vom Unglück verfolgt sein

Living in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is very much a double-edged sword. There are lots of things about MV that either sound great but in reality are shitty or vice-versa. For instance, there are almost no English speakers here, which sounds lonely at first, but in reality it means that my German has improved loads, and I am making German friends. Another example is that MV is almost nothing but farmland, however this means that a plant biologist like me always has fun stuff to see. Finally, this state is the tourism destination in Germany, which is great until you realize that almost all of the industry here is in one city and is devoted to tourists, which can make finding a job rather difficult. On the balance though, once you get to a bigger city here, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

That whole tourism thing that I mentioned is what I want to talk about right now though. MV is an absolutely gorgeous state to visit. It's hard to find an area of the US to compare it to. Whereas Bavaria looks almost exactly like Kentucky, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is similar to Minnesota in that it has over 2000 lakes, but it's flat and fairly treeless like northeastern Kansas. So you might think it's like the American midwest, but it is coastal, which, in addition to giving the area a whole different vibe, also means that the summers and winters are really really mild. Finally, and this part I'm still not used to yet, we are at the same latitude as lower Alaska. The sun officially sets at 9:50pm, but it's not really dark until around 11pm. Sunrise occurs at a painful 4:40am, but that infernal morning twilight (and the birds chirping) begins at about 3am.

So suffice it to say that I find the area rather unique and very pretty. I wanted to take advantage of that in my time here, and I've had one goal (to rule them all). That goal is to see a national park by the name of Jasmund. This park is (supposed to be) breathtaking. It has bright white chalk cliffs that soar over the sea, fields of flint stones, and amber floats in the water there. The park is located on an island called Rügen. I tried to reach the park last winter, and I made it all the way to the biggest city on Rügen and then it started to snow, and since I was not prepared for snow and had to turn back. I was pissed!

Last weekend, I resolved to right this wrong and travel back to Rügen. I also wanted to see a few other things on the island, and I figured I could easily kill a day there. Sunday morning, David and I set out at 7 with the train to a tiny town called Binz. Binz is the prototypical coastal German coastal town. Very similar to Graal-Müritz, it's got thatched-roof cottages, steam trains, and is just very quaint. Near Binz there is a small hunting lodge that is now a museum, the Jagdschloss Granitz. Once we were in Binz and had gotten our bearings we set out on foot for the lodge. The trek to the lodge is through a forest and up what the locals called a “mountain.” While the lodge was technically at a higher altitude than the city, the mountain was really more of a hill. During this forest trek, I noticed that it was starting to rain, but I really didn't mind since the trees covered me. The forest, though, was very nice. It was very orderly with paved paths and had clearly been manicured. It was peaceful and in certain parts you could smell the pine trees. The hunting lodge itself was very cozy. Comapred to the other castles I've seen, this seems like one that I could actually feel at home in.

This is the outside of the lodge. We were very disappointed to learn that the building is actually pink, a decidedly unmanly color.

The staircase leading up to the tower of the lodge. The figure in the center is  some raptor  attacking a pike.

Just a few of the trophies hanging on the walls of the lodge.

The weather was sort of shitty, as I mentioned, but you can see here how flat MVP is.

You can also see how many lakes there are.

We then trotted down the “mountain” back into Binz. On that way back to the train station though, I noticed something that blew my mind!

It should say something that the store is proud that it is open for a total of 5 hours on Sunday.

See, in Germany like I've mentioned, the whole country shuts down on Sunday. Like, god help you if you have a heart attack, because the doctor will be like, “Sorry, it's the Lord's day. Gotta keep that sabbath holy.” So seeing a supermarket that is open on Sunday, even it it's only for five hours, is earth shattering.

David and I then hopped on a train to take us to Prora, which has a giant series of vacation homes built by the Nazis.The Nazis had this great idea that in order to conquer Europe, you would need a well rested workforce, so they built an enormous set of vacation apartments on the coast of Prora for all of the workers of Germany. It was part of a project called “Kraft durch Freude” shortened KdF, which means something like “Strength through Joy.” Right now, the vacation complex is sitting mostly empty. Weird that no one would want to spend their free time in a huge Nazi building. Who knew? The buildings also play house to a museum about the KdF project and the Nazi times. I would definitely recommend the museum if you're in the area.

Seeing Hitler in a knight's uniform was hilarious to me.

These things are huge and extend all along the coast.

This is, I hope, a play on words. It could either mean something like "...is a vacation" or  something like "Authority vacation", considering it's a sign about the Nazi vacation houses, I really hope they intended the play on words.

Around about the time we were arriving in Prora, the rain had started to pick up a little bit. I didn't have a rain jacket, so I looked like a drowned rat after we walked along the beach trying to find the museum. By the time we were done with the museum and ready to set out toward the coveted goal of the national park, David was starting to give me looks and ask some leading questions, “what do you think about the rain?” "are you getting cold?" The park is in Sassnitz, but the chalk cliffs and anything worth seeing is a good 5 mile hike away from the town.

I really hate to give up on my goals, especially since I'd already made it that far once and had to turn back, but I eventually came to the decision that hiking onto a cliff made of chalk after 12 solid hours of rain might not be the best idea. This is especially true since parts of that cliff break off all the time, and just last year a huge section broke off and buried a ten year old girl. It was with a heavy heart that I decided to head back to Rostock...

So all in all, I'm sort of pissed. I mean, yes I got to see a cool museum and hunting lodge, and got to spend more time with David, but I've been to Rügen twice now and have yet to see the Chalk cliffs. Today's word means “cursed with bad luck” and that's how I feel about this damned Island of Rügen.

einen Hafen anlaufen

Ever since I lived next door to a Dane, I've always found Danish men mysteriously attractive.

For me the Danes are the epitome of European manliness. Maybe it's the conspicuous amount of facial and chest hair, maybe it's their smokey language where they sound like they are trying to clear their throat and talk simultaneously, or maybe it's the nautical vibe they give off. Regardless, I hear “Danish” and I think “MAN!”

The fact that the Danes invented Legos doesn't hurt their case either.

Over Memorial Day weekend, David and I decided to take a trip to Copenhagen. Copenhagen in Danish is København, which translates as “merchant's harbor.” Today's phrase means “to put into harbor.”

Looking at a map, you may think that getting to Copenhagen would be easy for me since I am right next to the place. You would be half right. The journey itself is not hard, but it's long. The first leg of the journey is a ferry from Rostock to the town of Trelleborg, Sweden. I don't speak Swedish, nor do I intend to learn, but the phoenetics of Swedish are totally beyond me. “Trelleborg” for instance does not rhyme with morgue, but rather with glory....I found myself thinking of the Swedish Chef from the muppets the entire time I was in Sweden. He actually approximates Swedish quite well.

This scene essentially played out before our eyes in the bus station

The ferry ride started at 10pm and took 6 hours, during which time David and I planned on sleeping, which we did, with gusto. We slept so long in fact that we almost took the ferry back to Germany. After this near miss, we stumbled through Trelleborg to find the bus station. Upon reaching the bus station we were greeted by a small flock of chickens who seem to have free reign at the bus station. No bullshit there were easily 15 chickens in this place.

Cock of the walk, indeed

Then we heard this weird call from some animal, and since we had 20 minutes to wait, we went to investigate. This is what we found.

Yes. That's right, we found chickens and a damned peacock in the bus station. You can't make this shit up, people!

Taking our leave of our feathered friends (read: ravenous beasts) we departed for Malmö, Sweden, where we would grab a train to Copenhagen. Malmö was finally a normal town, like it had pigeons and magpies, not chickens and peacocks, in the train station.

We arrived around 9am in Copenhagen and set to work checking the city out. But not before David enjoyed a good sit in the complimentary couch in the train station.

We've been doing lice and scabies checks ever since we took the picture.

Walking down the main drag in Copenhagen was pretty run of the mill. That is, until we realized that we had unintentionally picked the weekend of Copenhagen Carnival for our trip. So I heard some kick-ass music and naturally started walking in that direction, and what did I discover?

Showgirls. That's what I discovered.

Naturally, a drag queen was there too.

And then the Peruvians...holding Danish flags.

Once we got off the main drag, Copenhagen got a lot more beautiful. First of all the city is absolutely full of bikes. Children on bikes, old people on bikes, bikes with cargo containers, bikes with strollers. The bike lanes in Copenhagen are wider than the traffic lanes. I don't know if it has to do with the bike riding or not, but the Danish men wear some damned short shorts. My jaw hung open the entire weekend. Think Daisy Duke, but provocative. I was pleased with the fashion choices of the Danes.

This was the parking lot at a fairly small train stop.

Also, I don't know why exactly, but the architecture of Copenhagen is very pretty. I mean, of all the things I expected to be nice looking in Copenhagen, somehow the buildings weren't the first. It's certainly modern, but it doesn't look like an art school project; it looks smart, but progressive. It all seems very forward looking, but without losing a sense of classical style.

The half-timbered house style, seems to be the exception, not the rule.

David and I did the city totally on foot. Now David grew up on Sicily, which means that his olivine skin is impervious to sunburns. I, on the other hand, after a year in north Germany, have the complexion of a naked mole rat. So these two marvelous days in Copenhagen left me with a killer sunburn. That's right, I travel to fucking Scandinavia and return with a sunburn. Still Copenhagen is a very walkable city. The one thing that people kept on recommending that we see was this Mermaid Statue in the north part of the city, so we set out to visit her. Two hours later, we arrive, and the statue is choked with Japanese tourists. Now I'm thinking this must be a nice-ass statue. I finally cut through the crowd, and the statue is about 3 feet tall and is some pitiful little mermaid just siting there. Not doing a backflip, not swimming, not even emoting. Just sitting there. I was so crestfallen that I refused to take a picture of the hoe.

David and I also checked out the hippie commune of Christiania. It's kind of a cool place. You're not allowed to take pictures, so sorry about that in advance. The main “street” in Christiania is called Pusher Street, for obvious reasons. The last thing the hash dealers want is photo evidence of their merchandise. It's a cool area though. I was getting a contact high just walking through the grocery store there with these people.

On Monday, we retraced our route back to Rostock, but I spent the entire weekend looking for this picture in Copenhagen:

Something's rotten in the state of Denmark!

Oh and finally, we got to see sunset on the Baltic sea, which was gorgeous.

der Legostein

I was a weird kid when I was younger. I nourished myself almost solely with coca-cola and cake frosting, I refused to wear jeans as I was convinced they were made of metal, at the age of 6 I made napalm, and for a good two years of my childhood, my mother had resigned herself to the idea of having an autistic son. She (tentatively) was later proven wrong. Despite my...erm...idiosyncrasies? one part of my childhood was very normal. I loved to play with Legos. I still have a giant box of them in my room and my various Lego spaceships completely with Lego crew are still docked at my Lego space station.

About three weeks ago, I went to visit my very good friend David in Ulm. The goal was that I would meet his family, throw paper airplanes from the highest church tower in the world, and generally make Ulm a little insecure. We did all that of course, but then David dropped a little surprise in my lap. It turns out that Legoland Deutschland is only a hop, skip, and a jump from Ulm. My tail began to wag at the first mention of Legoland, and I got this dopey grin that I couldn't get ride of when I found out that he and I were going to visit it.

The church tower in Ulm. One of my paper airplanes reached the Danube...another one reached the police station.

See, I've always wanted to visit Legoland. The original one is in Denmark, but it's just slightly to the East of the Middle of Nowhere, Denmark, so a trip there was infeasible, and I had all but given up on the dream. I knew there was a Legoland in Germany, but I had forgotten about that one since I'd been living in northern Germany.

Legoland was awesome. I probably would have gotten a very little bit more out of it had I been an actual child, but that would only have been because I could have ridden more rides. I was beside myself with enjoyment as it was though. There are a couple of roller coasters, but since the median age of Legloand patrons is somewhere between 7 and 11, the coasters aren't too scary. The first thing we did was get on a roller coaster, which also doubled as a haunted house type thing. We all got high-fives from the roller coaster operater as we passed by. My guess is that I wasn't the first conspicuously old person to ride the coaster. Afterwards we hit up another ride themed around “Ninjago, Masters of Spinjitzu.” I have no idea what spinjitzu is, but somehow it lends itself to a bucking carousel ride that resembles a tie fighter. The seats also had wings that you could steer. This gave you just enough rope to hang yourself, so to speak. If you tilted the wings just right, you could make your experience significantly more terrifying than your neighbors'. There was another ride that was some sort of robot arm that tossed you around like a rag doll, I cut in front of easy four 2^nd graders to get the best spot.

The park also has a movie theater, which was kinda lame. Go figure. The show factory was pretty cool to see, though. Ohh wait I just remembered something about that damned factory! Ok, so the tours are in groups and are all started with a short film about Legos. We waited in line, during this wait a child and I played around by jumping back and fourth with one another. Then the doors opened, and our comeradery dissolved as I basically palmed him and two other kids into the pavement to be the first one inside. The door man was handing out souvenir Lego bricks and I stood there expectantly awaiting my Lego brick. The man looked at me and said in a dismissive tone that only the children get the bricks. I thought about arguing but the last thing I wanted was to get thrown out of Legoland over a goddamned Lego brick, so I sighed, conspicuously loud, and went inside. Bullshit. Today's blog title means “Lego brick” by the way.

By far the coolest thing about the park was the miniature world. The imagineers have recreated a handful of cities around the globe in Lego form and the amount of detail is awesome.

This is the Lego version of the Castle Neuschwanstein. To get an idea of the size,  my friend David is standing in the background taking a picture and he is about 6'2". The plants are all real. I managed to corner a gardener in the park and she told me that there are only 20 gardeners who take care of the entire park.

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This is a Lego version of Römerplatz in Frankfurt. It's not totally accurate, but Lego is an imperfect medium. Oh, and my (other) friend David, who is a Frankfurt tourguide, told me a story about a man in the Frankfurt city hall who would spy on important meetings, and on the real city hall in Frankfurt they have a small statue of him, which the Lego designers recreated!!!!

Berlin in Lego form. This is specifically the Berliner Dom and the TV Tower, which I captured in my own travels to Berlin.

The is the German Parliament. I haven't seen this technically, yet, but I will be seeing it next week. The short (Lego) woman in the snazzy jacket can be no one other than Angela Merkel (a fellow Ossi, I might add)

This little gem was found in the recreation of Schwabenland, I had to photograph it since both my aunt and David's mom are named Sonja.

I liked this mostly because I utterly hate pigeons. The woman's book says "Pigeon recipes"

Oh lord. Ok, so hooking is legal in Germany, and the city of Hamburg (recreated here) is famous for  the Reeperbahn, an area dedicated to quite literally hookers and blow. So the Lego imagineers recreated Hamburg, complete with hookers.

No, this isn't New Orleans. This is Venice. The ships in the model really do float and travel along the canals. David (the first one) noticed that the 'Italian' music playing in the background was utter gibberish.

I am no fan of Munich, but even I have to admit that this recreation of Allianz Arena is pretty baller. The whole thing is about 7 feet across, and glows at night. They had to design a special kind of brick that was translucent in oder to get the proper effect.

Friederisiko!

I remember hearing someone say that god never closes a door without opening a window. I don't really believe in god, but if this quote is the case, 1) god must have an astronomical energy bill, and 2) god was on my side last week. Last week my plans to head to Erfurt for Easter totally blew up in my face. It was clearly through no fault of my own, but who's interested in placing blame? As fate (or a perpetually window-opening god) would have it, the day those plans fell through, my friend Caro invited me to spend the weekend with her and her boyfriend in Potsdam. Needless to say, I readily accepted.

Before heading to Potsdam, I knew precisely two things about the city. First, through a fairly simple mnemonic device I remembered that the last major post-WWII conference regarding the fate of Germany took place there. And second, from my several trips to Berlin, I remembered that a metropass including Berlin and Potsdam costs a full €2.30 more than a regular Berlin metropass. The €2.30 alone has been enough to prevent me from seeing Potsdam despite having been in Berlin at least 5 times.

I caught a train on Thursday afternoon and headed toward Potsdam to see Caro and her beau, his name is Joe (haha that rhymes!). The train station I got into was called Park Sanssouci, a name which I consistently mispronounced as Park Sarkozy, and it's right next to the Palace grounds in Potsdam. The Palace is great, but also overrun with tourists. The Palace, which doubles as a university lecture hall and of course student bar, is currently being renovated and spruced up because the man who built the castle, Friederich the Great, is about to celebrate the big 3-0-0. And Potsdam is going ape shit about this! The festival is called Friederisiko, a combination of his name and the German word for “Risk”. They're even building a new castle. Apparently the old one wasn't good enough. There is an art exhibition, and this whole shebang is slated to last 6 months.

My first night in Potsdam we went to see a Nirvana tribute show in Lindenpark, which is right next to where Inglorious Basterds was filmed, btw. The music was great and the atmosphere was really chill. I have to admit though, that I expected more of a Nirvana “show”. Those of you who know me know that I can't stand Courtney Love, and I fully stand behind the theory that that shell of a human killed Kurt Cobain. I had my fingers crossed that they would have paid some tired old hooker to impersonate Courtney Love and walk around the concert shouting obscenities at the crowd, spilling drinks, and that at the end she would reenact how she killed Kurt. But alas. After this we stumbled...erm walked classily to a campus bar in Potsdam, where we met two dudes from Cameroon. In typical German fashion a debate followed, where the Cameroonians, who by the way both live in Germany now, described the immigration problem in Germany. Let me repeat this: Two people from Cameroon, who immigrated to Germany, believe that immigrants are a threat to Germany....

Whatever.

The next day we set out to see the Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain, in German). I didn't quite understand why were were doing this at first, and I should have asked for clarification earlier when I heard phrases like “...but the watchman is really lax” and “just an abandoned military installation”. Despite how it sounds, the place was baller! It's an old American radar station and listening post on the outskirts of Berlin. You have to climb through a chain link fence ringed with razor wire to get there. Though somehow there are mothers with children in strollers all over the place. Germans are a tough folk.

You Go Girl, indeed

This was our posse. The floor would occasionally just open up into 10 foot deep pits. This area was relatively safe.

The smallest of the four domes. You can climb inside and enjoy a great view of Berlin.

I'm not gonna share too many pictures because I'm saving up for a post later about graffiti and street art in Germany. After Teufelsberg we hit the town, and be damned if we didn't meet those two Cameroonians again!

Saturday we nursed our hangovers and checked out Potsdam. We found the villas where Stalin and Truman lived during that post-WWII conference, and we also found the Brandenburger Tor...the other one.

The Potsdam Brandenburger Tor, which is the one actually in Brandenburg.

The Berlin Brandenburger Tor, which is by and far more famous.

On Sunday, of course, we painted Easter eggs, like normal college students do on weekends, and then I hopped on a train back to Rostock, because that evening there was an exchange student party, but that is a story for another post...

Bernstein

“I'm riding a 3-speed, 20 year-old, communist-made bicycle with mismatched tires, what the Christ do you expect from me?!” I shout to myself as I flounder on the muddy trail. I've never taken a bike trip outside of a city before, but I've decided that my first foray into longer distance cycling should take the form of a 13 mile trip to the town of Ribntz-Damgarten. Go big or go home, right?

After the bomb threat to the University that kicked this week off, I decided that I needed more excitement in my life. I decided to take this bike trip for several other reasons as well though. First of all, I recently repaired my bicycle, and I'm drunk with my power being able to travel at upwards of 15 miles per hour! Also, I've developed a recent “interest binge” in amber after my coworker told me that the area here is just covered in the stuff. Eventually I landed on the idea of visiting the Amber Museum in Ribnitz-Damgarten, which bills itself as the Amber City. Today's word, “Bernstein” comes from the low German word “bernen”, which means “to burn” and “stein”, which of course means “stone”. Bernstein is the German word for amber, did you know that amber is flammable? Neither did I!

I planned on combing the beach for amber for about an hour before I set off on my trip. Did you know that amber floats in salt water? (Neither did I!) My wide-eyed and naïve goal was to load up on at least 1 pound of amber before I hit the trails, sell it along the way, and finance my admission to the museum. Turns out, amber only washes ashore after storms, and we've had fantastic weather over the past few days. My planned departure point was Markgrafenheide, just north east of Rostock. I was going to travel along the coast and then after about 7 miles head straight east to Ribnitz-Damgarten, emphasis on the “planned” and “was going to” parts in the last sentence.

It was a beautiful and foggy morning, totally alone on the beach.

I didn't bother to plan an actual route for my trip, but I knew the cities I was supposed to turn at, and I figured that would work well enough. Nope. On the trails, it didn't tell you where you were currently located, rather it told you where you could go from that point. It's like instead of saying “you're in Kansas City” it says “head this way to get to New York”, which is a stupid system, because you can head west out of Kansas City and eventually get to New York. This is apparently how the trail planners thought too. According to them “This way to XYZ“ means that they will take you to the middle of no where and then to XYZ. My midway point was the city of Graal-Müritz, beautiful name, dont you think? And as chance would have it, nearly every bike path east of Rostock leads to Graal-Müritz. This means that instead of taking an efficient route, I zig zagged all over the damned forest. At one point, I was forced to choose between a path through a swamp, which was reported to be flooded out and another path, which I could see to be nothing but mud. I opted for mud and was handsomely rewarded, with more mud. At another point, I turned left when I shouldn't have and went about 2 miles on the trail and ended up going about 500 yards as the crow flies. But it's the journey that matters, not the destination, right? Right? Somebody tell me I'm right...

Eventually I did make it to the euphonious town of Graal-Müritz. GM was once, and still is today, a spa resort town, and this place was gorgeous. Rows of villas, cafes, bright colors, thatched roofed cottages. Very picturesque. I should have planned my trip in reverse, so that I could end my day with an hour in the sauna and a relaxing massage from a Swede named Njord, but alas. Regardless, GM is definitely a place I intend on returning to when I have more time on my hands.

The thatched roofs look so cool.

After leaving GM, it was luckily a straight shot to Ribnitz-Damgarten. I guess god decided I needed a break. RD, like I said, bills itself as the Bernsteinstadt, and it sounds dumb, but I was literally expecting a town made of amber. Like amber windows, amber roads, amber everything. Nevermind that this would be horribly expensive and a disaster if anymore ever lit a match, but I wanted amber, damnit!

I could not be happier to be done biking.

This is the Amber Fisher and his Family fountain in the center of town. You can see him and his barefoot, hillbilly children, with their no doubt rabid dog.

The museum was really interesting, and when you pay to get in, they give you a free piece of amber. Apparently they are just rolling in it, so they can give the stuff away. One floor is the science of amber, how it forms, where it comes from, why Jurassic Park was total bullshit, and where to find it. I plugged my ears when they talked about Jurassic Park; I have to hold onto my childhood. The second story was all about amber jewelry and decorations, which, in my opinion, was an utter snooze-fest. “Oh look another amber necklace! Look at all the ways I can wear amber around my neck!” Take my advice and stay on the ground floor. The museum also has an amber finisher that you can watch, and for 5-15€ you can even finish a piece yourself. The museum staff are really nice, and the lady even let me take an extra piece of amber for free. I did have to shower her with compliments about how great the museum was though.

After the museum, I bummed around the city, ate lunch, and then hopped on a train back to Rostock. This train ride took 20 minutes and cost me 3€. My trip out took me 3 hours, but it was free, it was also beautiful, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

Kölle Alaaf!

It is a statistical certainty¹ that when a person falls asleep on public transportation, the moment they awaken, they assume RIGHT NOW is the time to get off the train/bus/tram. In reality, this is rarely the case. Keep this little bit of knowledge. It'll be useful in a few paragraphs.

Last weekend I went to Cologne for Karneval! If you're unfamiliar, Cologne is in western Germany and is the place people go to celebrate Karneval. Karneval itself is essentially the same thing as Mardi Gras. I say “essentially” because I'm not religious, and I wanna hedge my bets in case there really is a difference. A few of us PPP'lers who are stranded in the GDR², decided to meet up in Berlin, rent a car, and drive to Karneval. We stayed with another American girl's host family near Düsseldorf, which is close enough to the revelry.

This of course means that we got to drive on the autobahn, which has been on my bucket list since the first time I was in Germany. The car we rented was a stick-shift, but luckily my mom insisted that I at least learn how to drive stick. I won't lie, I was rusty as hell when I started off, but I drove a stretch that was almost all autobahn, so it was only rough until I got on the on ramp. The German autobahn gods must have been watching me, because right as I got on the autobahn, we hit a section that actually does have a speed limit. After about 30 minutes of that garbage, we finally made it to an unrestricted section. I can't properly describe the feeling of piloting a vehicle at 130 miles per hour. Pure speed. (Mom, if you're reading this, 130 was a typo, I mean 75. Yeah, slow, safe, reasonable 75 mph). Another cool thing about Germany is that there is no open container law, which means that we enjoyed our autobahn trip with some nice East German beers in the car. Of course the driver can't drink, but someone has to take one for the team.

Andrea and Jen packing our car

I do find it odd, that a country that has laws for everything doesn't have a speed limit and allows alcohol consumption (starting at 16) while driving. It took me some thinking, but when I consider that two of Germany's most popular (and politically powerful) industries are beer brewing and automobile manufacture, it makes sense that they would have the political clout to keep away restrictive laws.

I am what you call a "young ambassador"

But eventually, we get to Cologne. A few of us had decided to make a group costume, something which in my opinion never ends up happening in the end. Big plans are made “The Seven Dwarves, but Sexy” or “All the Presidential Candidates” and then in the end everyone shows up as something boring like a cheerleader.. Somehow though this time it actually worked, and damned well too! We all dressed up as characters from Super Mario. I almost ended up going as Princess Peach since Ive got the best legs of the group, but I dressed up as Luigi instead. Of course there was partying and revelry, so I'll skip the stories about that, and jump to my public transit story from the beginning of the post.

On Saturday night, I got separated from my group. In truth, I probably just walked away as I'm prone to do when there is a lull in activity. It's a great way to meet new people in my opinion. Regardless, I get separated from my group. I text to see where they are, and they are heading back to the tiny town we are sleeping in. (Incidentally the path from the train station to our house is a concrete jungle, I'd only walked it one time at 7am on Saturday morning. So it is advantageous to meet up with my friends and navigate it together.) Ok, cool, they're heading back, I will too. I get on the train and promptly fall asleep. When I wake up, that statistical certainty I mentioned earlier comes into play and I get off the train. I get off the train in the middle of nowhere. So I go to the ticket machine and check when the next train comes. The next train comes at 5 after the hour, so I wait. Five after comes....and goes. So I go back to the machine, and I realize that the next train comes at five after 5am, which is 3 hours from now. It's freezing, and I'm still dressed as Luigi. So I curl up in a ball next to the machine and, shivering, I fall into a very light (but not light enough sleep). I am awoken by the sound of the 5:05 train as it leaves the station. “Well fuck,” I said aloud to no one in particular. I'm just gonna call a cab, I can't be that far from home, I think. My phone however is dead, so I go around the neighborhood knocking on doors of houses and businesses alike to find a phone. I eventually find a casino, and the owner asks where I am heading. He then informs me that the ride will probably cost 70€, but the next train comes in an hour. “Well fuck,” I say quietly and mostly to myself. He then offers to let me sleep in the casino for the next hour. This man is a saint. I eventually catch the train back home, and don't make any mistakes this time.

Wario and I.

One of the things I pride myself on is my good memory. It's how I made it through college, it's how I've learned German as quickly as I have, its how I remember funny jokes and turns of phrase. Thanks to this wonderful memory, I was able to successfully navigate my way back to the house from the train station without getting lost. I arrived at 7:30am, again still dressed as Luigi, and have to wake the host parents up to be let in. A total trip time of just over 5 hours.

I crash cold and weary into bed next to Andrea (nothing happened!) and awoke the next morning to play with the children and have a barbeque. All in all a successful weekend of revelry, boozing, costuming, speeding, and “living of the land”.

Oh and before I forget, today's word is a Narrenruf (Fool's Cry) from Cologne, and means Cologne Alive!

1. Not Really.

2. There is no GDR anymore, despite what many old people say.

Ich decke dich

We're right past the halfway point of my year in Germany, and to prove it, last week we had our midyear seminar in Frankfurt.

A pretty unique skyline for Germany

Luckily the week before last, all of my classes ended. In fairness I only had 3 classes and 2 half classes, so it wasn't like the end of classes gave me that much more free time than I normally had. However, I decided to take this opportunity to drop by Berlin and Karlsruhe again before I headed into Frankfurt a day early.

I've already discussed Berlin ad nauseum, so I'll skip a long-winded explanation of how much I love that city. On Saturday I bought my ticket from Berlin to Frankfurt...via Karlsruhe. If you're not familiar with German geography, this is like driving from Kansas City to Chicago by way of Denver. Every ticket checker I encountered was confused as hell.

Anyway I eventually get to Frankfurt a day early, having booked an extra night at our hostel. I was checked in by a very nice guy from Kenya. His German wasn't fantastic, but neither is mine as you'll soon see. There was a lull in the check in process where something was printing off, and to fill this lull he decides to banter with me. At this point I notice that his hat has some sort of bible verse on it, and his T shirt is similarly decorated. He then asks me “Sind Sie...Christ?” Now I'm an atheist, so I never really focused on learning religious words in German, which means that I didn't know that “Christ” in German doesn't mean “Jesus Christ”, it means “christian”. So I was very confused for a hot second, because of course I'm not Christ, not by a long shot. Then I realized he was asking my religion, so I was relieved to see that he hadn't mistaken me for his savior, but also concerned that I'd be drawn into a debate about born-again Christianity, during which I'm not certain I would have stayed polite. So I very excitedly informed him that I love Jesus and that, yes, my family is Christian. So, I technically avoided lying depending on how you define my family and if by love I meant respect. Welcome to Frankfurt!

That night I met a guy named David, who is a history student at the University of Frankfurt and who is also learning to be a tour guide of the city. He showed me around Frankfurt and explained the history of the city and the traditions, and he even spoke some Hessisch, which is the local dialect. He paid special attention during the tour to mention anywhere that JFK stayed at, spoke from, ate in, sat on, or even so much as glanced at during his time in Frankfurt. Later in the week, we also met his friend Samuel and all of us got lunch together at the University (Fun Fact: the University used to be the headquarters of the Supreme Allied Command after the war.) This particular building on the campus doesn't have normal elevators, but instead has paternosters. They're cool as hell. It looks like an elevator, but it never stops running and has cabins all along the elevator cable. There is an upward side and a downward side. So instead of pressing a button and waiting you just step into a cabin as it comes by and wait until you hit the right floor! It was wild!

At this point, I suppose I should explain the title of the post. I often say sentences in German that make no sense to anyone except me. Usually people just say they don't understand and ask me to rephrase it, but last week was different. I have two examples. During the first example, I was standing in front of the Goethe Haus with David and Samuel, and we were planning what to do next. I said that I would probably catch a train back home and not stay another night (I was getting a sore throat). Then I added an apology for being a party pooper. I wanted to say something funny like “don't get mad and hit me.” and I said “bitte mich nicht abhauen.” And Samuel asked me to repeat it, so I did. Then David asked me to repeat it, and I did, and then they both laughed. They said it was a very pretty phrase, but made absolutely no sense at all. It was worse than a grammar mistake and more like a collection of random German words strung together. I ended up saying “ please me no scram.” After four years of German, that was humbling to say the least.

The other, and by far funnier, mess up that I made happened on Sunday. Christoph and I were going to meet my friend Kevin for lunch. Christoph didn't have any cash, but time was short. So I wanted to tell Christoph that I would just pay for his lunch. I tried to say, “I'll cover you.” In German, things to do with covering usually have the word stem “deck” in them. Decke = blanket, abdecken = conceal, entdecken = discover, Deckel = lid. It seemed logical to me that covering the cost of a meal would also involve this word. I very casually said to him, “ich decke dich”. And he suddenly stopped walking. Then he realized that I (probably) didn't actually mean what I had just said, and he started to laugh. He then politely informed me that I just said I was going to impregnate him, ostensibly in the restaurant.

Other than my (hilariously) poor German turns of phrase, the week was a blast. The first night most of the 75 of us decided to go to a bar near the hostel. It being a Monday night, they weren't expecting 40 people to show up at once, but the bartender made bank on us. We also got to see the The Who's Tommy. At my mom's behest, I'd seen the movie version when I was about 15 or so, and I loved it. But I was the only one who'd heard of Tommy. Trying to explain the plot of Tommy goes over about as well as explaining the plot of Rocky Horror Picture Show: There's this kid who sees a murder, and then he is struck deaf, dumb, and blind...for some reason. So Tina Turner tries to cure him with LSD. Oh and then (still blind) he gets really good at pinball and defeats...Elton John. Then he founds a cult. My friends were less than enthused, but after the first half I think they were all converted.

Anyway, I'm halfway done, and I'll be writing more soon.