8 Months Down, 2 to Go

So following two insane weeks of travel life settled down a little... I spent the first week after Steve left trying to catch up.

On Saturday, Tim, Kristina and I went to Dachau. It was the first concentration camp opened up and is in a little town about 20-30 minutes outside of Munich. It's actually still in the public transportation system- that's how close it is. Unfortunately it was a really overcast day and started raining as soon as we reached the meeting point for our tour group. Turns out a lot of the tour was outside. It was an organized tour for students in English and TUMi had sent us an email about it. It was obviously very depressing. Dachau was actually a concentration camp and not used extensively for mass murder. It was still a pretty sober place and there was still a lot of death. Everything was really gray, no color anywhere. By the time the three hour tour was over we were cold, hungry and kind of humbled.
We weren't done yet though... we had Stammtisch shopping to do. And so we headed off to the store and loaded a cart with 15 loaves of bread, 15 packets of cheese (we cleaned the store out of that kind...) as well as noodles and margarine and chocolate and marshmallows and jello and graham cracker substitutes. We got some weird looks at the cash registers. All the stuff ended up the floor of my room. The cooking party was Sunday. It took considerably less time than last semester. Amy, Tim, Hans and Matt formed a grilled cheese team in my room using both burners. (pretty sure Tim, Hans and Matt were in charge of buttering bread and unwrapping cheese... we left the boys with the easy jobs) while Amy flipped. Kristina and I went down to her room to make the jello. The entire process only took like 3 hours including cleanup. Then we packed all 150 sandwiches back in the loaf bags and carted them up to Tim's fridge. Kristina and I had fridges full of jello cups. We sent Amy and Matt with huge bags full of the dry ingredients (mac & cheese and s'mores).
Monday at 6:30 Hans showed up and helped us pull 150 loaves of grilled cheese out of Tim's fridge and load them into backpacks. Then we awkwardly layered 150 not-quite completely solid jello cups into boxes with cardboard in between for layering... and headed out to the subway. I know how weird we looked because everyone kept running to open the subway doors for us. We got to the church and started trying to boil insanely large amounts of water in three pots. The water ended up taking almost an hour to boil. Wow. Turns out that was okay because 15 minutes into our cooking we were told we couldn't serve the food for an extra hour... because there was a concert goign on for the first half and they wanted people to go to it. We were mildly annoyed. The people waiting for food would soon be even more annoyed (not that I blamed them). We started warming up grilled cheeses on one oven shelf and warming up marshmallows on the other. We laid out 150 plates, forks and s'more halves and then slowly started putting it together.... and finished a good 30 minutes before we were still allowed to serve. We got to eat at that point though. Yummy. The result for everyone else sadly was slightly cold grilled cheese and mac & cheese but we still found it tasty... I actually didn't hear any reviews from the outside... except for one of the Tutors who pointed at the mac & cheese and asked what kind of "cheese" was on it. I explained it was fake and it was powder. He repeated, "what kind of 'cheese'?" We eventually explained the concept of fake cheese, which, we pointed out, was also in the grilled cheese...
But, all else aside it was a success simply because we successfully managed the meal. Definitely not as grand as the Thanksgiving Feast, but still fun!

Anyway, the rest of the week went on as normal except for other random holiday on Thursday. Something about Communion or the Last Supper or something? Except according to the previous days off, Jesus had ascended last week so I'm not sure exactly why the supper was happening now... but it was a day off! As a result, on Wednesday night we headed to a big International Grill Festival happening at StudentenStadt, the other big student housing. It was quite the festival. Lots of people bringing their own meat to throw on a grill. The most exciting part, however, was meeting Alex.

I had heard about this mysterious girl named Alex from St. Louis as of November or so. I just hadn't managed to meet her yet, despite my best efforts. I saw some of the people who knew her at the festival, asked, and one of them accompanied me up to her room because she lived in the complex! Well! It turns out she went to Parkway West and lives about five minutes from me by Manchester and Weidman Rd! And we have a large handful of mutual friends since she was in debate and knows all the debate kids from South. It was so weird to talk to her!

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was surprisingly mellow. Thursday-Monday all turned into mostly work days. Thursday night we had a group dinner. Friday, Kristina and I had an extensive orgo study session. Saturday Kristina, Amy and I hung out in the English Gardens and laid out in the sun while I read my lit novel. Sunday we went to Munich's 851'st birthday party! It was a big event that stretched across several city blocks (Odeonsplatz to Karlsplatz over Marienplatz if you've been here). It was a combination of a city fair, Christkindlmarkt and Oktoberfest. Stands are set up selling all kinds of food and goods. Marienplatz was turned into one giant Beer Garden with tables and tents all over the main square. Music was playing, events were going on. It was pretty cool to see. Happy Birthday, Munich!

This week (Mon-Thurs) in Garching there was the Garnix (Gar for Garching... but Garnix is slang for "gar nichts" which means "absolutely nothing") summer festival. All week they had music playing during the day with a beer garden and fresh grilled food, as well as sports events in the evening and open air movies at night. Kinda interesting... it's just out open in the field in front of the chem building. School sponsored. The sister festival takes place next week on the main campus (creatively titled Tunix (Tu being short for TUM and "tunix" being slang for "tu nichts" or "do nothing").

Anyway, that brings the week to a close. Tomorrow at noon we're taking a train to the airport in Memmingen to fly out to Barcelona until Monday afternoon so expect an update sometime after that. Until then, I'll be home 7 weeks from today. The countdown is less than 49. I've got exams and papers due in 4-5 weeks. It looks like the next couple of weekends will be studying and writing and seeing the things I've missed in Munich.

So, a couple of pictures of Stammtisch before I go!
Hans, Matt and Kristina making the food
Hans preparing to load up for the subway
Me dishing out mac & cheese
Ashley with the s'mores