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