt (BMW world) which is the largest BMW showroom of all their latest technology. And also a very, very interestingly designed building. I know this because Nick and Nicole are both architectural majors. It apparently defies the rules. BMW Welt is free to walk around. We did, and then went over to the museum and walked through that as well. It was pretty interesting (coming from someone who doesn’t care about cars). They do have a sample of their first hydrogen-fueled car there. I could get a job here! They also have a pretty awesome synthetic car that literally molds itself as necessary (the fabric retracts into itself to open up the headlights when they are on, and the car splits down the middle to get in and out).After we were BMW-ed out, we walked over to Olympia Park. It’s really pretty. Also home to Munich’s hill. Munich is about as flat as Illinois. This hill is man-made. After the city was bombed, they collected the rubble, piled it up, and made a hill out of it. Looking south you call also see the outline of the South Bavaria Alps.

Photos:

awesome picture of a giraffe
tiger at feeding time
BMW office building and Museum
BMW World
Awesome synthetic car
More fun animal photos