Sepp was in the band! How cool is that?! They played a lot of silly American and British summery songs. It was pretty great.
Today I went to Munich to buy a dirndl. That was my singular goal for my day off. Preferably cheap (used), and preferably green (hunter, to be specific). Now, I know that the picture is gigantic and that you probably looked at it before reading this and there was no suspense, let alone surprise. BUT LOOK AT MY BABY!
One of the light bulbs is out in my room, and it's dark out, so the colors are not accurate. The dress (the darker part is one piece) is a slightly-lighter-than-hunter green, closer to the yellow spectrum than blue, to be as accurate as possible. The apron is a dark chartreuse. It's not as olive as it all looks. Hopefully I will have a better photo tomorrow, as tomorrow is Tag des Bieres (Day of Beer), which celebrates the 491st anniversary of the Rheinheitsgebot in Bavaria. We are not actually sure if it is a dirndl holiday, but it's gonna be. Then May Day is on Tuesday, and that's DEFINITELY a dirndl holiday.
Here is another picture of my dirndl, with the necklace I bought in Berlin, which matches fairly well, though the buttons on the dirndl are silver, not gold.
I promise that the cut of the top is very tasteful. Anyway, the whole get-up was a little less than 50 Euro, which is a pretty good price for a set. It was much cheaper than the first store I went to.
The problem with bargains is that you go broke on them.
And I bought it. It was not pass-up-able. You'd agree if you saw it up close.
Oh, and if that wasn't a good enough argument, my Felicity doll had this get-up when I was little, and I always wanted the me-sized version.
The color in these photos is REALLY off. It's dark green, with horn buttons. It is perfect.
First, completely unrelated to ze Deutschland, the annual drama that is General Room Selection has once again played out. Though my group got a relatively low number (141 out of probably 200), we were just above the cut-off for groups that got woodframe houses. So, I present to you, my new diggs:
It's "far" from the Science Center (aka the most important building on campus), but only by Wesleyan standards, and is still a pretty short walk or even shorter bike ride. And we have a driveway for Xtine's car. It's close to the gym (and frisbee fields), the off-campus deli, and the cemetary (in a good way, it's beautiful at sunset).
Confession: The photo after this one in my photo folder is of my very wonderful friend Hannah, and I am tempted to just fill the whole post with pictures of my friends and captions about their wonderfulness. But onward!
On Sunday, Jess, Kay, Julia, Charles, Maya, Regina and I went to visit Regina's great aunt at Haus St. Benedikt, a nun-place (cloister? nunnery? mission?) for nuns who have spent their lives being nurses and missionaries who are basically retired from the active work.
We arrived a few hours early for our coffee with Regina's great aunt, so we spent a little time along the Sternberger See before walking over to the cloister.
There were lots of bugs everywhere. In a related story, there were also lots of pretty flowers. Unfortunately, because of an alarm clock snafu, Jess and I arrived late, and didn't get to stay in this spot for long. In the long run, it wasn't a big deal.
When the time arrived, we hopped up, put our books and scholarly texts away, and headed off to Haus St. Benedikt. Again, unfortunately, I did not get my hands on the photo of us with Regina's great aunt, Landhilde. We were welcomed in by two nuns who either recognized Regina or were just super-excited that we were visiting. They herded us into a cute little tea room with yellow flowers in vases on the table, next to heaping plates of apple cake. HEAPING. It was definitely a "actually listen when they say you're a guest and to not get up" situation, and while Sister Landhilde sat and talked with us, they brought out carafes of coffee and tea. When another couple of guests came to visit Sister Landhilde (who, I believe had tutored their son in Latin when he was younger), another nun sat down in her place and excitedly told us about how they had Sisters from all over the world, who'd served all over the world, and asked us about ourselves.
Sister Landhilde, who was 91 years old, and a nun for 65 years, told us about being a nurse during World War II, and how the Nazis had taken all of the supplies from their hospital to the front, and how it had been dangerous to even be a nun under Hitler. She was the first person I'd ever heard refer to Hitler as "The Führer" in real life. It was certainly notable. All of the nuns were very sweet and curious and generous. When it came about time for us to leave (we were there on Sunday), the nun who'd askes us where we were from scampered back into the room and gave us each a chocolate ladybug. They're a big German thing, though I'm not sure why. They're chocolate hemi-spheres wrapped in ladybug-design foil, and glued onto a piece of card stock that makes the whole thing look like it has legs. Ladybugs are called Marienkäfer in German, which means "[holy] Mary beetles". Though I have always loved ladybugs and thought of them as signs of luck, receiving a chocolate one from a happy nun solidified them as a sort of totem for me.
The nuns run a school right on the shore of the Starnberger See with a boathouse behind it, and it was suggested that we check it out. Though there was a gate to the property, we had the good luck to run across a nun who opened it for us. It was a pretty great spot.
Dad, I know you want to know *exactly* which Alps those are, so I made you a google map.
I have to run now, but that was generally it anyway. Ciao!
I know that's not how you spell "varied". I realized today that I've just been blogging too long, and have run out of synonyms for "very". Things in Germany have lots of something, I guess.
Bamberg
Bamberg was not what I expected. I thought it would be smaller and quainter, but it was an awful lot like Salzburg, but with a little bit of a Schaffhausen flair. Kay and I arrived around noon, while Jess, Maya, Gretchen and Lauren came an hour or two later. Scheduling confusion. I don't want to talk about it.
I had come to Bamberg with approximately three goals in mind: 1) Rauchbier (smoked beer), 2) Seeing why Andrea called it "Can't Miss", and 3) To see an example of "every major European architechtural movement starting with Romanesqe."
I did get some beer.
I picked a restaurant "with a lovely beer garden" at random out of my guidebook (never again!) and Kay and I spent an hour or so looking for it, only to discover that it was a Spanish Tapas Beer Garden. To add insult to injury. To rub salt in our wound, they did not have Rauchbier (tools!), and the stuffed peppers we ordered were so salty that they were bitter, and needless to say inedible. In a smart move by us, we relocated to a more traditional German restuarant across the river where we got tea and apple cake for a reasonable price. As we were finishing our cake, the other four girls showed up, and were also ready for lunch. So, we headed to yet another restaurant, this time a 100% German Gaststätte. Pretzels, camembert, wild garlic ravioli, and asparagus soup were ordered in addition to Rauchbier for all! (Among our group, Rauchbier is now known as "beef jerky beer", due to its smokiness). While there, we were treated to many a traditional German song/hymn by a table of middle-aged men throwing a few back on the first floor under our mezzanine table.
As planned, from there we went to Domplatz, which the guidebook referred to as having "no possible rival for the title of Germany's finest square" (Rough Guide to Germany, 6th ed. which I usually LOVE, by the way). I think the author may not have been talking about the right platz when he made this claim. What we found at Domplatz was an average-sized square with the Dom on one side, and a large palatial-but-institutinal-looking building on the other side. There were no businesses or restuarants, and frankly, Alexanderplatz could've given it a run for its money in the "finest square" category. And that's saying something. It would appear from my photos file that I was not actually inspired enough to take a photo of it. Here's the Dom:
Apparently there is an impressive collection of sculptural art in and around the Dom, but the group didn't seem in that sort of mood. I look forward to checking that out when I visit again, probably with my parents and brother. We wandered out the back of Domplatz and found ourselves on a road called "Teufelsgraben", which means "Devil's Ditch". In the distance, there was a tower that looked like it might JUST be close enough to walk to.
And we set off toward the horizon. It turned out that the path to what ended up being Schloss Altenburg went through big beautiful fields, and offered an impressive aerial view of Bamberg.
The castle ended up being two hills away instead of the assumed one. But by the time we realized that, it was way too late to turn back. Fact: Bamberg was built in Rome's image (apparently) even down to the fact that it sits on seven hills.
HERE is a google map of the important places in this story.
The castle/fortress was fairly small, and we only visited the outdoor elements of the building. In retrospect, I'm not sure that the inside was accessable to visitors. This website says that it was built for the first time in 1109, and rebuilt after a fire in 1553.
As you will see if you click on the google map link above, this castle is in the southwest of Bamberg, and the trainstation (Hauptbahnhof) is in the northeast. With an hour and half before our train, we didn't think we were going to make it back from the castle. Then, lo and behold, there was a bus that went from about 5 minutes away from the castle to 20 minutes away from the train station, and we managed to make the train.
So I only got to see a very little piece of Bamberg, and while it didn't blow my mind, I'd be very willing to give it another try. This experiment was inconclusive. A few more photos from Bamberg: The first two are the Old City Hall, and the last is a restaurant named after one of my favorite, frequently-posted-about things.
A post about Bamberg and Tutzing (a town on the Starnberger See where Regina's lovely great aunt is a nun)
And I've finally discovered what all of the yellow fields are, they're rapeseed! For oils! I guess! (This picture is from the top of the Altenburg in Bamberg.)
For the first time ever, I do not have classes on Fridays. It has been quite disorienting. The full impact of the magnitude of the weekday/weekend ratio change has yet to hit me, I think.
Lauren, Maya and I went to IKEA today, on a bus adventure! I bought this gorgeous medium blue (like maybe hex code #1378D7) half-liter thermos that I've been eyeing for like two years at the IKEA in New Haven. Yay for saving money bringing my own tea to class. I also got this silly easter mug that has a CHARTREUSE chick on it for 69 cents. You all know how I feel about green.
After we returned, I ate a Teddie peanut butter and jelly sandwich (strawberry, for those of you who understand exactly why we blog). It was pretty great.
THEN I had more frisbee practice. I kept very focused, and I played extremely well. It's such a pleasure to play when your not sucking wind (or in general). I even got a d[efensive] block, but it got called back for a foul. It was right on the goal line, though. (and the foul didn't affect the throw, for you skeptics).
Oh man, this day keeps getting better. AFTER practice, I made dinner! I boiled a few handfuls of spirelli pasta in salted water, and then drained the pasta and tossed it with about a half-tablespoon totes German garlic-infused butter (good call!). Then I plopped about three tablespoons of pesto (from a jar) on top and mixed it all around. THEN I dolloped something like a heaping 1/4 cup of ricotta cheese on top of all of that. I tasted it, and it was pretty insanely delicious, but to put it over the top, I lightly (and I do mean lightly) sprinkled it with granulated garlic and black pepper. I didn't take a photo 'cause I ate it pretty fast. Eh, it was ugly anyway. But with fresh pesto, it might be nice-lookin'!
I picked up an additional course at the last minute yesterday, called "Literature and Electronic Media". I thought it was going to be about e-books (which doesn't really explain why I went to it) but either way, it's not. It should be called "The Narrative and Electronic Media". The professor showed us an internet video of babies puking on their parents to demonstrate a new type of narrative, talked about Finding Nemo at length, and mentioned how blogs depart from the linearity of a narrative! I'm really psyched for it, and I REALLY hope it gets approved by Wesleyan.
Tomorrow we're going to Bamberg and then having a BBQ, and on Sunday a couple people are going to the Starnberger See, near Munich. Regina's great-aunt who is a nun lives in a cloister there, and we're tagging along on her visit. I think it will be really neat!
Vox, while great, doesn't let you code much on your own, and I haven't a clue how to make this post stay on the mainpage. Consider me looking into it.
ETA: I looked into it. The map is now linked to the mainpage URL, so will read hits to the mainpage, but the map itself will go into the archive like all old entries. I tagged it with "visitor map" in case you're ever that bored. I hope you are not.
P.S. I stole this idea from Alissa.
OH, and here is a photo of me sarcastically giving a thumb's up as I freeze my tootsies off in THE BALTIC SEA! IN MY VICIOUS CIRCLES SWEATSHIRT!
This one I had with myself on the way to the post office, which was closed, because they knew it was on my to-do list.
Me: Oooh, gelato. I should get some gelato
Me: But it's kind of cold out, and you just want it because it's there
Me: We'll cross that bridge when I get to the gelato shop
Me: I need to save my money! Okay, I will either get a gelato or the food magazine, but not both.
Me: Well, you probably want the food magazine more.
Me: Do you even want gelato?
Me: Not really.
Me: Then it's settled.
Me: I'll just walk past the shop on my way home, but I'll only get some if there's a really crazy flavor.
Me: Good plan.
Me: Man, this chocolate gelato is good.
Well, it didn't quite happen like that. I ended up NOT buying a gelato, but I had anticipated the end of that particular conversation with myself, and liked it better that way. I actually didn't get the food magazine either. But I probably will next time I go food shopping.
(clearly)
For some reason I cannot post the photo of the postcard Xue sent me.
Oh, and iced tea.
So I had my first day of classes today. Well, it was supposed to be my first day of classes, but ended up being my first day of one class. I had the wrong time for my second class, so I went to the room, which was full of people, sat down and waited for class to start. Then, in walks the ONE professor I know ISN'T the one teaching my second class. How do I know this? Because he taught my first class. He announces the name of the class, which isn't the one I thought it was, and then started to do attendance. Knowing that there would never come an "appropriate time" to say "Oh shit, I'm in the wrong class", I quietly stood up and started to leave. From like the second row. By the time I got to the door, the professor was staring at me, and I said "I'm not in the right room" (in really, exquisitely poor German), and walked out, to the laughter of the rest of the class. I went to the Uni computer labs to try and find out what had gone wrong, but I couldn't even log into the computer. So I went to the grocery store and home, forgetting to get one of three intended purchases at the store.
The first class, the one about food culture, was great, though. The professor is young and a good mix of light hearted and professional. Today we examined a McDonalds box. Our grade in the class is going to be based on two assignments: First, an oral presentation between 20 and 25 minutes long, and second, a paper 7-15 pages long, single-spaced, on the same topic. I'm not sure if it's a research paper or one of those crazy German opinion papers. Either way, the longest paper I've ever written was a) 12 pages long, b) in English, and c) for an assignment that was supposed to be around 15 pages. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? I'm not yet convinced, however, that it won't kill me. Either way, my topic is in the realm of "Meal Times", and I think I'm going to focus on the "family meal". Jess, Lauren and I ended up working on the same umbrella topic (meal times), and we're going to be doing the oral presentation on April 30th. Which is soon. Especially if you don't know how to do an oral report in Germany.
