NaeNae, willst du ein Schneemann bauen?

This past weekend was needed. It felt good to take a break from the typical routine. I had almost forgotten what being back in the working world was like. After work last Friday, I took a trip to München (Munich), which is in the German state of Bayern. Of course Munich is famous worldwide for one of the biggest beer drinking festivals in the world a.k.a. Oktoberfest! The last time I was in Munich was to experience Oktoberfest, if you haven't read back that far click here.  

This time it was to visit some participants who live in the area. Which is all I seem to do as of late. Although I will say this, one upside of living in Reutlingen is if I do want to travel somewhere it wouldn't take no more than 3hrs in whatever direction I go in. Saarbrücken, Munich, Strasbourg France, Switzerland, Radolfzell am Bodensee, Köln, Frankfurt, etc. All have been less than 3hrs of traveling by train, which is helpful when you want to make the most out of your weekend. Unless of course you happen to be traveling to East Bumblef*ck (I'm talking about you Czech Republic). 

Anyway, I met up with two PPP'rs,  at the main train station.

S-Bahn selfies with Haley and KC

That night me and KC kicked it at this super chill gay bar, had a couple drinks, and chatted. It felt great to just relax and not think about the last couple of week's series of unfortunate events. Afterwards we grabbed some food, and then some random lady handed me a little blue modern day Bible (in English at that!) I guess I looked like I could use the good word. The plan for that weekend was to go hiking in Tegernsee. Tegernsee is a beautiful town just an hour South from Munich and very close to the border of Austria. It's so cool how all these countries border Germany and it takes a lot less time to get to them. For instance it takes about 8hrs to drive from from Mobile, AL to Huntsville, AL. 8 WHOLE HOURS! In that amount of time you could be in the Czech Republic. or halfway across France. or actually from here where I live in Baden-Württemberg you could  drive from my dorm to Florence, Italy in 7hrs!

We woke up around 9am that morning and met up with Haley at the station after a slight train delay, a poop filled train car, and me "accidentally" leaving that little Bible on the train we arrived to this gorgeous view!

At the base, isnt the view purrty? (photocreds go to: KC Fong)

hunched over, struggling to make it up the mountain. I wonder what being in shape feels like?

Kandids with KC

total postcard  moment"Wish you were here"! (photocreds go to: KC Fong)

So I'll be the first to admit that I have a bittersweet feeling towards rachet behavior and I've noticed it's just gotten more intense in the U.S. over the past 7 months. A few months ago I was introduced to the "Nae nae" dance and definitely wasn't feeling it. Because, lesbehonest.. It looks a hot mess. But hey, opinions change.

YAAAHHHHHHHH

So on the way up the mountain I showed Haley and KC how to do it and we literally danced our to the top (well more me and kc, haley wasn't really feeling it).

The farther up we got, the more snow started to appear. We began this trek breaking a sweat, but the weather kept changing as we proceeded onward and upward. There was almost like a cutoff point to where things stopped melting and began to freeze over. This was my first time climbing a snow covered mountain EVER so it took a minute for me to get adjusted. Imagine being on the verge of having a heatstroke, then 10 minutes later you're shivering and wishing a nice cup of hot chocolate would fall out of the sky (with a little parachute attached of course; otherwise that would be rather unpleasant if you happened to look up as it came crashing down).

 I'd say after about an hour or less, we made it to the top switched into tourist mode.

Strike a pose.  (photocreds go to: KC Fong)

Diabolical/Maniacal laughter with dark clouds in the background... I could totally be a Disney villain. (photocreds go to: KC Fong)

We reached the top and it was so unbelievably coldddddd. I wanted to build a snowman, but there was a hut/restaurant right across from where we took that photo.  Eating hot food, being warm, and far away from frostbite for awhile kind of changed my mind about it entirely. Maybe next time.

listening to Haley as I contemplate how damn good that Chili con Carne was. photocreds go to: KC Fong

Frozen in place, trying to make it back down the mountain. (photocreds go to: Haley Keller)

Idk what we were talking about here, but MORE IMPORTANTLY the guy in the background with his son on his shoulders almost slipped and fell like 2-3 times with his son. still on his shoulders. (photocreds go to: Haley Keller)

Defrosted and made it back down, just gazing up into the wild yonder. photocreds go to: KC Fong

trying to focus my tangerine so I can get a clear photo haha.

After an exhausting day of hiking, we made it back into the city and went back to rest up. The plan was to rest and hit up some club that night. After a few hours of restlessness and sore calf muscles, we came to the notion that the hike was just too much for us so we stayed in and chatted with Kc's roommate's haha.

My bus was scheduled to leave at 3:40pm, so that  morning the three of us went to do what big kids do on Sundays... go to the Kino (Cinema) and see Disney movies at 10am.  We watched Frozen, which I had already seen before in English, but seeing a Disney animated movie auf Deutsch is a different experience entirely. In German, the movie Frozen is called Die Eiskönigin-Völlig unverfroren. A mouthful right? Germany has a way of translating short English titles into long ridiculous words for no reason in particular. Either way the translations were pretty dead on. I'm glad I saw it in English first because I understood the German translations pretty well. That's one thing I am happy about. Although my speaking isn't the best, my comprehension of the German language as a whole has really improved since my time here.

This weekend is a huge event called "Karneval" in Köln. A city I haven't seen since almost the beginning of the program when I took that trip in early September. I'm sooo excited, I've been told it's like a once in a lifetime event that everyone should experience. It's 1am and I'm currently packing for it now. 

What is sleep?

Til next time.

Bis spæter!

Eine Reihe Betrüblicher Ereignisse (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

This blog post is brought to you by Denglisch. A combinational usage of both Deutsch and Englisch often used by study abroad participants who have spent entirely too much time speaking or hearing the German language. So get your translator apps/browsers ready, because this one is going to be a Handvoll.

A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out. That comes from Lemony Snicket, one of my favorite authors as a youth. I've had his works on my mind a lot lately. So not only will this post be in Denglisch, but it may or may not have some Lemony Snicketism's here and there.

Manisch Montag 10.2.14

Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have. I awoken early that morning, tastebuds still buzzing with remnamts of Alex's host mom's delectable cooking. The faint smell of Thunfisch, Tomaten, und Mozarella still on my breath (it's safe to say I fell asleep the night prior, before I could brush my teeth). It was my first day of work and I had to be there at 9:00Uhr bright und early for orientation-- the word orientation in this sense meaning "a dull präsentation about the history of the company (in only German) with no signs of a continental breakfast in sight."

Unfortunately I didn't receive my contract from Human Resources until the Saturday evening prior to my first day. I find "Human Resources" to be a pecuiliar name for a department. You'd think with a name like that, they would always try to live up to the title and be "resourceful humans". For instance, they could have sent it a week in advance or the moment they were done processing my information. That would have given me more time to be prepared to what would soon be eine große Kopfschmerzen.

I was still in Saarbrücken visiting Alex that Saturday night and as fate would have it, nowhere near a printer. So this meant I would have to fill out all that paperwork on Sunday night, trek to the library on campus, and print it out (also make copies) super EARLY on Monday morning before beginning what would be my first day on the job.

I had it all planned out. I would bike to the library, print out the paperwork, scan my passport and other documents, and make it to the resourceful humans department with time to spare. At least I thought that was how it would go.

I rode my bike to the library and arrived just shortly after they opened. 3 minutes after locking my bike up I realized that I didn't have my Studentenausweis. Das ist sehr wichtig! That's really important when your only way to print, copy, and scan things on campus is to have this ID, because who would want to let strangers print things for free? Raced back to my room and couldn't find it so I thought "crap I probably did in fact leave it IN the library when I was there last week." Once again I race to the library and ask the librarian "Haben Sie mein Studentenausweis gesehen? Ich glaube es ist verloren." A couple moments of searching through an aluminum case of despair and it finally surfaced. 

I thanked the Librarian for her help and then proceeded to retrieve my data from my USB stick, and what do I see when I open the PDF file that contained all of my information? 
        

After all these years of dedication, commitment to not losing that stupid flashdrive, I was rewarded with pages upon pages of blank text fields and false hope. 

After printing in frustration, I raced to my new internship and made it to the security gate just in time for the HR guy to pick up the other interns for orientation. That präsentation was far from exhilarating and of course, there wasn't even coffee or donuts. After the video introduction of the company and an auf Deutsch PowerPoint, we proceeded with the paperwork which I had to write allllll from scratch. I ended up finding out that I needed both a SteuerIDnummer, ein Sozialversichersrungausweis, as well as a banking nummer. I was neverrrrr told in any emails to obtain any of this ahead of time otherwise I would have been prepared. Might I add the HR guy told me that if I couldn't produce these documents by Wednesday, I wouldn't get paid until mid-March. Again, these were not "resourceful humans".

I proceeded to get my ID badge and that was less of a hassle than I thought, the next thing was to actually find my office. The downside to having the badge was that it. didnt. WORK. I couldn't get into any of the buildings, no one answered my phone calls to let me in. I almost gave up and went home until I decided to bang on the door and have someone let me in.

Dangerously Devastating Dienstag 11.2.14

Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant.

A trip to the movies combined with loads of salted popcorn and nachos left me feeling like scrambled fried death the next morning. I woke up feeling lightheaded and a bit confused. Either I was suffering from the black plague (which would be a surprise since it hasn’t been seen in Europe in well over 600 years, or that weekend in Saarbrücken had hit me hard. Nevertheless I still found the strength to make it to work. That entire day involved me making frequent trips to die Toiletten while trying to hold down my breakfast. and my lunch. To be honest, the thought of eating made me sick and eating actual food just made me feel sicker. I felt the need the urge to kotzen on more than one occasion. I was afraid that I would be spewing more than just a few German words when I spoke, so I kept interaction and talking to a minimum. I blame Alex and his incredible, but sick host parents for passing along this… whatever this was.

Mittwoch 12.2.14

Wednesday was me still sick and struggling to get adjusted with the fast pace in which things were moving at work.

Freiheit Freitag 14.2.14

Stress is a funny thing. It's like those annoying relatives that come and visit you for the holidays, they show up out of the blue without even the least bit of notice and never want to leave. That's how my workload has been, everything has moved so fast that I haven't even had time to process anything. All I could think about that day were the amount of hours left until I would be once again reunited with my bed. I completely forgot what day it was until around 15:00Uhr (3pm), when my boss sent out the reminder for the celebration dinner and put emphasis on “I hope this doesn’t ruin any Valentine’s Day plans you have”. Valentine’s Day? That’s today? No wonder I’ve been seeing heart-shaped Milka chocolates all week. Um 17Uhr (At 5pm), only one thing was on my mind…. FOOD. There was still 5 hrs remaining before I could embrace my pillow once more. Um 18Uhr (at 6pm), I carpooled with my coworkers to this exquisite Italian restaurant. I won't even go into detail, but I will say the food was good and the environment was very chill and relaxed...

Missgeschick Mittwoch 19.2.14

Work that day -like a greased up pig trying to squeeze through a fence- went by smoothly. I was halfway through my second week and slowly started feeling more confident in my internship. It was the end of a long day and I grabbed my bike to cycle home like usual. This time I was feeling a bit more energized and decided to race home. The path I take to get from home to work involves a bridge with a spiral path. From atop the bridge I could see the street signs below and noticed that they changed to green. I figured by the time I reached the bottom they would still be green and I could just shoot across to the other side without stopping…

I let gravity do most of the work as I Speedy Gonzales’d my ass down the spiral pathway leading into the street.

The crossing light was still in fact green when I reached the bottom so I continued to speed through. One thing I couldn’t have been prepared for was the oncoming biker going top speed in my direction. I saw him coming towards me from across the street and instinctively tried to go around the traffic pole that separated us. I reacted fast, but not fast enough. Instead of going around the pole, the result was me going through it at top speed. The metal cylinder met my bike before meeting my face, which saved me from a concussion. I crashed into the pole like George of the Jungle crashing into a tree: arms flailing, legs straight out, face red with embarrassment.

I'm still not sure what’s worse, crashing my bike into a stationary object during 5 o’clock traffic and looking like an idiot, or having about 40 pairs of German eyeballs staring from their cars and from across the street with no one offering to help me up. I guess this is what I deserve for abandoning my bike and leaving it locked up at work over the weekend.

After another troublesome day, I finally was able to crawl back in my bed and hide from the world, if only for a little while....


At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey. I will keep that in mind as the days progress and my remaining time in Germany dwindles. 

138 days left in Deutschland.