AMSTERDAM!

Okay. So Amsterdam was awesome. And a whirlwind of a trip. Wow.

Ashley and I woke up at 6 so we could catch the 7:00 subway to the 7:20 train to the 9:30 flight. Turns out there's no need to get the airport that far in advance because travel within the EU is actually easier than travel within say... the same state in the US. We got to the airport 90 minutes early and it took a total 20 minutes to check in, go through security, and walk across the airport to our gate (at least 10 minutes were walking). It's an hour and a half or so to Amsterdam. We were flying KLM Dutch Airlines... and in the hour and a half they still gave us drink service and two snacks (crackers and cookies!). Quite impressive. We landed in Amsterdam at 11:20 and caught the 20 minute train into the city. We had planned on taking a walking tour that started at 1:00. The train dropped us off at Central Station (which there's a picture of here because it was huge and gorgeous). Wow. Amsterdam is probably one of my favorite European cities so far. It's amazingly pretty. We walked around the outside area of the station for a bit because we had time to kill, then grabbed sandwiches and walked down 10 minutes to Dam Square (I'm translating) which is the main city square and where our tour was leaving from. The tour is part of Sandeman's Walking tours. They are actually offered in a variety of European cities and if you're in a city where they are offered, I highly recommend it. It was a three hour tour (actually, a little longer, but we had a half hour break in the middle to grab a bite to eat and sit down) and it took us through all the main points of the city. By the end we had a pretty good idea how to get around the city, and knew a lot of cool facts and history. Did I mention it was free? The tour started in the city center, as said, by the Royal Palace and the Dam Square Monument. We headed into the Red Light District (1 pm, remember, so not much going on there), then passed such things as the highest point in Amsterdam (1.3 m above sea level... the majority of the city is beneath sea level. they spend a lot of time fighting the sea), a hidden Catholic church with the biggest organ in Amsterdam hidden in a normal looking house (Amsterdam was a Protestant nation for a while), many, many gorgeous canals and crooked houses (it's a very water based city, so when you build your house on ground that sinks you end up with very crooked houses), the Old and New Church, a magnificent post office (you would have thought city hall...), China Town (complete with Buddhist temple), the Jewish District (redone in 60's style architecture after it was emptied by the Nazi's and then pillaged by the freezing townspeople during the war (to burn for warmth)... thus making it the ugliest part of the city according to our guide), this included the Rembrandt house. We saw a guild with a tower full of windows. To get in the guild (picture) you had to make a window, and if you failed your window got bricked over. In front of this guild is now an open market but used to be the site of the guillotine that the Dutch apparently fell in love with. We found the many coffee shops and learned that Marijuana is actually quite illegal in Amsterdam, but they were so focused on killing the hard drug problem that they ignore the soft drug one. Ironically it's illegal to smoke tobacco inside a building, but if a cop catches you smoking pot inside the same building, he won't care... we also saw the famous coffee shop from a scene in Ocean's 12.

Our tour ended around 5. We decided to head to our hostel (which took a while to find anyway) and drop our stuff off and check in. We were staying in a Christian Hostel in the middle of the Red Light District, which was quite interesting. It was about 10 minutes from the city center. I had my first chocolate covered waffle for dinner. Basically, a square of a Belgium waffle that's covered in chocolate... which they then warm up. Absolutely amaaaaaazing! Then we headed back to the central station to catch a canal cruise since we'd been told to make sure we took one. Turns out there are over 1200 canals that divide the city into 90 islands. We were exhausted by that point, but it was beautiful to see the city at night and especially all the lit up canals. After the tour we wandered around the city for another hour or so and then headed back to our hostel and figured we'd sleep early and get started early the next morning.

We got breakfast at the hostel at 8, when they started serving it. I opted for the hot breakfast option, which was french toast with 'syrup'. Or so they claimed anyway. I'm not really sure what it was, but it was possibly more solid than liquid and tasted very unlike any syrup I've ever had. We think it was closer to a very weird molasses. Either way, I ate my french toast with jam... then we headed over to the Anne Frank House, which was on the opposite end of town. It was COLD! So much for our weather report of 40 degrees! Granted it was also supposed to rain and at least we had sun, but we were freezing on our 20 minute walk. The line to the Anne Frank House can be a several hour's wait later in the day, but we got there right as it opened at 9 and so were the first in line. It only took about an hour to walk through but was definitely worth it. Sad though. I realized I had never read the Anne Frank Diary and that I really need to..

After that we decided to take a tram to the Rijksmuseum (pronounced "Reeks-museum") because Dutch like to throw a "j" in where other people might use a "c". (we actually spent a lot of time analyzing the language, but I'll come back to that). This was a good idea as the Rijksmuseum was very far south of the city. The museum is absolutely huge and gorgeous on the outside. 2/3 of it was closed for restoration but we were actually okay with that... the top 33% was still there and that's all we cared about since we didn't want to spend 6 hours there as apparently many people do. It's the biggest museum in the Netherlands and has a lot of Rembrandt paints, like his most famous, "the Night Watch". We had learned our our free tour how the Night Watch had actually sat in a basement for a very long time and been quite damaged before they decided to hang it on a doorway in the Amsterdam Town Hall. But it didn't fit... so they actually cut slices off all four sides to make it fit! We spent about 2 hours there and then took the tram back up to the main city and walked around in the sunshine.

With another four hours to kill, we headed to tourist information to see where we could find the nearest windmill... We'd been directed to a specific one at the hostel which neither Ashley or I could remember the name of. The tourist guide rolled her eyes at this and informed us all windmills were the same. Granted, she is Dutch and apparently found windmills rather boring. She directed us to the only one in the city, which was a "15 minute walk at most" east of the city along the harbor coast. We figured this was doable. The other choice was a 30 minute train ride north. Well, we started walking and 15 minutes later we had seen a ship yard, NEMO (the science and research center, which is on a boat off of a boardwalk) and a couple of cool sculptures... but still no windmill. Another 15 minutes and we had reached it. Apparently the Dutch walk extremely/span> fast. It was pretty cool though. Not spinning as it's actually a residence... which was also kinda neat. We figured once again that it was worth it to take the tram back since neither of us were up for another "15 minute" walk. Once back in the city we took a walk to the south to explore an area the tour had just discussed but we'd seen from our canal tour as well. We saw the Music theater and walked around inside. We also found the "X-tra Cold Ice Bar", where the bar, stools and glasses are actually made of ice. You get thermal suits before you go in. Entrance was 8 Euro though, so we just took a picture of the outside. It was cold enough outside that we didn't need to go in to the colder... by then it was starting to get dark. We found a souvenir shop and then headed back north to explore one more time. We each got another waffle (Munich really needs to jump on the band wagon with those... they are amazing), took a last walk through the Red Light District and headed back to the train to the airport. Once again we were at our gate within 20 minutes of getting to the airport. The flight back was even shorter, just over an hour. 9:00-10:30 from gate to gate. Was home before midnight... and exhausted!

But... it was definitely worth it. The city is absolutely gorgeous but obviously has it's own sense of personality.

I also fell in love with the Dutch language. Basically, it looks like a really messed up German dialect. The words you can't recognize as obviously being very similar to German, you just have to say out loud and you hear either a German or English word. "Ingang" for example, is entrance in Dutch. This would be "Eingang" in German, but they use the English "in" prefix instead of the German "ein" prefix. My favorite word was "uitgang" (exit). This looks nothing like "ausgang" in German, but if you say it out loud... "ooit", you can definitely hear an accented "out".

One more example since I'm quite obsessed with the language. Here's a sign we saw.
"Wij werken nu ann de energie van morgen". This is very easily readable by a german speaker "Wir arbeiten nun an der energie von morgen". The only word that doesn't really translate is "werken", which is, obviously "work" conjugated like a german verb (german verbs end in "en"). Anyway. I'm sure no one else is quite as thrilled as I am and probably just skipped that last paragraph, but I love it.

Now, for picture explanations...
1. The thinnest house in the Netherlands. It's around 1.8 meters wide. It's inhabitants are taller than that. Yes, it is still inhabited.
2. The red light district. Red lights were at the start of all the streets. Warnings? Or to draw attention? I found it semi amusing.
3. A canal
4. The widest bridge in Amsterdam. Most of the canals are pretty thin.
5. Very crooked houses along one of the main canals.
6. The before-mentioned guild.
7. The windmill we hiked for 30 minutes to.
8. The magnificent train station.
9. Ashely and I in front of a canal.
10. Quite possibly the most amusing part of the trip. "Closed due to Circumstances..." Apparently the Dutch are pretty vague people.

Prüfung Stress

Finals are creeping up on Munich and you can tell. You basically have to wait in line to wait for a locker to put your bag/coat in before going into the library (or just drop it in front of the sign in the library that says "please to not store your bags/coats in this area, but use the lockers located outside the door"... this sign is occasionally covered by a coat so one can not actually read it), and once you get inside, you usually end up walking around all three floors several times before you find a free seat.

German finals are a lot more memorization oriented than US ones, and apparently the month before finals here means Germans study, study, study.

But moving past that, not much has happened, but I figured I should update anyway, as it's been awhile. I've been doing a lot of studying. I have my Sociology presentation next Thursday over Gender Roles in Society. Two weeks left of all my other classes.

I worked at the cafe last Tuesday. That means I've worked my 4 times this semester, so I'm good till April. I did go hang out there last night though. It was "Quebec Night". They were showing a French Canadian movie (title: Seducing Dr. Lewis? in English... but they also told me the title in French and German). We watched in French with German subtitles and they served Canadian beer, which tastes extremely different from German beer... which I am indeed finally getting accustomed to. I wouldn't say I quite like it, but I can drink it without a problem, and I don't cringe when I'm offered a second one. But the Canadian stuff was a lot thinner. One of the Germans took a sip and commented that it tasted like they had taken German beer and added a lot of mineral water (carbonated water that they drink here). Though I don't think I'll find a German who will admit that another beer is better than their own no matter how hard I look...

A couple more interesting things. I worked Tuesday with a guy from Russia. He moved her to do his university because TUM had a really good program. We were talking about Germans and I was saying that they were a lot more closed than Americans (as in, it's a lot easier to meet Americans than Germans). His response was that he found the Germans much more open than Russians! I guess I don't want to go to Russia...

Also something that amused me. I was talking to my Sociology class (the four of us...) about why I was in Munich and what I had seen so far. I was saying that I'd been around Munich a lot, or, well, throughout Bavaria, but I hadn't really been to much more of Germany. Well, this brought up a quote from a very Bavarian movie that pretty much sums up just how different Bavaria and Germany are.
"Hi, I'm from Bavaria! That's right under Germany" ...

But... I'm gonna hit a new country this weekend! Ashley and I are going to Amsterdam for the weekend! We decided to just go ahead and do it because we're both interested in traveling and didn't want to end up trying to fit everything in in July. So we leave tomorrow morning, will get there by noon and are flying out Sunday night. It will be a short trip but we're both ready to fit as much in as possible. Current plans are a free city tour, a canal tour, the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum (most famous one there... mostly Rembrandt). We'll see what happens, but I'm pretty excited. It will be a nice break from studying 8 hours straight (or trying to...) on the weekends. Be ready for pictures!

So... Munich is cold.

I know everywhere is so don't bother telling me... It's depressingly cold though because there's no desire to leave the (relative) warmth of your room to go do something in Munich. Even going out on weekends becomes a debate of "is it worth it???"

I can't wait till spring...

Anyway, life is back to normal in Munich. I've been here a full week. Classes started again. Semester is wrapping to a close... we have three full weeks left until the lectures end and the finals start. Here's the final overview for me:

My Economic History of the New World's final is on Feb 12th and requires me to write two essays on course themes in an hour.

My Biology final is on Feb 13th. It's 90 minutes.

Linear Algebra is on Feb 16th. No idea how long it is yet...

My Religion Sociology class requires me to write a "Hausarbeit" which is a maximum 15 page essay (with outline, sources and appendix) over the topic of our presentation. We have all break to do it... it's due in April.

Basic Sociology... I'm actually not sure about this one. At the beginning she said we'd write a 5 page paper and present an article one day. We're presenting the articles in the next two weeks but she hasn't mentioned the paper since... so maybe it doesn't exist?

German has no final. The grade was my presentation, which I did back in November, so as long as I show up for the next three weeks, I'll be just fine.


Anyway, other than that... not much planned for the next few weeks. People are freaking out about finals and the weather is cold, which limits planning.

I am trying to put together a trip to Amsterdam the weekend after next... will update if that works out. Also hoping to get down to Hall, Austria one more time before I go home again. We're planning on a ski weekend! Then come finals... and then in the week after finals and before I go back, I'm hoping to get a little more traveling. There's a potential trip to Cologne, which may become a trip to Prag or a trip to Venice/Milan. We'll see!

Short post, so I'll tag on the most recent "differences" I've come across.
I mentioned these first three when I was in Austria... but it's the same in Germany it turns out.

1. Looseleaf doesn't really exist here. Well... it does, but not quite like we have it. And students dont' take notes on looseleaf. They take them on graph paper. No matter what the class is. I always feel semi-self conscious pulling out my 70 page college-ruled notebooks from the US. I bought some proper graph paper notebooks for linear algebra and bio so I'd fit in.

2. Chalkboard erasing. They don't erase. They wash. Once the board is full, they take a sponge-like on a stick and wet the entire board with it (like the things for your windshield at the gas station). At this point the board is dripping wet. Then they take a squeegee (proper title? the back of the thing you use at the gas station to dry your windshield?) Then then go across the board with the squeegee and dry the board (catching the water with the sponge thing) so that the chalk shows up. (chalk will not show up on wet board...) I was helping my partner wash the board before our religion sociology presentation and I commented that we didn't do it like this. She asked how we did it. I explained we simply wiped it. That seemed inefficient, she said, as that left the board white so you couldn't see what had been written over it... this is very true. Why haven't we come up with the German concept? Granted all their rooms have sinks in them so you can wet the sponge... so there is a bit of a design problem there, but it makes a lot more sense.

3. Frische Luft. For those of you who didn't feel like translating that, "fresh air". Germans are in love with it. They feel that if the windows of a room are closed too long it gets really stuffy and is really bad for your health. Thus, they air their rooms out. Yes, even when it is 3 degrees outside, our German teacher insists we open the windows for 15 minutes when we enter the class room so we can get some "frische Luft". This concept follows me everywhere. It's somewhere between amusing and annoying. They swear by it though.

4. "Clapping". You don't clap to show appreciation. You bang your knuckles against the desk (this is in more of an informal setting). If that didn't make sense, you basically make a fist and "clap" the desk. The weirdest part of this to me, is that they "applaud" like this at the end of every lecture. Without fail... like you're applauding the professor. Which is a nice concept. They'll also do it in the middle of lecture if the professor says something they like "this won't be on the test" or makes a joke they appreciate.


Anyway, that's all for now. Back to studying for bio... more later!

"Home" again

So I'm back in Munich. For those of you who didn't hear, the flight back to St. Louis was an adventure to say the least. I got into Chicago with no problems. The weather was clear despite the previous day's threats of a flight-delaying wintry mix... and then my flight was delayed for five hours anyway due to plane servicing. Turns out the plane was actually there at the gate... the problem was that it had another to-and-from flight to make before it could take me to St. Louis. Thus I took off at 8:30 instead of 2:55. In the meantime, I switched on my computer to take advantage of O'Hare's wireless only to discover that my hard drive had crashed somewhere in the previous 16 hours of travel and my computer would no longer boot. On top of that, my US SIM card had decided not to transfer all my US contacts back when I switched out my German SIM... much thanks to Amy for texting me numbers so at least my phone kept me busy for that long afternoon since I'd finished my book on the previous plane.

But anyway, being home was wonderful, and I did get home eventually. The flight back was uneventful in terms of my planes were on time and the flights were more or less pleasant. I flew through Atlanta. This might be related... ironically, I ran into one of the exchange students from Georgia Tech (who I know in Germany and actually met on my first day) at the airport. What are the chances we'd be flying back on the same flight? I hadn't even known he was going home. Even more ironically, we had seats right next to each other. Go figure.

We came to the depressing conclusion together that it was January 6th, the "Day of the Three Kings" (read: Epiphany), and thus a national holiday and thus everything was closed... so much for grocery shopping. Jet lag obviously sucked. I sat in my room for the next 8 hours and tried to stay awake since it was freezing outside and there was no where else to go...

But today's a lot better. I slept from 8:30-7:00 and feel just fine. Today was the first day of classes. I have no idea what my plans are for the next month other than a lot of studying as it's starting to slip in just how quickly finals are coming up and just how potentially bad this could be...

Oh, obviously I have a new hard drive for my computer now. And luckily the old one was recoverable (thanks Dad!) so nothing was lost for good.