Cologne!

So I got into Cologne at 3:10, which was 5 minutes after Hans had gotten there so we met up at the train station and headed out into the chaos. I had been lucky it turns out. Apparently he was on a “party train” filled with men dressed up as pink fairies and several cases of beer. Mine had been pretty quiet. Anyway, neither of us had realized we’d be on the train over lunch and thus had not eaten so we figured food was the first stop. We stepped out of the train station and… Wow. The cathedral is right there. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Cologne Cathedral is one of the most massive churches in Europe. It’s huge. And it’s right there. We attempted to walk back far enough on the square in order to fit the whole thing in our cameras. We were almost successful. Then Hans called his friend, Becka, who we were staying with. She’s on the same program as he is (Fulbright) and had been nice enough to offer her kitchen floor to us for the night even though they’d only met once (and we’d never met) at the beginning of the year. She was nearby with the three other people staying with her. One was a friend from college who is studying in Hamburg, and who had brought two friends with her. The group of us went in search of sausages (I have eaten way too many sausages in the least three days. Wow…. Then we were handed a beer (Kölsch is the Cologne beer (also, actually, the name of their dialect)). I’m versed enough in beer to know that it was not Munich beer and that people from Munich probably consider it a step down. It’s a little closer to American stuff. We walked over to the riverfront so Hans and I could see the Rhein and then we joined the rest of the city and went searching for a bar. Let me stop for a minute and explain Carnival. It’s really Marti Gras, but Germany takes it to a different level (Well, parts of Germany. Turns out there was almost nothing going on in Berlin). They add the Halloween aspect. The streets are basically filled with people dressed up as anything and everything in the world (criminals, pirates, bumblebees and brightly colored wigs were very popular). Each of these people is holding a beer. Some of them have string tied around their necks with a little pouch to hold their beer. Some of them are wearing belts that have little pouches attached with individual bottled shots. A large portion of them are holding sausages, eating currywurst or Berliners (as they’re ironically called here… they’re Krapfen in Bavaria/Austria… this is the famous Jelly Donut JFK referred to himself as. In Munich they are powdered with marmalade inside. Cologne has a second flavor with a raspberry/strawberry type jam… much tastier!) There are also (because this is Germany and Germany doesn’t miss a chance to add alcohol when it can), Berliners filled with liquor. Now Munich, the drinking capitol of Germany, has these donuts filled with Eierliquor (eggnog liquor), Sekt, Amaretto, etc. Cologne just had Eierliquor. I’m fond of eggnog so I got one. Turns out there’s about a shot of liquor in there, which comes spilling out when you bite into it. Anyway, so this is what we’re walking through. One big Halloween drinking party. That’s on the streets. When you walk into a bar, you add dancing. This is the typical German music that, as my host sister, Lisa, put it once: “you only hear at festivals because you have to be drunk to actually think it’s good”. If I can figure out how to post music, I’ll post a couple of examples. So all these drunk costumed people are merrily dancing to the music and taking shots of beer… well, not really on the last one. That’s just what Hans and I determined. The Kölsch beer is sold in 0.2 liters in the bars. That’s a very tiny glass. Less than half of a bottle. They’re usually only 1 Euro though. Anyway, we hung out there until Amelia caught up with us and then went with Becka back to her apartment to drop off our stuff. We were going to a parade! Or so we thought. It was too far to walk and should have been about 15 minutes on the subway. (Cologne subways are actually subways/trams combined since they’re above ground more often than not and run like trams). However, this was not the case. You will think I am making the following story up but I promise I am not. There were approximately a million people waiting for the subway. Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Which is why it was great when the subway showed up… already packed full. We all crowded on anyway. Doors close. Subway jolts forward. We are smashed closer to the pirates and bumblebees than we ever thought we’d be. Subway stops. We stand smashed in subway for a good 5 minutes. Doors open. People get off. More people get on. Doors close. We sit. Doors open. People start yelling to get off. People get off. Eventually we are finally told the train is broken and we need to exit. We exit. Next train is coming in 15 minutes. We figure this is probably because the same thing is happening one stop down. Train finally comes. Also extremely crowded. We crowd on. This time it goes. Unfortunately we have to transfer three stops later. We exit. Our connection is coming in 2 minutes. Not bad. 5 minutes later it’s still coming in 2 minutes. And then it changes. It’s coming in 7 minutes. Approximately 20 minutes after we get there, it finally comes. Of course it’s full. A lot of people get off though. We get on. Everyone else gets on. Doors close and we stand there for about 3 minutes before it jolts forward… and stops. Doors open. People get out. We decide we’re sticking put until someone tells us to get off. More people get on. Doors close. Doors open. People get off. People get on. Announcement tells us tram is broken and we need to get off. Again??? We can’t believe it. We get off. Next one’s coming in 3 minutes. Yeah, right. Sure enough 10 minutes later we’re finally on a tram that’s moving. And packed full. We finally get to our stop and pile off and look at the time. It’s been two hours. Becka calls her other three friends who had gone straight to the parade and asks where they’re standing. Turns out the parade just ended. Yeah… and of course there’s no way we’re getting a tram back because not only is everyone that was on the tram we just got off of climbing back on, so is everyone from the parade. So we decide to walk. It’s several miles but it’s along the river, which is pretty at least. Unfortunately by the time we’ve been walking 30 minutes or so we’re still only a third of the way to where her friends ended up. We decide to chance a different line. It’s coming in 8 minutes and it starts at this stop so it should be empty. Well, 8 minutes was fairly optimistic on their parts. It takes 35 minutes. Luckily, it is indeed empty when it gets to us. We get off at an entertainment center. Food is everywhere. As are bars… that are jammed full. There are lines outside of all of them to get in but of course no one is leaving so the lines aren’t moving. We hungrily devour Chinese food which is surprisingly really good, and then wander for 15 minutes or so away from the party to find a bar we can get into. The one we find is pretty smoky. With the plan to see the city early in the morning, Hans, Amelia and I decided we’d had enough of the party for the night and we headed back to Becka’s and went to sleep. Three of us on an air mattress in the kitchen. It was fun. We woke up at 7 because we wanted to see the Cathedral, which, due to Carnival, was only open 6 am-9 am. And by open they mean you can walk through it. The tours were all cancelled, as was the possibility to go up in the towers (each over the length of a football field in height to give you an idea…). We wandered around inside anyway. Again. Massive. From there we started to hit the other sight seeing things. Where Potsdam was filled with palaces, Cologne has churches. Over 30 of them listed on the map. We hit 5. Or at least we tried to. The first two we went to we got in fine… because it was Sunday morning and they were having services… oops. When we tried to hit more that afternoon, they were closed. As was everything else we tried to see… the Ludwig Museum is their known art museum with a large Picasso and Rembrandt collection. Closed for Carnival. There was a Roman/German Museum with Roman artifacts from the area… closed for carnival. AND… the best reason to go to Cologne other than the Cathedral is the LINDT CHOCOLATE FACTORY! Turns out Cologne is the leading producer of chocolate in Germany and the factory/museum gives FREE SAMPLES. The website had not said it’d be closed (I had double checked). We walked all the way down there. CLOSED FOR CARNIVAL!!! AHH!!!  So basically we determined you either go to Cologne to see the city or you go to Cologne for Carnival. You can’t do both. The entire city shuts down. I guess they can afford to do that due to the amount of beer and sausage they sell. Amelia took a train home at that point as she’s ending her semester in Munich on Tuesday (same as me, but going home for good). Hans and I wandered around a little more, taking advantage of things they couldn’t close (such as the original city wall and a couple of city gates). Then we took an evening train to Düsseldorf to check into our hotel. Cologne was, obviously, completely booked for the weekend. We crashed at 9:30 and woke up nice and early at 6:00 to catch breakfast at 7:00 and take a subway to the center of Düsseldorf. It was just barely dawn and the streets were empty. We walked around the Altstadt (old city center) and then to the river and circled. Went back to the hotel, checked out and took a 9:30 train to Cologne. Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) is the day of the huge parade in Cologne. I mean huge, too. It’s a 6 hour parade. Well, we were on the party train to get there. There were no seats left so people were crowded in the aisle. The train was blasting Carnival music and the middle aged prisoners beside us were taking shots of vodka. Yes, I did say 9:30 am. We met Becka and a friend of hers (the other three had gone home the day before) for the parade. Let me just say, wow… It makes me wish I’d been to the New Orleans parade just to compare, but I have a pretty good feeling this one would have been really hard to miss. I mean, come on, 6 hours! And let me tell you about the candy. I’m used to getting thrown smarties and tootsie rolls. They throw chocolate bars. I’m not talking about snickers fun size (though they throw those too in the form of Bounty and Tolberone). I’m talking about 100 gram full sized Hershey bar type chocolate bars. They were throwing large boxes of truffles. I’d love to know the candy budget. It was awesome. They also throw individual flowers (probably roses due to Rose Monday…), which was really cool. Basically candy and flowers everywhere. And everyone is yelling “Kölle Alaaf!” (Cologne first! or something in their dialect) to get the floats to throw the candy. Meanwhile the guy with the loudspeaker is telling us all to greet each individual float as it comes by (by screaming this) and telling the floats to “let the candy scatter like you’re scattering seeds!” (something like that… it’s a German phrase and that’s my best explanation). There were some really intelligent guys who were actually profiting off the parade. Most people were just leaving their empty beer bottles/shot bottles on the ground. We saw quite a few people walking around with huge bags and collecting these bottles. When you buy glass or plastic bottles in Germany, they add a “Pfand” (deposit) onto the price for the bottle. If you return these to the supermarket, you get the Pfand back. It’s often 15-20 cents. Considering the number of bottles on the streets, these guys were going to make a fair amount of profit. Anyway, we left the parade around 2:30, which was good because we had to get back to the train station… which meant we actually had to cross the parade three times. This is easier said than done since we had a lot of police officers trying to prevent us from doing just that. We did eventually make it with 20 minutes or so to spare and then I caught up 3:30 train and Hans caught his 3:50 train back to Munich. It was good to sit down, and I was, by that point, looking forward to a 10 hour plane ride of not-walking. Anyway, got back to Munich at 8:30. Funny how Munich Hauptbahnhof (main station) now feels like “home”. Travels at an end for now… back to the US.

Pictures:
Hans and I at the Rhein
The Cologne Cathedral
Close up on the door. Look at that detail!
Me with my "Berliner"
The parade: this pretty much sums Carnival up

BERLIN!

Okay! So this is going to be two posts (one per city) because they’ll be long, especially with pictures.

Caught the 8:20 train which ended up 15 minutes late along the way causing me to miss my connection in Nuremberg by 5 minutes… and thus I had to wait another hour for the next one. Not so thrilled with Deutsche Bahn. But I eventually got on the train and headed north! Nice scenery on the ride actually. Very sunny outside (figures since that was the day I was on the train… it snowed the other 4 days). Lots of windmills and we even passed through a very hilly/low mountainous area (which I knew where that was…). Got to Berlin at 3:05 and hopped a subway to the hostel where I dropped my stuff off and met up with Amelia who’d gotten in a few hours earlier. It was around four by that point. We decided to walk down to Potsdamer Platz, which is the commercialized (modern?) square of Berlin (the Times Square, I guess). She’s an architect so it was a hot spot. It’s got some cool buildings including the Sony Center which is a bit movie theater but has a really cool roof and open air center before you reach the buildings. It was freezing as the sun went down so we stopped for hot chocolate before circling around to the Opera House and walking along the Tiergarten (City Park) and over to the Reichstag. This is the German parliament building. It has a glass dome at the top and it’s free to go to the top to look out over the city or, from the top you can look down and see where parliament meets. Of course it was 8 by this point so the city was dark and parliament was not in session, but it was still pretty cool. Going late we missed the usual hour plus queue to get in. From there we headed back to the hostel. Went to bed early that night but woke up at 7 on Wednesday. Plan was to take the free walking tour (what I did in Amsterdam). We decided to walk through the Tiergarten to get there since the pickup was on the other side at 10:30. It was gorgeous in the snow but absolutely freezing. The Tiergarten has, along with lakes/streams/statues/momuments/fountains, the Siegesäule (victory column) in the center and the home/office of the Bundespresident. Made it to the tour pick-up, which was… a Dunkin’ Donuts. Not even kidding. They have taken over Berlin. Almost as many as in Chicago. We defrosted with hot chocolate and a donut, then set out again, with the tour. The tour took us to all the main places. The Brandenburg Gate, of course, the famous Aldon Hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his baby from, the Jewish memorial (which is a really cool memorial, by the way)… we got to see fragments of the wall all around the city, Checkpoint Charlie (the most famous cross-over between East/West Berlin), the parking lot that stands above the bunker Hitler hid out in, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church- it was bombed during the war and they decided not to restore it and instead rebuilt the church in a very modern style directly next to it). The French and German cathedrals are identical and face each other. The Berlin Cathedral is the massive one and very impressive. We saw the location of the book burnings and the memorial to them (you can look down into an underground room at that point. The room is completely empty except for empty bookshelves that would have fit the 25,000 books that were burned). We also met Ampelmann (Stoplight man), who is the apparently quite famous East German version of the stop/go at crosswalks. He’s so well known that West Berlin adopted him after reunification and there are entire shops dedicated to him (selling t-shirts and the like). The tour ended on Museum Island which is home to about 5 museums and isn’t really an island… the river just runs around it. From there we walked down to the Jewish museum, which is both a very impressive building in general (just looks really cool) and definitely worth the 2,50 Euro it was to get in! (Berlin has great student discounts just about everywhere). It covers the history of the Jewish people but there are a couple areas dedicated to the holocaust. See facebook photos if you can for some pictures/explanations. After that we ended up going to a dinner party. Amelia had randomly met someone she knew from New Zealand in the London airport (she’d been to London the week before flying to meet me in Berlin). This guy, Alex, is currently living in Berlin, two blocks from our hostel actually, and invited us over to his dinner party. The food was quite good and it was a lot of fun to talk to his friends, a lot of who were from England actually. That was a bit of a late night. Thursday, we split for the morning. Amelia wanted to go to Dessau, 90 minutes away by train to see some architecturally famous buildings. I headed to Schloss Charlottenburg, which is Berlin’s palace. I have to say that I wasn’t that impressed, but at this point, I’ve seen a lot of palaces and it was very pretty but no more impressive than Nymphenburg in Munich. From there I headed up to Alexander Platz, which is just north of the museums and the Berlin Cathedral. That’s where the TV tower is (which you can go up, but I’ve also been up a lot of tall things in Germany and the TV tower isn’t that tall/special considering), the Red City Hall (yes, actual name), another church, the Neptune Fountain (big fountain of the god, Neptune) and the Radisson Hotel. I read about this online. It’s got an elevator in it that is surrounded by an aquarium. It’s supposed to be really cool, but unfortunately was the way to get to Berlin’s SeaWorld, and the elevator world was not worth the 13 Euro entrance fee. From there I met up with Amelia and we went up north to an area of shops/cafes/restaurants Alex had recommended. We got dinner at one and then went to Museum Island. See Berlin keeps its museums open till 10 pm on Thursday evening and for the last 4 hours they’re all free!!! Turns out this isn’t completely true… the Pergamon museum (the one I really wanted to go to) had a special exhibit so it wasn’t free, but we went anyway and it was definitely worth it. First we went to the Altes Musuem which has the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti and a lot of hieroglyphics. Very cool. The Pergamon has the reconstructed Pergamon Alter, Ishtar Gate, Market Gate of Miletus and the Mshatta Facadeetu, all of which were collected from their native homes in the Middle East many years ago. Very cool. One of my favorite things in Berlin actually. It’s a very different museum just because the “artifacts” are all huge. By the time we got out it was after 9 and we were exhausted so we headed back. Friday morning we woke up early again to subway down to the East Side Gallery, which is the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall. It’s a little less than a mile, I think. Berlin hired artists to come in and paint it with their own idea of freedom (the opposite of the wall). Now it’s so covered with graffiti as well that it’s hard to tell what’s original and what’s not, but the graffiti isn’t bad, it’s more just the public’s idea of freedom, which is kinda neat. I had been told by at least 3 people to try to make it to Potsdam, which is about 30 minutes away by train, just outside of Berlin. It’s the “City of Emperors” and has over 70 palaces apparently. We decided to take the tour offered through the same group that does the free tours just because the free tours were so good. It was 12 Euro but since we had no idea what to see in Potsdam we figured it was worth it. Well, unfortunately it was raining in Potsdam and really, really cold… and our tourguide was doing the Potsdam tour for the first time. And there were just two of us. Amelia and I. The result was that the tour was probably not that good of an idea. (it also ended up taking 6 hours instead of 4…). Potsdam, however, is a cool place and definitely worth it. We saw about 7 of the palaces, and in his favor, we did learn a lot about the history of the place. I think if he’d had a little more practice, we’d moved a little faster and the weather had been a little nicer (I’m sure spring there is gorgeous…), it would have been worth it. Anyway, we got back close to 6, which killed my afternoon plan of the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Instead, I decided I wanted to go check out the Berlin Cathedral. Normally there’s a 3 Euro entrance fee. I don’t pay 3 Euro to go inside European churches. We did, however, read, that there’s free entrance for the prayer time from 6-6:20. Perfect. Our tour guide tagged along as he hadn’t known this and hadn’t yet been inside. Turns out “prayer time” means service… oops. Still worth it. Amelia and I headed home and picked up some food in the supermarket. We’d met a couple of Australian girls at the hostel and had decided to cook dinner together. Afterwards the four of us went to check out Berlin’s night life… and when they say Berlin has quite the night life, they mean it. We stepped into a cool looking bar/club only to find it almost completely empty. We asked the bouncer when it started to get busy. This was around 11:30pm. His answer? “5 am”… riiiight. Well, we won’t be around for that… We eventually found a place that was actually busy. Very busy in fact. We didn’t stay late because we were all tired, but were glad for the experience. Amelia was taking a very early train to Cologne so she could meet a family friend in Düsseldorf (30 minutes away) for lunch. My train was at 11, so I slept in till 8, checked out and then walked around the city for a bit. And the next section of my journey, Cologne, will continue in the next post.

Pictures:
The Berlin Cathedral!
A section of the Berlin Wall
The Jewish Memorial (or translated, "the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe")
Me with the Brandenburg Gate
Schloss Charlottenburg
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche
Me at the East Side Gallery (with the Berlin Wall)

Intermediate Post...

Well, I'm home safe and sound from a week of travel. Berlin and Cologne were both awesome and I have large amounts of pictures and stories from each. That being said, I got home at 8:30 tonight and it's now almost 2 am and I finally have all my stuff together and ready for the 10:00 am flight tomorrow back to the US... soooo... I'll make my actual posts with stories and pictures later. Possibly in the airport if I'm so blessed with a working computer and wireless internet. Regardless, they'll be up eventually. But for now, I'm back safely. I had a great time, and I'll be in the States again tomorrow evening (6 pm hopefully).

....Aaaaaaand Finished!

Actually I need to stop thinking that. Because that depends first on my having passed Linear Algebra and second, I still have that 15 page research paper to write for Religion Sociology. But that's not due till April and the repeat test for Linear is also in April, so I'm done for now either way.

Anyway. As said, Saturday was the going away dinner for Nicole. We had a group of ten and went to a Mexican restaurant that, though quite tasty, is still not the Mexican I miss due to the fact that they don't have spice... Hans (who's half Mexican) finally asked if they had hot sauce. They had Tabasco sauce... which they brought him. It was a lot of fun, though, of course sad. I'll miss Nicole a lot.
Sunday was a stay home and study day for me. Monday was officially Nicole's last day. We all got lunch at the Cafeteria at 1:00. Amelia and I agreed to help her take all her stuff to the airport. Well, I had originally agreed but Nicole remembered I had exams and asked Amelia to help instead and then we both ended up helping. Reminding me I'm going to have fun dragging all my stuff to the airport in August... hmm... So that was afternoon. Her flight was at 7, so after lunch we headed back to her place, did some last minute chocolate shopping for her, got her stuff, said her goodbyes and then headed up to the airport. I got home around 7 and went right back to studying.
Tuesday was actually an all day review session in Garching for Linear Algebra. It was actually considered a one-day course over semester break. Two were being offered. Tuesday and Thursday (same material). I went at the start, 9:30, but then had to leave at 3 to get to my German class. It was the last day and she was passing out our certificats/grades, but luckily it was starting at 4 instead of 3. The result was that I missed the last 90 minutes of the review session. Figured I'd go catch the last bit on Thursday after my Econ exam. After German went home and studied...
Wednesday I studied. All day. Took an hour break to go to dance. The course is over but every Wednesday the room is open and they turn music on and you can practice for two hours. I told my partner I could only stay for one, but it was fun (and a nice break) nonetheless. Then I went home and studied.
Thursday I woke up, studied, and went to Econ. In the review session he'd given us 14 topics and told us there would be 14 questions, one corresponding to each topic. We had to choose two and then had an hour to write an essay on each. I'd gone ahead and just studied all the material I could find on the two topics I felt most comfortable with. (Shock city development in the 19th/20th century... specifically New York, San Fransisco and Los Angelos, and Imperial Economies of the early New Worlds: fur trade, cod fishing, sugar plantations and merchantilism). I figured this was slightly risky, since I had no fall back topic, but I got lucky and was adaquately prepared to answer both questions. I actually didn't even get a chance to read through the other 12. I just found those two and answered. An hour for two essays is not much once you subtract the time it takes to write all your information on the exam and read the questions and organize your thoughts. Still, I felt pretty good about that walking out. No idea when the grades will be up, but apparently it won't be too long becasue the professor is going back to New Zealand... so then I headed out, grabbed a slice of pizza for lunch and headed up to Garching... or tried to. First of all, I had just missed the train I needed by two minutes (couldn't have made it b/c of the exam), but they were only running ever 20 minutes. Then it came 10 minutes late because of the work on the station I was traveling through. The result was that I ended up in Garching at 4:00. I plopped down next to a guy in one of the few free seats and started furiously copying everything on the blackboard. He commented that I was a little late. I replied that the U-Bahn had been late, to which he responded, "since 9 am? Hey, are you American?" ... Well, then I had to look up from my copying to explain that I'd been there Tuesday and had had to leave early and had just had an exam and yes, was American. And then we chatted for a bit while I continued to copy notes. Luckily for me the review ended up going till 4:50 instead of 4:30, so I still felt like it was somewhat worth it. Afterwards headed home... and studied...
Friday's exam was Bio at 11:00. This was my first real experience with German Uni exams. First I made the mistake of sitting somewhere I wasn't allowed to. Apparently they're a little anal about cheating on the final... I guess because it's the only grade? Well, first I was in the wrong row. You are only allowed to sit in every other row. Then I was in the wrong seat. Because unlike U of IL, where you have to keep one empty seat between each student, Germans apparently have extremely good eyesight, because the professor insisted on two empty seats between students. Thus the majority of the seats in the lecture hall were very empty and two lecture halls were needed to test a class that normally takes up 2/3 of a lecture hall half that size... But anyway. The exam was 90 minutes. And 18 questions. Yes. 17 powerpoints of about 40 slides each. So many cycles and enzymes and processes and molecules covered and memorized and studied for so many hours of my life... and I got asked an entire 18 questions. I was mildly irratated actuatlly. I had the very strong desire to regurgitate everything I had learned to prove I had learned it. But I didn't get to. To top it off, the first question, which was 10 out of 100 points, was on the second slide fo the first powerpoint... and one of the perhaps 3 out of 17 x 40 slides I had not bothered to copy into my notes and thus hadn't learned... figures, no? But despite all of that, I felt really good about the rest of it (I did learn that stuff!). So then I grabbed lunch, went home, and took a break for a couple of hours. And then started studying.
Saturday I studied. Saturday evening a group from the Cafe I work in were going ice skating and I had been invited when I randomly met one of them on the U-Bahn. So I took a study break. We went to the Ice Arena in Olympia Park. It was a lot of fun and needed... and then I went back to studying.
Sunday morning was another brunch in the Cafe. I once again ran into a lot of people from the Cafe and had to turn down their offer to play a board game after they ate... to go back and study...
Monday... Linear Algebra exam was at 9:15. It was 7 questions, but that's typical for math finals at UIUC so it was relatively expected. Apparently you need 25/60 points to pass. This explains why the grading conversion scale for TUM -> UIUC is a little warped and me passing at TUM does not guaruntee that I will pass at UIUC. Unfortunately this may have been the case. I wasn't clueless. I worked my way through 2 of the problems relatively completely, and another two at least partway. The last two I just didn't understand... they were written in my professor's lovely version of math which I have yet to grip since I can't find it anywhere online or in any of my 16 textbooks... And the last problem was a set of 11 true/false. Except that when you guess wrong it's -1, not 0, which means it cancles the one you guessed right. As in, don't guess. Aaaanyway, unlike other courses here where I was warned results would come out in 4-6 weeks because professors go on vacation, Linear promised to have scores by tomorrow morning... I was going to check before I left until I recently realized that I'm not sure where they will be posted. So I might not actually know...

But moving on. So! I'm finished with the semester! And now on to travel! Tomorrow morning I'm catching an 8:20 am train to Berlin. I'll get in at 2:00 and hopefully meet up with Amelia, who will be flying in from London around 11:00. We're staying at the same hostel, anyway, so we should meet up eventually. We're in Berlin until Saturday morning when I'm taking a train down to Cologne to meet up with Hans who will be taking a train up from Munich. Thursday through Tuesday is the huge Faschings/Carnival Celebration (read huge German Marti Gras). It's called Faschings in Munich (as it was in Austria), but is known as Carnival in the North. Cologne has the biggest celebration in Munich. Because of this, booking lodging was a bit difficult. Saturday night we're sleeping on the floor of the kitchen of another student Hans knows in Cologne. Sunday night we're staying in Düsseldorf, which is only 25 minutes away by train. Monday we'll stay in Cologne for the big Rose Monday parade, and then we'll take (separate, unfortunately) trains back to Munich that afternoon to get in that evening. Then I'll move my stuff around to finish packing because Tuesday I have a 10:00 am flight home. I'm probably going to be pretty out of reach for the next week, except for a few possible email/facebook checks if the hostel has internet access as promised... but expect lots of pictures when I get back!

One "Semester" Down...

The semester officially ended on Friday the 6th. Granted I have three exams and a 15 page paper still coming up, but the semester is in school terms over. And now I'm going to take a study break to give a quick update of what I've been up to for the last two weeks or so (since Amsterdam).

Okay, so the Monday after I got back was the last Stammtisch of the semester (that's the TUMi biweekly gathering that we cooked for). The rest of the week was a lot of preparing... for my Referat on Thursday for Sociology! Basically we (the class of 4) had been given four texts and told to divide them up and then present the topics to the class. I ended up with "Gender Roles in Society". I put together a 30 page powerpoint and had 90 minutes to present (two people presented each day, and this is the 3 hour block class every other week). Well, I was a little nervous about this obviously because I wanted those slides to have grammatically correct German on them and I wanted to know what I was talking about enough to fill 90 minutes... and of course it went just fine. There was a lot of discussion about the topic within the group and I had ample material to cover the time and even go slightly over. At the end she told us she was going to give everyone a "1-scale", so either a 1,0, 1,3, or 1,6 (i guess it's kinda like A+/A/A-?) not becasue she didn't want to give us all 1,0's but because that looks suspicious. After class she told me I was getting a 1,3 and she would have loved to have given me a 1,0, but I (of course) don't participate quite as much as the other three and she knows that that's becasue of the language barrier. Sadly, this is the grade that's getting combined with another class- my Religion Sociology class... the one I have a 15 page paper due for. So hoping I can pull off a 1 something on that paper too!

Anyway, that made my day. That night was the finale of the Comedy going on in the cafe. I hadn't been planning on working but they were in need of people since most people were pulling out because of finals. So I decided to go. Turned out to be a lot of fun. The comedy was great. I understood most of it. That's always a plus since a lot of them had been speaking a pretty strong dialect.

Friday was a study day. Saturday morning I took a train down to Hall. Hung out with them on Saturday and then Sunday Lisa and I went skiing. Well, she went snowboarding. I, of course, have not been on skiis since I last was in Austria... about three years ago. So I put skiis on and Lisa says, "Let's just go straight up to the top. You don't need the practice hill"... well, once would have been nice.... but then we were on the lift. Of course the steepest part of the hill was the top drop. But I survived. The first time down took about 45 minutes... the last time down I made it in 10. That was an accomplishment. Of course I got my share of homecooked meals... and two of my favorites! Spätzle and Knödel.

As for this week... Monday was uneventful. Recovery from sore muscles from skiing. Tuesday was Strike Day! The Subways/Buses/Trams decided to strike from 4 am to 3:30 pm. They told everyone a week in advance. Of course this was great for all the students (a fair amount apparently) who had exams on Tuesday and couldn't just skip class. I would have except two professors had told us to make sure we made it because it was the last week and was important. Thus I woke up an hour early, layered up, and walked the 45 minutes to class. On the bright side it was a very pretty area. I found out I face the opposite direction I thought I did... I was apparently very directionally confused up until now. The other bright side of Tuesday is that I decided to go to the LMU class I've been randomly attending since a couple of weeks into the semester. I had originally bee interested after it was recommended to me by Erika, my "mentor" here, I guess. The title translates to "What is good German? What is correct German?" and basically is a German grammar class that leads to him informing us at leat half a dozen times per class that this example is yet another reason German is so hard for non-native speakers... because even though this is technically incorrect, it's very commonly used. And even though this doesn't follow any of the rules, it's right. It's sometimes very interesting and sometimes very depressing. But anyway, it only meets an hour per week so I figured there was no point tryign to get credit for it... and then the last day he asked if anyone needed a grade for the class. I wandered up with the large mass of people to see what was going on... and the class is 2 SWS (so 1 credit in the US system) and he was giving everyone a 1,0 for the class and signing the sheets. I figured I might as well grab one... of course it doens't do anything for my graduation requirements, but it is a full 1 credit hour of A that will indeed factor into my GPA. :) I'm gonna need those, I think!

Anyway, so Tuesday night, Nicole and Amelia from New Zealand and I went out to dinner at a place Nicole and I had gone to our first week here. Wednesday was my last real day of class, followed by my last real day of dance (hence forth for semester break it's a "free training" two hour period you are invited to if you so choose), followed by a celebration of Ben's, the other one from New Zealand, birthday. Thursday I only had a review session for Econ. That was a big relief. He told us the topics of the questions (14 topics... there will be 14 questions). We have to choose two and write an essay on them. We have an hour. AP style essay writing... but the bright side is you only have to actually know 2 topics, which is good since I haven't been paying all that much attention in class since I started out thinking I only had to write a term paper on a topic of my choice and found out later I had to take the exam. I figure I'll study three areas to be safe. :)

Thursday night was a karoke night at the cafe. It was the last night it was opened this semester so it was kinda just a big party. It was a lot of fun. Most of the people I've met working there were there and I met some new people as well. Friday was more studying, followed by meeting a group of the architechts for dinner and hanging out in a cafe for a bit. Afterwards I went to the End of the Semester Exchange Student Party at the disco across from me. Very convienently located. That was also a lot of fun as I saw a lot of people I knew. Tonight is actually Nicole's going away dinner as she leaves Monday. I'm actually heading out to that in about 10 minutes so I guess I'll stop here.

First exam is Thursday from 2-3 (Econ)
Second is Friday from 11-12:30 (Bio)
Third is Monday from 9:15-10:45 (Linear)

Wish me luck!