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Dusk falling on Cochem 💕

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I crave that Apfelwein.  Only four weeks until I go home!

A Schobbe Ebbelwoi from a Bembel

Ebbelwoi is Frankfurt dialect for Apfelwein, apple wine or cider.

It is made by alcoholic fermentation of the juice of sour apples, which are usually not consumed as fruits. Often, fruits from the service tree are added during the fermentation process, which increases the astringency of the drink. It contains about 6 % alcohol.

The drink is served in glasses with a lozenge cut pattern, a holdover from past times when people used to eat without cutlery and a smooth glass would easily slip out of the greasy hands. Such a glass filled with Apfelwein is called Schoppen. Larger servings come in a Bembel, a paunchy pot from glazed grey stoneware that keeps the drink cool.

Fermented apple juice has a long history and goes back to times before the Romans occupied parts of Germany. The Germanic word Ephiltranc for such a drink is mentioned in Roman documents. In Frankfurt, apple wine appeared first around 1600. By that time, it was a sub-standard drink for the poor, while the majority drank proper wine. Only when wine culture in the area of Frankfurt declined due to climate change (temperature decrease), war ravages, and the phylloxera epidemic, apple wine became popular as a substitute for wine.

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Abroad: My Solo Adventure

Covers: November 11th - 12th

In my post about cutting my own hair, I mentioned that I still wanted to get my Astrid Kirchherr cut, and on a blustery Friday noon in November, I went into a German stylist and in my broken German told her what I wanted.  Getting the cut removed all the red dye from my hair and suddenly I was completely blonde again and I felt like a new person.  With only a few minutes to run home and grab my backpack, though, I headed off to the Hauptbahnhof to catch my train to Frankfurt.  See, despite my haircut, it was by far not the most exciting thing happening that day: I had a ticket to see The Lumineers in Wiesbaden that night.  

I’ve loved The Lumineers and their music since my senior year of high school when I first heard “Flowers in Your Hair.”  Before leaving for my freshman year of college my parents and I just missed getting tickets to their show in Portland.  So when they came out with Cleopatra, there was no way I was going to miss seeing them.  I bought my ticket in April, only a few weeks after the album came out, and was thrilled then for my solo adventure.

Anyway.  In a flurry I got to return home to show Quinn my cut and grab my stuff, and then I was off.  The three hour train ride to Frankfurt consisted mostly of prepping for the show and knitting.  When I arrived it was 3:45, which gave me just enough time to check into the hostel (the same one Quinn and I had stayed at before going to the UK), set up my sheets, and grab some dinner.  Then I got my ticket for the 40 minute ride out to Wiesbaden, and arrived in town right as doors opened.  It was busy, the line stretched far back along the road.  It was so strange to be so alone amongst all these groups and couples all on my own, but thrilling nonetheless.

Indoors, as I marveled at the giant, mostly empty, warehouse with a stage that was the Schlachthof, I slipped myself forward so I ended up basically in the third row of people.  Before the opener came on, two women in front of me from Mannheim started chatting with me, then two Indian men working in Ann Arbor joined in the conversation.  The Bahamas were the openers, and they rocked the house, playing a “shoo be doo wop” song I have been unable to find since, as well as their hits.

During the Bahamas a joyfully drunk German woman and her friends came into the fray, getting very excited that I was from America.  Throughout The Lumineers, she would occasionally lean over to the Indian men and me and scream something about “international love” and give us all hugs.

“Big Parade” was this beautiful line of just all of them up there being beautiful humans.

The goddamn Lumineers came onstage and opened, naturally, with “Sleep on the Floor,” the first song on the album.  I almost cried.  So many years of listening and waiting, and here I was, listening to this song live about leaving home and having an adventure.  They played probably 90% of their songs, including all the important singles, and all the songs I had hoped to hear (except maybe “Flapper Girl,” but that’s just because I cut off all of my hair that day).  Wes didn’t tell too many stories, but the ones he did were always about his family.  “Charlie Boy” is about his uncle dying in Vietnam.  “Gun Song” is about him going through his dad’s stuff after his death and finding a gun, and that being the moment where he knew his dad was really dead because he couldn’t ask him why it was there.  “A Long Way from Home,” which was the first song of the encore, is about his father dying from the same rare throat cancer that his grandmother had.

It was a beautiful show.

But like a little Cinderella, I had to run off immediately thereafter to catch my last train back to Frankfurt.  And upon my arrival, I passed out in the hostel.

The next morning I realized I had forgotten to pack a towel, so I just washed my head in the sink and shook my hair out like a wet dog.  Now it was time to decide on my adventure for the rest of the day.  I ate breakfast and decided to see some Rheinland castles.  From Frankfurt I could go to Sankt Goarshausen in an hour and a half, then catch a boat across the river to Burg Rheinfels in Sankt Goar.

And do that I did.  The day was sunny, but cold, so once I was hiking up the hill to the Burg I had removed my coat, hat, and scarf.

The hills were alive with golden vineyards.

All around me was this Rhein valley, turning all kinds of autumnal colors.  And the castle was enchanting.  It was just a few families and me wandering around, allowing me to be alone for most of it.  And there are the ruins of the castle itself, but also a vast network of mine tunnels underneath that I could have explored all day.

The majority of the castle ruins from a turret (bathed in sunlight, no less).

But to get back to Saarbrücken before it got late, I had to hop on a train off.  As I approached town, the sky may have darkened again, but I was still bathing in warm sunlight.

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Materials Science: The Slow Slide

This post should probably start with how the German university system works, seeing as how this is my first school-related post.  Well, here’s how it goes.

Normal students typically “register” for classes insofar as professors know how many students will be showing up to their lectures (we don’t do that because exchange students are kinda funky).  However, you don’t really register for a class; you register for the test.  That is all that really matters in German lecture-based classes.  Tests.  I only have one class that has a graded problem set every few weeks (called an Übung, or practice), and in every other class I am expected to sit, take notes from slides that have already been posted on the professors’ websites, and get ready for the test.

Now, when the schedule says that classes begin on “October 24th,” oftentimes that is not when classes begin; most of my professors basically cancelled our first week of classes.  And then in the second week, some classes were cancelled.  In the third, maybe one was cancelled.  It took a while to form anything close to a rhythm, and honestly I still haven’t, because tests aren’t until March, and motivating yourself to study when there is nothing really to study is incredibly difficult.

My group of Atlantis folks weren’t given contact information for getting everything together, either, so this whole semester has been quite the process of running around, slowly finding out what we were supposed to do and everyone being very surprised that we’ve managed to get as far as we have without any of the right information.  So take that as you will.  We’re awful at asking the right questions, but pretty good at solving problems on our own?  Maybe.

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Abroad: U.K. Part 3. Wales and Whitchurch.

Covers: October 18th - 24th

You might think I’m talking in hyperbole, but I didn’t know freedom until I was standing on a grassy, muddy hill, barefoot, looking out at the Atlantic Ocean.  This is how Wales felt.  Unlike the urban charm of Leeds or the industrial Nottingham, coming to Wales was stepping into an ancient world.  

When Quinn and I switched trains in Manchester earlier that day, we were on the Welsh line of trains.  Underneath every english phrase, it was repeated in welsh.  “Toilet flush” became “Tynnu dwr y toiled.”  We were on the train to the end of the line, landing in Llandudno.  And, of course it was the end of the line, because if it went any further, we would have been in the ocean.  One might ask, why Wales?  What were you doing there?  And it’s a fair question, but Quinn had been dying to see a beach.  Like me, he grew up in Portland, only an hour away from the coast, and now we were living in a country that, while not landlocked, would take quite a while to get to any beaches.  A website recommended Wales, and Llandudno wasn’t too far from both Nottingham and Whitchurch.

As was our habit at this point, after checking into the hostel, Quinn and I set out to see the beach.  Walking down the main street, though, we saw what was truly the attraction of the town.  The Great Orme.

This magnificent beast of a…Hill? Mountain? Cliff? The only way I know how to describe it is Orme.

The beach mostly consisted of rocks, rather than the sand we’re very used to, and what sand there was was a sliver of a rectangle on one end of the beach.  We wandered out to a pier that spit itself out into the ocean and reminded us of the entirety of Seaside.  Then, unable to contain ourselves, we had to head up the Great Orme.

And great it was.  Despite an initially awful climb (reminding me how completely out of shape I am), once far enough up it, obvious trails disappear, and it’s just grass, limestone, goats, and heather for miles around on this outcropping facing the endless Atlantic.  Unfortunately for me, having planned on running around on the beach, I wore flats that I could easily take off.  They were not nearly as comfortable as my converse, and with the wet grass I was sliding around.  So as we crested a hill, I took them off.  The sudden feeling of mud beneath my toes was inspiring and—as has happened to me once or twice before—I felt something like a spirit take over me.  I ran forward down a path cutting through long grass with my arms outstretched until I crested another peak and stared down the cliffside.  It was quiet out on the Orme, with just the sounds of the wind and waves disturbing that peace.

The two places where I felt freer than ever before.

Quinn and I meandered our way back, saying hello to a herd of Orme goats, before plopping ourselves down for a dinner of fish and chips, and crashing at the hostel.

The next day, Saturday, we had a traditional welsh breakfast of toast, eggs, beans, and varying forms of sausage (including black pudding which always makes me sick when I think about it, and then it tastes just fine), walked along the beach, and then decided to go to Conwy.

Only about ten minutes by train, Conwy is about two towns over from Llandudno and it has a medieval castle.  Also it’s a walled city.  See what I mean about stepping into another world?

LOOK AT THIS CASTLE RIGHT HERE.

Conwy Castle has all the fixtures of a not-bombed-by-WWII castle: battlements, ramparts, parapets, pinnacles, keeps, you name it.  We wandered around for an hour and a half, marveling at the stonework, the levels, and the very claustrophobic spiral staircases.  Built by Edward I from 1283 to 1289, it cost £15,000 at the time, and has been in its fair share of battles and sieges since then.  Despite four centuries of use, it eventually fell into disrepair and became a monument.

Back in Llandudno, we got pizza for dinner and, inspired by Edward I and castles, we watched A Knight’s Tale on his computer and reminisced about Heath Ledger and how cool walled cities must have looked when they were actually built.

For the last day in Wales, Quinn and I made our way back up the Great Orme.  Not yet satisfied because we hadn’t reached the summit, we walked from the hostel up hills, through the heather, and braced against the bitterly cold wind blowing.

Most of the path on the Great Orme is just grass that’s more worn down than the rest of the grass.  Also, fun fact: people ski down it because there are no mountains in Britain.

On our way back from the summit, we came upon the Bronze Age copper mine, where people—for hundreds of years—dug into the limestone to gather enough ore for smelting into one of the world’s first alloys.  It’s a special feeling to wander 3500 year old man-made caves with tiny children screaming around you.

Wandering within 2% of the world’s limestone? Gotta get a selfie.

Since it was a Sunday, the train didn’t run all the way out to Llandudno, so we took a bus to Llandudno Junction, then we could get on the train from there.  Two hours with two changes, and we were in the exceedingly provincial Whitchurch.  The hotel (that’s right, without an s) was above a pub, because everything is a pub in England, and after checking in, we got dinner and went to the odd Percy’s Coffee and Curios, where we sat with about ten other people in a covered, but outdoor space.

Jerry was so happy to see that we came.  He bought Quinn and I a round of drinks, calling us his “Whitchurch fan base.”  And his performance was just awesome.  I heard new stories, songs that I’d never had the opportunity to hear live, and as he’s only done once before, he let me give a request for “Good Sunday,” which, it being a Sunday and one of my favorites, felt appropriate.  Not only was I thrilled, but so was everyone else in the crowd.  People were buying up a ton of his merch and saying how much they loved it.

I think he was telling the “Giraffe” story here.

I was so grateful, and Jerry was so grateful, and Quinn was so grateful that we had taken the risk and went on this adventure.

Unfortunately, as all adventures go, it had to end.  The next morning we were on a train back to London, back to Heathrow…on a plane back to Frankfurt…on another train back to Saarbrücken.  Classes, we thought, were supposed to start that day, but as it turned out, starting a semester in Germany is a slow slide.

Because this is what you should be left with, not thoughts of school.

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Abroad: U.K. Part 2. In Support of Richmond Fontaine.

Covers: October 18th - 24th

When we left off, Quinn and I were worried he wouldn’t have a way to get back into Germany due to his technical overstay and the possibility that German bureaucracy wouldn’t be able to deal with such a sudden request.  Going with him to his visa appointment the morning of the 18th, everything turned out to be okay and he now has a sticker in his passport that easily served as his residency permit for the month.

We headed back to the apartment, packed our backpacks—travel light!—and got on the train to Frankfurt.  We got in around 7:00, checked into our hostel, and went on a mission to the Apfelwein Haus that we’d been to after a trip to Saarbrücken when living in Kassel.  You bet I got a classic German dinner before disappearing to Great Britain for a week: schnitzel with grüne Soße, potatoes, and Apfelwein.

We passed out in our hostel that night, and woke up at about 7:30 to take the train to the airport, get checked in, and get on our flight at 10:55.  Along the way, I found myself having to remember to respond to people in english.  On the plane, I was looking for the bathroom, and one of the flight attendants, in his lovely british accent, showed me.  My response was a painfully american-sounding “danke.”

Passport control in Heathrow was a pain to go through, but I’m sure non-American citizens would say the same thing about any US airport.  The line was incredibly long, and we had to fill out weirdly personal papers detailing our visit.  Once through that, though, we made a fast lunch stop (I had my first sandwich with an avocado in months!) and hopped on the ultra-bougie Heathrow Express to Paddington Station.  This is where the trip gets insanely train-y and name-drop-y.

We stopped in Paddington, which was where I had my first moment in Britain of that butterfly-excitement of adventure.  Coming out of the Heathrow Express and into the huge, very open Paddington Station and immediately being swept up in the human traffic had a sense of magic that I hadn’t felt for a very long time.  From Paddington, we hopped on the London tube to King’s Cross, where I took a quick peek at “Platform 9 3/4,” which was definitely not between Platforms 9 and 10, and rather just a line of kids in the middle of the station trying to get a photo with a Gryffindor scarf.

I was so excited and then SO disappointed.

Then, we were off to Leeds.  The train went past so many provincial towns that reminded me of something out of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, and I couldn’t even put in earbuds because I just wanted to hear everyone’s accents. 

Off the train, and we were a five minute walk from the train station to the hostel. We checked in, changed out of travel clothes, and set up our beds, then we were off to Hebden Bridge so as not to miss a moment of Jerry Joseph.

Hebden Bridge, only about an hour outside of Leeds, looks like a McMenamin’s theme park.  Everything looks like the Kennedy School and Edgefield.  We found ourselves in a pub called the Trades Club, which is a co-op space, holding drum classes, varying start-up food businesses, and (Quinn’s favorite) microbrew IPAs.

And then Jerry Joseph took the stage.

How many people can say they travelled 650 miles to see an opening act?

He came out playing “Think On These Things”—which I don’t know as well as his other songs since I’ve only ever heard it live—but by the chorus I was singing along, and he looked in my direction, furrowed his brow, I nodded with a smile, and the look of surprise on his face was everything I’d waited for.  It was shock, wonder, and then joy.  The exact same joy I was feeling.

A side note about my relationship to Jerry Joseph.  He and his band, the Jackmormons, have managed to take the spot of favorite musician(s) in my heart with jamming dad rock melodies, excellent guitar solos, and truthful lyrics that I have always connected to (well, since I was old enough to be able to).  Over the years, I’ve gained attention at shows for being the youngest superfan in attendance.  Then here I was, representing my entire family.

After Jerry Joseph finished his set, the second opening act came on and Jerry came down to chat with Quinn and I for a couple of minutes.  He asked if we were going to be in Nottingham the following day, and I got my chance to tell him the show was sold out and we did not have tickets.  His response was a nonchalant, “oh, I’ll get you on the list.”  And there it was, we were on the list.  I had Jerry Joseph’s phone number and email, and we would make it work.

When Richmond Fontaine came out, the set was awesome.  The guys were funny, upbeat enough to sway to, and the house loved them.  Quinn was excited, since he’d grown up hearing their music.

After the show, we hopped on the last train back to Leeds and crashed hard in the hostel from a day of constant movement.

Quinn and I were not to be slowed down for a moment, though.  It was a Thursday in Leeds, which we had decided we loved, and we were gonna see it all.  We asked the lady working at the front desk what was most interesting to see in Leeds with just a few hours.  Her response was the Armory with a stop at the Leeds Minster.

Why not, we figured.  We started off wandering, first, enjoying the elegant British architecture of buildings on the main street, the town hall, and a couple churches in the middle of town.

Trying to capture the gestalt of a city is hard.  But please take note of the CARS GOING THE WRONG WAY.

Feeling a bit peckish for a snack, we accidentally ended up in a giant marketplace, very reminiscent of Seattle’s Pike Place.  The building was rather unassuming, and then we walked in, and there were smells everywhere of fish, thai food, pies, and varying other street foods.  There were flower shops, cheap clothing shops, odds & ends shops…there was an all-out fabric store!  It was such a wonderful find.

Seriously, this is just the entrance.  It kept going for a square block and a half.  It was bigger than Powell’s!

So with some mussamun curry and pad se ew, we started walking toward the Minster.  And let me say, everything about British churches is different from mainland European ones except maybe the stained glass.  When I think about the Kölner Dom versus this Leeds church, my mind sees very opposite visions of the worship of God.  The Kölner Dom is massive, magnificent, but dark.  It’s all about tall spires, curves, and an overwhelmingly large, dim interior.  It is about the power of God.  The Leeds Minster, and all other British churches I saw, was very rectangular, and while it wasn’t plain in the least, it did not seem to invoke the almighty power of The Church.

Left: See the architecture based on rectangles, rather than tall, spires, as in the Elisasbethkirche in Marburg or the Kölner Dom.  Right: This was when I just needed to take a moment.

The interior was also incredibly light.  It felt like a place to be together and express love of God.  I felt so in awe and joyous being in that church.  Not to mention, the Father wanted to tell us all kinds of stories and point out new additions.

But we were on a mission to see the Armory before we had to hit a train to Nottingham.  And in just a five minute walk, we had arrived.  Quinn’s not the biggest fans of museums, and I have very little interest in humans finding more ways to destroy each other, but it was free, so we figured we might as well. And then we walked inside.  Not thirty feet ahead of the entrance was the most amazingly designed stairwell.

Literally called the tower of steel.

Around the outside of this display you walked to each floor, with different themes.  The first was an interactive history of war that was set up more like an art museum than the random collections of artifacts we’d seen in some other museums.  There was a volley of arrows hanging on the ceiling, spots where you could touch a weapon and it would explain to you how to use it, and beautiful dioramas.

But before long, we had to catch our train to Nottingham.  Having been told by a pub owner, rather wryly, “that it’s a really lovely town,” Quinn and I didn’t have high hopes.

I think, had Leeds not been so much fun, Nottingham would have actually been a lovely town.  But it had an odd air to it that just did not feel very welcoming.  But we knew we didn’t need to be there long anyway, so it wasn’t too bad.  We went to a pub near the hostel (where I got my first pie) and headed to The Maze where we’d get to show off being on “the list.”

Being on “the list” was less impressive than we’d hoped, because it was just “Please let Bria Robertson and Friend in,” but it was still oddly gratifying.  Jerry changed up a couple of his songs—there were only four to start with—but it was a spirited set.  The sets from the other two bands were nearly identical, and probably would have been more fun to listen to had the previous day not ended so late and this one started so early.

Collapsing in the hostel that night was comforting, sleeping in sheets that were a plaid Union Jack, and it only excited me to make it out to Wales and the tiny Whitchurch.

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Abroad: U.K. Part I. Planning.

Covers: October 11th - 17th

The idea for an adventure to Great Britain  popped into my head when I heard that my favorite musician, Jerry Joseph, would be touring through the UK as support for another band, Richmond Fontaine, in the middle of October.  The plan went through several iterations, but one thing remained constant: it had to be a surprise to Jerry Joseph and his fans I’m friends with.  

A week before departure, I finally had it the whole thing laid out (in a color-coded spreadsheet!).  My good ol’ roommate Quinn would be joining me, as having a travel buddy sounded like a much safer decision for my first big adventure into a country I’d never before visited.  We would visit five towns: Leeds, Hebden Bridge, Nottingham, Llandudno (in Wales), and Whitchurch.  Jerry Joseph was supposed to play in Hebden Bridge and Nottingham as support for Richmond Fontaine, and then had a solo show in Whitchurch.  However, there were no student-friendly sleeping accommodations in Hebden Bridge, so it was easier to take the train from and to Leeds that day and stay there.  Then, there was a weekend of downtime to be had, and something about a northern Welsh beach town starting with two L’s sounded very interesting.

Although the trip went incredibly smoothly, there were a few hiccups in executing the preparations before leaving.  Because of my purchase of tickets from Frankfurt to Heathrow, my bank cut me off from my card and I couldn’t make any purchases past the BritRail passes (very cheap and useful, look into them if you’re ever off to Britain) and the B&B in Whitchurch.  Luckily, Quinn could help with that.  We were also disappointed to find that Nottingham had been sold out.  All we could do was ask Jerry Joseph once in Hebden Bridge if there was anything he could do.  

But the nerve-wracking problem was that Quinn was beyond his 90 day allowable limit to be in Germany, and that upon our flight back to the country he  could have been deported.  We planned the adventure around his student visa appointment but found out that he wouldn’t receive his residency card for another month.  Since we were leaving on the day of his visa appointment, it would come down to whether or not he could an approval saying that he could return to Germany.

More in the next post about an overnight in Frankfurt, seeing Jerry in Hebden Bridge, and a whole lotta train rides!

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What is it like to be an American in Europe on Election Day?

I was actually just about to write about this.  I’ve been working on a really lovely blog post on my trip to the UK back in October, but it’s going to have to wait because I am far too upset about this right now.

No one in Germany really mentioned anything during Election Day.  My group talked about it a little, we made plans to go out drinking until we knew the results, but overall it was just an average day here.  I went to bed at 1:00 am with about 1% of the polls on the East Coast in.

Here’s the thing, though: most of the results came in while I was asleep.  I was woken up because my phone couldn’t stop buzzing from snapchat, texts, my messenger app, and WhatsApp.  The sense of devastation came before I even knew who had won.

I’m not one to get political on my travel blog (you can seek out my normal one for that), but I am a young, queer woman from Portland, Oregon.  You know how I voted.  And you know how scared I am for my human rights if I go home.  America chose to elect a man who can spew hatred about anyone but himself.  America chose to elect a 21st Century dictator who knows nothing about what presidential duties actually entail.  This is what the Leader of the Free World is about to look like?  I don’t want any part of it.

Since I got here, my German friends have been asking me, “So…Trump…what is America thinking?” I’d always just shake my head and ask them the same question.  They have all been warning me because Germany already did this 83 years ago.  Sometimes I’d consider it and sometimes I’d say, “yeah, but there’s no way that it would ever work like that in the US.”  Now, I’m not so sure.  People who are elected through hate and fear tend to be tyrants.  They don’t follow the rules.  I’m seeing the Hitler parallels far better now.  I just wish Americans had listened to Germans.

I’ll have the energy to fight later.  Right now I’m just sad and disappointed, and about as helpless as my friends back home.

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Getting Caught Up

After not posting for so long, I’m not quite sure how I should organize my blog.  I suppose I’ll chalk it up to a loss of time and being in a space where I could sit and write for a while.  In the future I’ll get back to the mundanity of simply living abroad, but some of these are shorter and cover themes rather than weeks.

The Europa-Kolleg

I Cut My Hair

A Day in Marburg and Cassie Comes to Visit

My Weekend in Leipzig

The Köln Adventure

“Kyle’s Slaughterhouse”

Intensiver Deutschkurs

The Robertson Family Comes to Visit

Two Weeks of Moments of Excitement: Joseph, Volksfest, Caves

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Abroad: Two Weeks of Moments of Excitement

Covers: September 29th - October 18th

Here we are, everyone.  This is the post that will have you all caught up to the present.  Between my intensive Deutschkurs and the start of classes, I have been allowed three weeks of vacation.  True, pure vacation.  I have no job, literally nothing to do but hang out.  I’ve got an adventure planned that I leave for on Wednesday (can’t say anymore, it’s super secret), but overall, it’s been very lazy around here.

That said, there have been, as titled, moments of excitement.

Joseph (First Weekend of Break)

Following his summer as a mechanical in an opera of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Italy and working on a farm in France, Joseph spent his last weekend in Europe making a visit to Saarbrücken.  It was good to catch up, show him a little of my life here, and talk theatre.  I took him out to Garage, and, nursing a nasty hangover, took the train with him out to Frankfurt the next day to wander and eat a pile of thai food.

It’s been a theme for me early in this crazy year-long experience, to meet people in the middle/at the end of theirs.  This happened with my friends from New York, last year’s Atlantis boys, and Austin.  To see someone wrapping up their time here, about to go home, it keeps reminding me how much I need to take advantage of this year I have and bring as many stories back with me as possible.  Joseph was different, in a way, because I knew him before his summer in Europe.  And he came out—from what I saw—more balanced, ready to go with the next part of his life.

Volksfest (Second Weekend of Break)

Since the Atlantis boys and I never made it to Oktoberfest…anywhere, we decided to go to the second-biggest beer festival: the Volksfest in Stuttgart!  Which, I’ve heard, is actually more German than Octoberfest, mainly because the vast majority of people there are actually German.  The crew of the day started as the Atlantis boys, me, and Tori, another American exchange student from Boise studying business.  Her german speaking is also much better than all of ours.

To get to Stuttgart from Saarbrücken using only regional trains, it’s three trains, and each one got consecutively busier.  By the third one, we were all standing near a group of Germans in Dirndls and Lederhosen.  Partway through the ride, Tori leaned over and asked if they wanted a picture.  The woman, who we later learned is named Tessali, and who we affectionately call “Mama bird,” said that they didn’t know each other.  Suddenly, a photo was taken of all of us standing together, and we became fast friends.

Hailing from Karlsruhe, our new German friends led us through Stuttgart and into the Volksfest, which was simply insane.  There were probably twenty “tents” (which were really more like large dancehalls with non-permanent roofing) that could fit probably 2000 people in each one.  Then, there were people wandering the walkways, playing carnival games, eating sausage, and riding the rollercoasters.  We (luckily) got into a tent, and stood near the stage, unable to get a table.  People who did have tables, however, were most often standing on their benches.  Everyone was plastered-drunk, and the music was mainly glorious german pop music.  At one point, though, the Time Warp started playing, and I was invited to also stand on a table to dance to it, along with many other germans.  It was crazy.

We had to leave somewhat early in order to catch our last train home, but Mama bird invited us to Karlsruhe during Christmas time to see their Weihnachtsmarkt and enjoy a city that’s a little less French and a little more German.  I know where I’ll be the first weekend in December!

Caves (Third Weekend of Break)

Having expressed interest in a castle adventure, Quinn found something within the Saarland (our student cards allow us to travel the entirety of the Saarland for free) that he thought would be of interest.  There are twelve floors of manmade caves underneath castle ruins in Homburg, which is only 30 minutes from Saarbrücken.

It was an easy day trip with Quinn and Jimmy, and was certainly worth the five Euro.  It’s a guided tour of only one floor, but it’s an incredible one.  We stood in this tall, sandy cavern, but could see the original tunnels, only a meter-ish tall.  After being forgotten about from the Middle Ages, they were rediscovered by children exploring in the last century.  Part of the floor we were on was also redesigned as a bunker in World War II.  Also, Quinn is too tall to ever be a spelunker.

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Abroad: The Robertson Family Comes to Visit

Covers: September 23rd - 27th

The most emotionally intense moment since I’ve arrived in Germany—other than some of my week two frustrations—was seeing my parents for the first time.  I couldn’t stop talking about it for the entire week leading up to their visit and deliberately tried to plan ahead as best as I could.  For their arrival, my room was clean, my laundry was done, and I even prepared a welcome basket of German treats.  Standing on the platform on a sunny Friday afternoon with basket in hand, I felt like Little Red.  I was not ready to burst into tears at the sight of my family getting off the train.  Our first hug was every emotional catharsis I didn’t know I needed.

And it was the first moment when I could really see how much I had changed in the two months I’d already been in Germany.  After I walked Mom, Dad, Aunt Karla, and her new fiance—but boyfriend of many years—Dennis to their hotel, we sat down to open up the basket of goodies.  While drinking wine and eating fresh pears, we could all sense a difference.  I wasn’t just one of the kids anymore, I was an adult who could be an adult with her family.

I’m a real Robertson woman now!

As we headed out to a bar to have another drink before dinner, my parents mentioned that they needed to go to the Hauptbahnhof around 7:00 to deal with…something.  They were very secretive about it, so I assumed there was some ticket problem and they just didn’t want anyone to worry.  

As Karla, Dennis, Quinn, and I were just sitting at Zing (the bar), we saw Mom round the corner with a video camera in hand.  Very confusing.  And then behind her was none other than my German sister, Jeannine!

WHAT?  WHAT JOY AND MAJESTY IS THIS???

I was surprised and more than a little unprepared, but my whole family was there with me for a weekend.  Simply incredible.

We went out for some typical Saarlandisch food, an after-dinner digestive, and then walked home.  Everyone got along famously and it was exactly what I had needed for so long.

After not sleeping much Friday night, trying to plan out how Saturday would go, I met up with my family the next morning so they could do their laundry at my apartment.  Unfortunately, every machine was taken, so we postponed and headed down for a breakfast of pastries and bread rolls.  Attempting laundry again, Mom and I were able to get one load of dirty clothes in, but we still needed another one, so we met up with everyone else to go down to the Schwamm butchery to get meats and cheeses for an afternoon at the Biergarten am Staden.  After dropping the family off again, Mom and I returned and sat patiently in front of a washing machine for forty five minutes so we could get the second load started.  It was another deeply emotional moment to be seated on a concrete basement floor screaming at the machine on spülen, while carrying on a long-needed heart-to-heart with my mother.

This washing machine made me lose more hair than my junior year of engineering.

When we returned to everyone at the Biergarten, we began snacking and playing German card games with a north German deck which only has thirty-two cards.  Weird, but I was into it.  Look up Knack, if you want a new, but reasonably simple game to play.  It was a good time.  Dad and I went back up to my apartment for one last trip to put everything in the dryer, and we also got our own heart-to-heart.  This time with less frustration at the limited number of washing machines.

With laundry done, cards played, and snacks well-eaten, it was time for an afternoon nap and to get ready for dinner.

Because Aunt Karla had a dress that she hadn’t gotten to wear yet on the trip, we agreed to go out to a fancy dinner together.  The first choice—a tiny French restaurant I’d heard about—was too busy, but we wound up at a steakhouse, which was deceptively large; the main floor was rather small, but after going down a flight of stairs, the cellar went on forever.  The food was incredible, and I realized it was my first time to eat out for dinner since my first night in Saarbrücken.

Delicious food, and smiling faces!

The next morning was the Irish hangover breakfast that I’d seen advertised from the basement of Old Murphy’s during more than one karaoke night.  I didn’t know we had to call ahead to reserve, so the waitress and cook, being very nice (and not wanting their customers to leave), made it happen.  The waitress got eggs from the restaurant next door, and the cook made due with what she had. And it was incredible.  There were three kinds of sausages on our plates, ham, baked beans, toast with multiple spreads, a fried egg, and a grilled tomato.  Next time, I’ll know, but now I also know that the breakfast is incredibly worth it.

The rest of the day was spent, again, am Staden.  This time we could all just relax, eat, and play cards, without laundry looming.  Joe, Quinn, and Bianca joined so they could meet and hang out with my family.  The day ended with a goodbye to Jeannine, as she had work the next day and a seven hour train ride home.

Houses of cards, mas beers, and hugs goodbye.  The right way to spend a Sunday.

After, it was just the family, Quinn, and me, and we ate another dinner together at die Kartoffel (the potato), making plans to meet in Trier after we got out of class.  It gave me and my parents one more chance before having a tearful goodbye.  Monday was our last hurrah; my parents found me a purple leather jacket while wandering about the city that day, we ate at a brewery, and had a few drinks before Quinn and I caught the last train home.

My tears weren’t so bad this time.  I’ve begun to cultivate a group of people here in Saarbrücken, and although no one knows my character quite like my family, I’ll see them again soon enough with even more growth under my belt.

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Abroad: Intensiver Deutschkurs

Covers: September 7th to 28th

When we (Quinn and I) moved into the apartment, we had to stop at the university to pick up keys and rental agreements and everything.  There, the welcome office told us that there would be an orientation on the following Tuesday.  What they did not know—and none of us remembered—was that the german course the Atlantis students had signed up for was not the same one that most exchange students take.  So the day of the orientation was supposed to be our arrival date and placement test for the german course.

It all got worked out, of course, because Quinn, Joe, and I got our residence with the city and paperwork for our student visas filled out immediately, although we all could have probably placed one level higher in the test had we been a little more prepared.

At any rate.  The first day of class was Wednesday the 7th, and all of us were standing in a building’s lobby.  College students from all over the world, huddled together where they could all speak their mother tongues.  Then the teachers came in one by one and called out the names of the groups.  These were ordered from A to F, where A is the highest.  Jimmy was placed in A, I was in B, Joe in C, Quinn in D, and Isshu in F.  It was the first time we had all been entirely separated from one another.

The only photo of (most of) Gruppe B.  Left to right: Nana (Georgia), me, David (Czech Republic), Sofia (Ukraine), Sofia (Argentina), Herr Schreyer, Andrii (Ukraine), Bianca (Mexico), Edwin (Mexico), Aleksandra (Poland), Justine (France), Yesenia (Mexico), and Rodrigo (Mexico).

The class was structured similarly to a german high school, where a cohort of students stays together (most often in the same room) and the teachers come to that room to teach their section.  Classes were split up into Sprechen (speaking), Lesen (reading), Hören (listening), Grammatik (grammar), Phonetik (phonetics), and Projekt (project).  From 9:00 to 3:00 everyday—or 12:45 on Tuesdays and Fridays—we would have class in what seemed to be a randomized order.  Seriously, I cannot figure out how german schools make schedules.  It confuses me so much.

At any rate, over the course of that month, I really forced myself to better my speaking and to just be confident with it, even without a good base of vocabulary.  The Europa-Kolleg was good for getting my understanding up to speed and hearing german, but it was time to take it to the next step with this.  And I think by the end of it, my german really had improved.

It was also good to be in a class with people who didn’t necessarily speak much english.  German, instead of english, became the common language, which also forced more practice outside of the classroom.

The tutors!  On top, left to right: Janosch, Katrin, Klara.  On bottom, left to right: Max, Olga, Charlotte, Laura.

The other part of this german course was the Freizeitprogramm (free time program) with the tutors.  These guys organized things for the students to do almost daily with weekend excursions.  The Atlantis guys participated in multiple sports nights, there was karaoke, a bar hunt around the city, and a night of clubbing.  The tutors were incredibly friendly and I still see some of them sometimes.

So the first excursion we took was a day trip out to the Saarschleife (a forming oxbow), then to Trier, and then to a wine tasting on the Mosel river.  The Saarschleife was cool, but it made me miss the Columbia River Gorge and its many hikes.  Trier was excellent, seeing as how it is the oldest city in Germany and has all this Roman influence still sticking around.  For instance, in the third picture, the boys are standing in front of the Porto Nigre, which still stands as the gate of an ancient wall where they would let people in through the first gate, and then before opening the second, they would pour boiling water or throw stones if they were hostile.  Lastly, the wine tasting was my first introduction to the possibility of enjoying wine.

Our second excursion was to the Wurst Markt in Bad Durkheim.  In early to mid September, this city throws the biggest wine festival in the world, so like an Oktoberfest, but a little classier.  It was a day of wandering around, drinking very full glasses of wine, and eating a lot of wurst and pommes.  That day I actually discovered how much I can enjoy wine, and some others found out that maybe they enjoy wine a little too much...

I missed the third excursion for the arrival of my family, but they went to Strasbourg in France, and now I know that that’s a trip I will have to make before I’m back in the States.

The entire intensive course was very good for me, continuing to solidify my german speaking skills, and making friends from all over the world.  I’ve got promises to meet up with all my new friends in different parts of the world at some point and I could not be more thrilled.

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Abroad: “Kyle’s Slaughterhouse”

This is my room.  Well, at least this was my room before it got incredibly messy, but that’s just how it goes for me.  Quinn is my roommate, along with four other people.  There are two Finnish girls, Noora and Sanni, a Mexican boy, Alejandro, and an Italian girl, Alexandra.  It’s busy in this little apartment.  When Quinn and I moved in, the place was a mess from last year’s students.  It’s getting better, but we’re always working on it.

The pin is where I live.  It’s about a thirty minute walk into the city, and a ten minute bus ride up to campus.

The name of this blog post has to do with living on Kaiserslauterer Straße.  I told Quinn that loads of times before we moved in, and he could never remember it.  Eventually, he started calling it Kyle’s Slaughterhouse, because if you say the street name really fast, that’s kind of what it sounds like in english.

I’m a real human living in Saarbrücken now.  My suitcases are currently a thing of the past, hiding in my closet, classes start in a week, and I have my visa appointment soon.  There’s still a lot to catch up on on the blog here, but we have officially moved in the story of this crazy year from temporary to permanent.

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Abroad: The Köln Adventure

Covers: August 29th - September 1st

I got off the train to Köln around midnight, two suitcases in hand, and my backpack strapped on.  It had been cold and rainy when I left Ben in Kassel, but was hot and muggy, even at midnight, when I met up with Quinn and Jimmy.  With an extra 75 pounds attached to me, we made the ten minute walk from the Hauptbahnhof to the Airbnb apartment Jimmy had booked.  The boys had already been in Köln for a night and had nothing but stories to tell me already.

The tiny Airbnb apartment we stayed in.  Directly above us is the loft with all our beds.

We went to bed around 1:00 am.  I woke up early, and with a couple of hours to kill I snuggled up to a windowsill, with the windows open, and read Slaughterhouse Five as the city woke up.  After the boys also got up, it became first order of business to get food and see the Kölner Dom.  We went to a bakery and then went inside.

Now, the Dom is massive.  It is the fourth tallest cathedral in the world that has been completed, and without any skyscrapers around, its two towers loom very large.  The scale is impressive, the detail is impressive, and the inside is cavernous, with people wandering around with their mouths so open, their jaws touch their necks.

One of the Dom’s entrances at sunset.  You can see the flying buttresses, and the towers off to the right.

There is no shortage of stained glass windows.  But what got me here, was the way the light played on the ceiling from them.

Even the floor is insanely detailed!

After we had experienced the magnificence of the Kölner Dom, we had to take a break before we made afternoon plans.  We ended up at some palatial gardens, wandering around well-groomed flowers for an hour before the rain started.

Flora Köln displaying its perfect symmetry and very large hedges.

Realizing we had a kitchen in the apartment, Quinn, Jimmy, and I decided we would go to a Rewe and actually cook a meal.  I think for all of us, it was the first thing we had cooked since coming to Germany.

Then after dinner, we made our way to the south part of the Altstadt to see a band I’d bought tickets for because, eh, why not see some music in a big German city, and it turns out, they have a huge hit.  The Strumbellas is a pretty normal indie folk band that have gotten huge with the song, “Spirits,” and Germans LOVE them.  The venue was about the size of the Aladdin in Portland, but without any seats.  After the end of their set, everyone started shouting something in German that the three of us didn’t recognize, and as I was looking up the word for encore—which turns out to be “Zugabe”—a kindly german man began to explain to Quinn what an encore was.  Because if you clap really loud, maybe they’ll play another song.  Love that language barrier.  At any rate, they played two encores and literally couldn’t come out for a third because they were out of songs.  What a night!

The Canadian folk thirty-somethings take the stage.

Tuesday was much quieter, with our only outing being the modern art museum, which ranged from the era of modern art to surrealism to pop art to some commentary pieces from the present.  What stuck out to me the most were two things: a black room with two videos being played simultaneously about very angry, poor, rural Nigerians planning to get their revenge on an oil rig, and tradesmen on Wall Street; and a Salvador Dali painting called La Gare de Perpignan that took up an entire wall and captured so much of what I love about Dali.

An interactive piece where I could snap a selfie of the three of us.  Left to right: me, Jimmy, Quinn.

ART.  GIANT MODERN ART.

Wednesday we went to a Roman-German museum, as Köln has huge Roman influences.  While it wasn’t my personal favorite museum, there was a neat glass exhibition and an insane tile floor that they just dug up and found from Roman times.  For me, a museum about a city needs to tell me the story of the city, and this felt mostly like a collection of random things.  Ancient, beautiful things, but without a story, it had little meaning to me.

Roman tile floor!

After dinner time, we made our way out to an overlook tower on the other side of the Rhein from us.  We watched the light fade with the sunset and got to appreciate the Dom from much further away.  It was a lovely last night to see the city we’d wandered from afar.

Quinn and Jimmy appreciating the sunset on the bridge.

From the overlook tower.

I couldn’t go a whole post without a photo of me, could I?

Thursday was then a travel day.  I have very little to say about it, other than it was stressful and I would much rather the last image of Köln be at the top of that tower.  

But the good news was, we were off to Saarbrücken to at last begin the process of living in Germany.

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Abroad: My Weekend in Leipzig

Covers: August 26th - 28th

Immediately after the end of the Europa-Kolleg I was picked up by an old Leipzig friend of mine, Ben, and driven three hours to Leipzig to meet up with my German sister, Jeannine.  The moment I got out of the car I was greeted by Jeannine and her boyfriend, and from there it was almost entirely German for the weekend.

Ben and I in the car!

My German family took me out to Greek food—now a tradition when I come to visit—and they stuffed me full of garlic, cheese, and ouzo.  We discussed Donald Trump, sharing food, and how weird it is that I can speak german now.  Immediately thereafter Jeannine, her boyfriend Johannes, and I went to the MDR tower to look out at the end of the sunset.

Amazing Greek food.  Counter-clockwise: me, Jeannine, Johannes, Sascha, Manu

The MDR Tower in Leipzig

Jeannine and I at the top of the MDR Tower looking over the city

Saturday morning I was treated to a classic German breakfast of sausages and cheeses on bread, nutella on bread, and basically anything on delicious German bread.  Jeannine then drove Johannes and I out to a Kletternwald, which is a little adventure park.  If anyone ever offers to take you out to one of those, DO IT.  I had a blast.  After the Kletternwald, we went home, showered up, and met up at a park near the high school Jeannine went to (and all the friends I made when I first came to Leipzig in 2011).  It was a picnic just to welcome me back to Germany!

Jeannine ziplining around a little forest.

You could ride weird horses!  I swung on a rope into a tree, screaming like Tarzan.

So good to see friends!  Counter-clockwise: Jeannine, me, Karo, Esther, Phil, Johannes

After another long day, we went to bed.  I was especially exhausted from listening to so much german all day.  It’s amazing how much harder it is to keep focus when your brain has to consciously think about language for long periods of time.

Sunday morning we had breakfast in the Garten and acted like small children!  Many German families, due to having apartments and no green space, get gardens outside the city center that they use to have little homes away from home.  It was a lovely last morning in Leipzig to just hang out with my second family.

My first vaguely American breakfast since I arrived in Germany.

Die böse Jeannine und die kleine Bria duke it out (check out my denglish)

We then got cakes before I drove back to Kassel with Ben and took my train out to Köln to meet Jimmy and Quinn.  It was an incredible weekend to be around people I loved and who obviously cared about me.  It was also so good to see how much my german really had improved in five weeks.

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Abroad: A Day in Marburg and Cassie Comes to Visit

Covers: Weekend between Weeks Four and Five (August 20 and 21)

I mentioned in another Abroad post that the Europa-Kolleg used to do a lot of excursions, but we still got one in the form of a day trip to Marburg.  The reason for it seems to be that we get to experience a very pretty town and get a history lesson on catholic saints, the protestant/catholic schism, and Fachwerkhäuser.

The Elisabethkirche, aka the church formerly known as the Heilige Elisabethkirche.

Our trip began rather early on a Saturday morning with a train ride an hour south of Kassel.  We walked about five minutes from the train station to a church, where we were given some very ancient history about Marburg and the Holy Elisabeth.  You ready?  Because I’m gonna do my best to tell the story in two paragraphs.

Elisabeth was a hungarian princess in the early 1200′s who was married off to Landgraf Ludwig IV in Thuringen.  She was incredibly pious, especially after she heard a sermon from the inquisitor Konrad of Marburg, who followed Francis of Assisi, a humble and charitable friar.  After her husband died, she went to Marburg and worked diligently with Konrad, where they built a hospital to fight the plague.  She died a few years later, but her grave in the hospital seemed to miraculously heal the sick.  Because of this she was granted sainthood and a church was built in Marburg in her honor.

About three hundred years later was the protestant reformation.  With Martin Luther’s split from the Catholic Church, the northern part of Germany also split, leaving Bayern, Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz, and the Saarland Catholic.  These states, of course, do not include Hessen, which is where Marburg is located.  Not wanting to worship saints, Elisabeth’s “Heilige” title was removed, as was her body from the crypt in the church.

And that is the amazing thing about German history.  Here you can go to any small town and find a thousand years of antiquity tied up in one church, or house, or what-have-you.

The crypt of die Heilige Elisabeth.

Most of the day, of course, was dedicated to wandering and enjoying the sights of Marburg.  As it was my last weekend to hang out with Austin, we spent most of the time together, finding ourselves in a bakery where the lady at the counter really liked him and really did not like me; running up and down stairs like there was no tomorrow; and sharing good heart-to-hearts about our respective lives. It’s amazing the people you meet when overseas.

“Hey, turn around!  I want a picture of you in the Altstadt!”

We just kept going up and down stairs.  We were out of breath, but I’m sure our glutes thanked us later.

The full group also made a trip up to the castle and we had a discussion about witches in the middle ages by the “Hexenturm,” where women accused of being witches were tortured.  Gotta love that centuries-old sexism!

The Marburg crew on the hill at the castle.  Left to right: Austin, Felix (one of our instructors), Jimmy, Joe, and Isshu.

We caught the train back for the afternoon, but I wasn’t long for sitting and relaxing, because I got a facebook message from Cassie, who goes to OSU with me.  She spent the summer on an internship in Beutenberg and took a weekend trip to Kassel with her friend Kayla.

The three of us grabbed dinner at a local Biergarten and made plans to meet at the Neue Galerie the next morning.  The conversation flowed easily, making it nice to have a taste of home.

At the Neue Galerie the next morning, we wandered through the first floor, enjoying the lovely work from artists of the 1700′s and 1800′s and admiring the building’s architecture.  Kayla made insightful observations that I often wouldn’t catch, and Cassie and I laughed when portraits made silly faces.

Cassie enjoying the hallway of marble statues representing art in different European countries in the Neue Galerie.

Then we made it to the second floor, where the oft-toted modern art started.  Some of the pieces were very cool, such as a neon orange and pink painting that took up almost two floors because it was so large, and then other parts were just…THAT kind of modern art.

Kayla made T-Rex shadow puppets out of this triple projection.

Just like…what?  Why is this here?  What does it mean?  And what was the idea to do it?

It was amazing to have friends from home appear and to talk about OSU and life outside of the closed loop that is the Atlantis boys(z).  Hopefully there will be a few more surprise visits from folks because it was refreshing to be able to catch up and do something so very European.

Outside the Neue Galerie before Kayla (left) and Cassie (right) left to get their train.