Listen: I've made it to Freiburg and I've already done a lot of stuff in this past week. For example, on Saturday, we took a bus to the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) and toured a cloister and a barn. Mind you, it was no ordinary barn, but rather a barn-house-thing that was first constructed, I think, in 1620....and it's still there. Generation after generation of the family have lived there and I think it was in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century that the land surrounding the barn-house-thing was sold to a non-family member....or something like that. Frankly, I didn't understand most of the tour because it was auf Deutsch... But I got that it was old and important because it is old. Oh I'm learning so much. The same day we also visited Titisee (Lake Titi, fantastic name), which was nice enough, but it was kind of crappy weather, so I think it could've been a lot more enjoyable. The town was a bit touristy, but that's what we were too. On Saturday we're going to die Schweiz (Switzerland) and I think it'll be about an hour trip by bus? Again, something I'm not very sure about because it has only been talked about in German. Pretty much everything is a surprise to me, as it is being done, because my listening skills are so shitty.
Tonight there was a bit of a celebratory birthday dinner in the kitchen for Markus' birthday. They put a spread together that was something like fondue, but different. Instead of dipping vegetables and meat into the cheese, you put vegetables and whatever on this sort of spatula thing and then placed a slice of cheese on top, and then heated it all up together on a sort of ... griddle. There was also this "dip" for the potatoes that tasted very similar to ranch dressing. Oh...and they all drink this thing called "Schwip Schwap" which tastes kind of like flat coke mixed with iced tea....kind of gross. Anyhow, it was fun and what not, and while they all speak German with each other, they say a lot of stuff in English, i.e. "Happy Birthday" and they can all speak English pretty well. I think they're only being nice when they say my German is good. I usually give up pretty fast and revert to English. I made some chocolate chip cookies. And uh, explained that "Don't Mess with Texas" comes from an anti-littering campaign and I think I've cleared Texas' name for now atleast.
So, uhhh. Right. Let me share some of my impressions of Germany/the Germans so far....
-Everyone has blue eyes....or well most everyone. And all the children seem to come in twos. I can count on more than one hand the number of little blue-eyed, blonde-haired twins that have stared me down from their stroller seats. Babies: the silent judger. Apparently Germans receive a fairly substantial amount of money from the government when they have a kid, which sort of reminds me of the Nazi system of rewarding parents that were of "good-breeding" when they had a lot of kids. Which brings me to my second "impression"....
-I can't not see an older person and wonder what they must've been doing during the second world war. I mean...I guess everyone couldn't have been a Nazi, but ... well... they probably were, right? I don't know. The old people are kind of mean period and are really bad about staring. Although, the other day this old lady was getting on the street train and fell down and that made me feel bad, but then I thought, well, maybe she was a Nazi so it's okay? I guess I kind of become obsessed by the idea of whether or not people were Nazis and it's really not something worth obsessing over.
-All of my "Mitbewohnere" (Roommates) are great. The way my dorm is set up is that everyone has a single room with a sink and then we share a bathroom, kitchen, and living room. I think I may be the youngest person in the hallway because Germans don't start university until much later. So I think the fact that I'm only 20 and already in my fifth semester of college is strange for them.
Alright, this should be enough to pacify you for now. Be good in die USA. I've only been here a week and it's already become difficult to write coherently in English. Sorry about that. I hope you get the idea.
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haha, "babies: the silent judger." so true. and when we went to berlin and saw all of the beautiful people, i wondered if that was because of the "cleansing" program 2 generations ago got rid of all the ugly people... :\ it's hard not to think that after learning what we learned.
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