I Survived Oktoberfest

Family members reading this blog: Don't worry! I promise I was completely safe and completely not drunk at Oktoberfest! Scout's honor :]

After taking a 3 hour train to Munich we arrived at the ever popular Oktoberfest. There were a lot of families and rides (although I chose to avoid the ride section of the festival because I kept having flashes of that one scene in The Sandlot where they ride the barf ride after chewing tobbacco. I definitely did not want to end up like that one girl who gets off the ride covered in someone else's puke.) which I wasn't expecting. Then there were the tents. This is where it pretty much looks just like the movies. Packed full of drunken Germans, Italians, Belgians, Aussies, Brits, and Americans. Women in durndels (those Heidi dresses) walk around carrying up to 10 huge liter beer steins at a time and sell them around the room (I managed to stuff an empty one in my purse. Later I found out it was a 50 Euro fine if you got caught trying to take one. Good thing I didn't get caught!). It was loud and smokey and every so often someone would start singing a German beer drinking song. We even saw one guy throw his beer (at 10 euros a pop I def would not have been wasting any of that) on a guy across the table from him, causing a fight to break out (we observed from a safe distance of course). All in all, we all had a lot of fun chatting with the cute Germans in their liederhosen, catching up with people from other programs we hadn't seen in a while, and eating crepes, gelato, candied almonds, and bratwursts.

Ah, this video here is from the soccer game we went to. It was Hoffenheim vs. BVB. We were cheering for Hoffenheim (the team that totally won! 4-0!). This video is a bunch of die hard fans chanting "shisse shisse BVB." Take a wild guess at what that means.

What I Miss

Top 10 Things I Miss Most About Home (aside from friends and family, of course):

1. My super comfortable bed, complete with Pakastani blanket and a pillow that isnt just a folded sheet stuffed inside a pillowcase.

2. Mexican food (including, but not limited to: carne asada, tortillas, queso fresco, horchata, rice, enchiladas, pan dulce, and pozole. Most of those I didn't even get to eat that often but just the fact that it's not even an option anymore makes me miss it more.)

3. Homemade Mom cookies (peanut butter, almond shortbreads, oatmeal raisin, etc etc)

4. Homemade Mom cake (double-layer chocolate with chocolate frosting and strawberries on top!)

5. Spanish/Spanglish

6. All the lotion I left at home (my skin is so dry!)

7. Warm weather (The past few days were freezing and it's only September!)

8. Being healthy (everyone in the house is getting sick! I plan to not follow that trend. I refuse to get sick!)

9. Ghetto parties (ha)

10. Decent coffee (with lots of cream, sugar, and cinnamon)

But don't think I'm complaining about being in Germany! I'm not! Just a little homesick for home-y comforts..

How To Survive Essighaus: A 10 Step Process

I'm lucky enough to be in the room that has what is known as the "Cat Cave." It's a big walk-in closet where every girl who's ever stayed for a Heidelberg program leaves her own mark on the walls or ceiling at the end of the year. The majority are about boys and how dense they are, but my favorite one says:

"How to Survive Essighaus: A 10 Step Process.

Steps 1-9: Get Drunk.

Step 10: Go to Essighaus."

Essighaus is the restaurant where we eat 5 days a week and it's definitely not known for it's delicate dishes. Everything is either breaded, fried, or drenched in gravy. Or a combination of all 3. The bathrooms in the house are also testimony of the effects of German foods on our digestive systems. We'll just say the door needs to remain closed at all hours. Especially since my room is located right next to die toiletten.

This weekend we went to a little festival/flea market in Ladenberg. There were some awful jr. high and high school dancers (made me miss my awesome Chaffey dance team) and German rock bands doing covers of Nirvana and such. I bought some delicious candied almonds (and just remembered I still have some left in my purse! Mmm.. sticky); and when it started to downpour on us we sat inside a little cafe and drank neue wine (it's not completetly distilled yet), which was delicously sweet and made us all flushed in the face. One of the guys in our group made friends with one of the waiters and invited him back to our house to play some games after he got off work. So we all walked to the bus stop together and met up with the rest of our rather large, rather loud group. After about 5 mins. of waiting German Waiter decided he was just going to take his car to the house later.. Of course he never came. I think we scared him by bombarding him with questions and playing/posing for pictures with a big elk hoof that someone had bought at the flea market. I'm sure we left a perfectly stereotypical American imperssion on him. Ha ha.

Laid-Back Weekend

So now that I've learned how to use the bus system and how to order food (I'm quite fond of Flamkuchen, which is basically pizza on a cracker-crust with sour cream instead of cheese and other various toppings. Ser lecker!) I feel adequately prepared to take on the rest of Europe. Ha. Yeah right. My current goal is to try every flavor of gelato served on the Hapstrasse(I know. I set the bar really high, right?). So far I've had three. Nutella, hazelnut, and rice milk. All quite delicious. The milchreis flavor made me miss home and horchata. Waa. Another goal of mine is to find as many Spanish-speaking folks as I can.

Today a couple of us went to the church our director attends. The service was completely in German so I mostly played with a little girl, Angelina (our little angel), who was a complete sweetheart. After church there was a big pot luck with a lot of foods I'd never seen before but were all very good. My favorite was this strange noodle-ground beef-pineapple-rice dish. Delish. After that we had some amazing desserts including plum pie and tiramisu (all homemade). Then, because we'd taken a taxi to church (and taxis are expensive) we walked aaaall the way back to the house. It was a nice walk. Long. But nice. One I'll definitely be doing again, only next time not in boots and a dress that relentlessly rides up and clings to my tights.

Das Autobus

Today the weather was beautiful and warm and sunny (76 F according to the weather report) and consequently the buses all contained a certain odor of body that became more pronounced as the day went on. As part of our "Headstart German" project we were split into 3 groups and today my group had to learn how to use the bus system. They assigned us one of those "learning scavenger hunts." We wandered around the entire city of Heidelberg, never failing to stand out as tourists. We stopped by the bank to exchange some money and I made sure to leave American amounts of personal space while standing in line (The people behind me were obviously not American). We finished up our bank bidness and got back on the bus to find the aisle blocked by a bar. The 3 of us stood in the front waiting for the bar to swing forward or for the driver to tell us we had to use the other door. But instead his response to our confused faces was to close the doors, trapping us between the door and the bar. Since we were lost as to where we should be going we just stood there until the bus driver loudly said something at us and when we didn't really respond he gave an exasperated sigh and pushed the bar lightly, making it swing forward with ease. So once again we were left the Stupid Americans, but we laughed out loud at our own inability to figure out this difficult task of pushing a bar.

Later on I stopped to look at a necklace stand outside our classrooms. The man who owned the stand (although it was more of a small pop-up table than an actual stand) told me how much the jewelry cost in German, then quickly repeated himself in Spanish, then followed that with "Habla espanol?" To which I happily replied, "Poquito," encouraged by the fact that he thought I looked like I spoke Spanish. We chatted for a little and I finally felt a little more comfortable in Germany.. Speaking Spanish.

Next time I see him I plan to ask him where he's from, and basically make him my new BFF so I can practice my Spanish. Yay.

Journey to Heidelberg

Here's Moore Haus. The place I will reside for the next 8 months with 53 other people!

Ahhh.. I love the feeling after a good long travel. I feel so blessed to be able to enjoy all these opportunities I know I don't deserve!

I guess this blog will mostly be about my travels.. things that stand out.. Amusing anecdotes. haha. Here's my first one:

The other day when we were getting on the bus to go to the wine festival I tripped over some guy's foot (because he had it way out in the aisle like a stupid). But I didn't know how to say "sorry" or "excuse me" in German (it's something long.. something along the lines of "estut mir li" or something.. i have no idea..) so I just kind of put my hands up and made some apologetic noise in my throat and made sure my face looked really sorry. Then I sat down not too far from him. So the tram gets amovin and the man starts talking to his friend. And he's completely AMERICAN. So I looked and felt like an idiot because I had made this awkward apology grunt at a man who spoke English.

And next:
The other day I tried to order an ice cream cone from a little stand on the street. After practicing the phrase "eine kugel zitrone, bitte" a couple times I mustered up the courage to actaully say it to the vendor. Only, when I try to hack it out in the most hackiest of ways, the lady can't understand me. Apparently my "zitrone" sounded more like "schokolade" which is chocolate and definitely not the lemon flavor I was looking for. Luckily, Kadie came to my rescue and told the lady the correct flavor I sought, with the correct pronunciation. Once the woman understood what we were trying to say she switched to English and told me, "Oh, zitrone! I thought you said schokolade. You are hard to understand."
So, maybe my German is needing a little more work, yeah?