First off, I think this is my favorite blog banner yet. Wild asparagus people! WILD!
Eeew! My hot milk has a skin on it!
Okay, but seriously, I have made a few attempts to blog The First Acutal Vacation The Foos Family Has Taken In My Lifetime (well, I guess I'd have to count Savannah too, so second!), but it is kind of daunting, and it turns out there IS actually schoolwork to do this semester. I figure I should keep blogging other events as they happen, otherwise nothing at all will get posted.
So Bürgerfest was unofficially announced to the uninitiated with little digital signs at all of our bus stops saying that there was going to be no bus service from Friday to Sunday due to this mysterious "Bürgerfest". Eventually (on Friday morning!) I did some googling and discovered the schedule of events for Bfest. There were a lot of events, but the official keg-tapping (yeah) was at 5pm, so I did nothing for a while. It was great.
At around 5, I took a shower (heh...) and headed out to Neupfarrplatz, which I feel is the platz most likely to have a party going at any particular time. Sometime during the night or afternoon, probably concealed by the defening noise of the constant construction on both of the streets that my building straddles, a stage and a metric ton of food & beer stands had been set up. Of course I had some Flammkuchen, which is never a bad idea. Trader Joe's actually has some pretty good frozen flammkuchen if it sounds good to you!
I strolled over to the Domplatz, to check out the scene there, as they'd blocked off traffic all over the Altstadt and I was curious what they'd set up in the streets. First let me add that the overwhelming theme of Bfest was stages with live bands set up ON EVERY CORNER. It was literally (which I am using in all seriousness) impossible to get out of earshot of one band without entering that of another. In my opinion it was kind of a dumb idea. But anyway, there was a band playing on Domplatz, but they had to stop playing when the BAGPIPERS came through!
The reason there were bagpipes is that the city of Aberdeen, Scotland is one of a handful of sister cities to Regensburg. Others include Pilsen (Czech Republic), Odessa (Ukraine) and Tempe (Arizona, USA). The hands-down best part about the bagpipe corps was that they were just marching in loops around Regensburg ALL DAY for three days.
So back to Domplatz. I met Lauren back at Neupfarr, where SHE got some flammkuchen, cause DUH, and then we went back to Domplatz for a beer. There we saw totally cool dudes in lederhosen that had green felt suspenders, instead of matching leather ones. They were off duty from whatever they were doing, so we didn't take photos.
One by one the other kids from the program checked their darn emails and cell-phones and Gretchen joined the party. I feel like I may have also made her get flammkuchen. But who knows. I think we just wandered around for a while and eventually went home when all of the stands started to close around 11:30. The "light show" on Bismarckplatz was unimpressive, but the snack stands were great:
Jess met us in the rain (sorry!) after the play let out, and Gretchen and I got crepes (strawberry and nutella, natch) and we all went strolling down Ludwigstrasse and into a big ol' loop of Regensburg. To our delight, there was a German rockabilly/50s band on Keplerstrasse. It ended up being one of those funny situations where the English song ends and then the singer starts speaking in German, but incorporating things like "Rock and Roll!" in a thick German accent and you kinda laugh but then you feel bad. It was par for the course, I guess I would say.
After the rain had cleared up and I had attempted to do some schoolwork but had actually just eaten another flammkuchen, Gretchen and Jess returned for me! We went out to the Jahninsel, which is a Danube River island halfway across the Stone Bridge, only to discover that they had a BEATLES TRIBUTE BAND! Ironically, they didn't play either of the two (I'm pretty sure it was only two) songs that the Beatles actually recorded in German. Besides "Hey Jude", "Yellow Submarine" and "Let it Be", they didn't really tend towards the big hits. Or maybe the big hits in my house aren't the real ones? I don't know.
In accordance with the German tradition of having really bizarre traditions, Jess and Gretchen played chess on the giant chess set that had been set up on the island.
Then, of course, more wandering ensued. Gretchen and I got some mini donuts from one of those awesome automated mini-donut machines that float the donuts down a river of oil and automatically flip them. Remember them from the Portland Market, Mom and Dad?
We ended up at Bismarckplatz again, where, while talking to Regina, we caught the attention of an American one table over. It turns out that he was a Colorado student in Regensburg 9 years ago. He'd married a German and had been living in Munich for 8 years earning 135 Euro and hour doing translations for a chemical company. They were on a last trip around Germany before packing up and moving back to the states - Boston, to be exact. It was encouraging. By then it was a little past midnight, and I went home to go to bed, because I had to be up for the 6:42 train to...
As Charles and I expected, it was a bit of an odd spot. When you're near or inside it, you can't really appreciate it because of the scale. We did find out, though, that contrary to what I'd always thought, the walls are blocks of rough marble (I thought it was some sort of stucco/plaster over stone). The way it works is that you buy tickets for 9 euros, and then walk 20 minutes up to the castle, and then wait for an hour or two until your number is called, at which time you see the three rooms of the castle which were ever actually finished. Charles wanted to leave "as little ripped off as possible", and I wanted to leave before nightfall, so we blew off the "tour". It was a pretty good idea, considering that by the time we'd checked out the castle up close and hiked around a little and were ready to hit the road, our "ticket time" (had we bought tickets) hadn't come up yet. So, in the end, curiously enough, it was a really GOOD deal for us. We split a 27 Euro Bayern ticket and everything else was free free free! I liked the landscape just as much as the castle, myself.
Photos!:
(The first one features Schloss Hohenschwangau - childhood castle to King Ludwig II, who grew up to build Neuschwanstein. Overall they're pretty unimpressive as photos go.)
And of the surroundings:
So the way it works is that you walk up to the castle itself, and go "oh. neat. it looks different up close." Then, you go up to the Marienbrücke, which is the bridge visible in the third photo of the first set, and you get shoved by approximately 498567356835 Japanese people, and then you take a cliche'd photo that would be easier to photoshop than to actually pose for.
But so anyway, after you climb up to the bridge, you presumably either walk back down or take the bus back down if you're REALLY American. Charles and I went for option C, and walked down to the stream at the base of this waterfall. We did so initially just to take this photo, but it turns out that there is a lovely, peaceful path that follows the stream and then leads you back to the ticket center where you can get on the bus back to town. It was quite a pleasant walk.
And then finally, a poetic end to the day and to Bürgerfest, and what I anticipate will be the first of many endings in the coming month: We all watched Sepp's band perform on the shore of the river.
For those of you newcomers in the audience, Sepp (on the left) was our grammar teacher during our first two grueling months in Germany. He is pretty much the coolest person alive, and always stops to talk to us when we run across him in one place or another. My parents met him while they were here.
The band he was playing in on Sunday was a french-music-type trio, and the woman was sipping on champagne the whole time and singing love songs in French. It was beautiful, and the sun was setting, and the water was flowing past, and then one by one, almost all of the 11 kids in my study abroad program showed up. They'd walk up and scamper over to where we were sitting and exchange a few words before sitting back and being captivated by the music. There was something very emotional for me about everyone coming from their varied activities in Regensburg and just once again forming this original whole that has changed so much since that first day in January.
I remember telling myself that day that though I was just meeting these people, I would know them extremely well before the semester was out. And I do.
First, though, Mom: You were right about cheese. I should be eating cheese until my eyes pop out. And I think I just may. Also, it turns out that the grocery store in Regensburg (the one in the basement of the department store) carries peppered goat cheese rolls just like the one we got in Salzburg. Yay!
Onward to the frisbee talk!
For the first part of the drive, I was just kind of looking out the window and not really paying that much attention to the conversation, but I soon became aware that Johannes and Jakob were arguing about where a border was, and I started thinking "Is it really that important where Bavaria ends? Weirdos." Of course, within a few minutes, we crossed a bridge called "The Bridge of German Unity" and I realized that it was the former east/west German border that we were crossing. So that was actually pretty neat. At that point I'd been to the former east three times: twice to Berlin and once to the Baltic resort town Binz. I was excited to go to a NORMAL former east German city, though in the end we didn't see that much of it.
We got to Magdeburg in a little over three hours, and went straight to the Elbauenpark (German) where the tournament and campgrounds were. After looking into it a little bit, I can tell you that it was built in 1999 as part of a biennial German green-space revitalization project (German). It's really neat, and HUGE. It has a hershey-kiss shaped tower called the Millennium tower, a rose garden, a climbing wall, LINED frisbee fields, a butteryfly house, etc. It's a "Freizeitspark" or "Free time park", which is a fairly German concept.
Anyway, it was around 9-9:30 when we got there, and the storm clouds that had chased the car the whole way were closing in. Unfortunately, we then had to wait about 15 minutes for the gates to the park to be opened so we could get in to set up our tents. Working in pairs of two we set up our four tents as fast as possible, but due to poor tent design, the last tent took forever and it started pouring. It was around this time that we got the phone call saying that the other four team members were in Dessau, and were only going to get as far as Leipzig that night because of the bad weather. It ended up being a 13 hour trip for them. Eep. Meanwhile in Magdeburg, we finished setting up the last [stupid!] tent, and gathered under a big blue tarp for the walk back to the main tournament tent about three minutes away. We still got soaked. At one point someone shifted the tarp (they were all, of course, like a foot taller than me) and all of the water pooled on top went sloshing right down the back of my shorts. Yeah.
Inside the tent they had set up those sweet, orange beer garten tables and a bunch of frisbee players were already there hanging out. We grabbed some beers and rolls with meat on them (typisch Deutsch!) and sat at a table and talked for a while. I asked for a Radler (half beer/half sprite) instead of beer, because they only had Pilsner beer, which I don't really like. I got taunted and had the Radler taken away from me and replaced with a beer. I learned a very cool German language trick from Johannes. There is kind of a series of German word plays that Germans find clever, and people-learning-German think are really neat. One of the ones I learned in high school was "Die Männer, die hinder dem Laden laden laden, laden die Mädchen zum tanzen ein.", which means "The men who load shutters behind the store invite the girls to dance", but is cool because it uses "laden" four times in a row. Anyway, the one I learned from Johannes is this: "Mähen Äbte Heu? Nein, Äbte mähen nie Heu, Äbte beten." The neat thing about THAT sentence/exchange is that it doesn't sound like German. It sounds like either Dutch, or German spoken in a very thick dialect, but it's 100% proper German. It means "Do abbots mow hay? No, abbots never mow hay, abbots pray." Oh it's just super!
One of the Magdeburg players came over to show us "a disc golf disc". It was quite interesting to watch as my teammates were all "oh, cool, that's weird and different!", because I've owned a few golf discs for like four years. We ended up staying there until like 2:30am, most likely because we didn't want to go back out in the rain. The same Magdeburg player helped out by driving us back to the parking lot to get the rest of our stuff, and then back to the main tent where our tarp was. I offered to take the smallest tent, in an attempt to be nice, since I was the smallest person. It turned out that it was also the only tent that didn't leak. Plus 1 for Marianna.
It rained ALL NIGHT. I woke up in the middle of the night using my wet sweatshirt as a pillow and shivering like crazy. That was the first "why did I do this!?" moment I had this weekend. I ended up being able to adjust my blanket so I was warm enough to go back to sleep, but the point is that it was raining when all of this went down. The sun came up and woke me up, and it was still raining. I got dressed, and soon heard voices from the other tents, so I got out of my tent to find that the dripping I heard was from trees above my tent and it had stopped raining. I also discovered that we'd camped across the path from a deer enclosure!
By the time I got to the breakfast tent, the other four players had arrived from Leipzig and we talked a little over breakfast. The sun came out about ten minutes into our first game. It was unbelieveable. The tournament website had promised two sunny days, and the weather forecast had consistently disagreed, and then there we were!
We were playing 5 v. 5, with a gender ratio of either 4/1 or 3/2 on small fields. We played six games the first day, and I have to admit that most of them were kind of a blur. We got slaughtered, though, coming in 12th out of 14. To be fair though, we had fewer people than most teams, and two of us had never played with the team before. The playing style reminded me if a very unpolished Get Flat, though. I learned a little about the differences between American and German Ultimate culture. German players will say "hi!" when they're covering you, and expect you to shake their hand, which is really off-putting when you're trying to play the damn game! I'm sure I looked rude when it confused me. Then, after the game, both teams form a huddle (arms around shoulders and everything, every other person from the same team) and talk about how fun the game was and what each team did well and poorly. Then, you break the huddle and clap a little, and then one team goes into the inside of the circle and forms another circle and then the two circles rotate in opposite directions and you slap hands. Weird.
Our second-to-last game on Saturday was our best, by far. The Bay Bees (my team) had mentioned that it had only NOT rained for two of their practices the whole season, and the only substantial rain of the tournament came POURING down during that game. It was really something to see, though. We just worked like a well-oiled machine during the rain - really not skipping a beat. That was the one game we won. (Almost every tournament I've played in with the Wesleyan team has been pouring rain as well).
Jakob aggrivated an injured hamstring (?) after the first three games and had to sit out the rest of the tournament (and by sit out, I mean drink beer and fall asleep in the tents). The worst part of the tournament was our last game on Saturday, when Dominik hurt his knee. He started screaming like crazy, and I think eveyrone thought he'd torn his ACL. We had to end the game because he couldn't walk, and we ended up calling an ambulance (socialized medicine, for the win!). A couple of minutes later, an ambulance drove by and didn't stop, so a couple of guys ran off to fetch it, and it turned out that there had been a simultaneous injury on the basketball courts about 50 meters away. To save time/energy/money a medic from that ambulance came over to look at his knee and said it didn't seem like it was too bad, but he went to the hospital anyway. I'm not sure the logic of the whole thing, because everyone was spreading rumors and those rumors were in German, but a medivac helicopter ended up coming for the girl on the basketball court with (apparently) a broken collarbone.
This did lead to a series of good jokes throughout the rest of the weekend, though. Every time something went moderately wrong i.e. "oh crap, I don't have a pen!", Jakob would just say, "Hubschrauber!"
After we shipped Dominik off to the hospital, we all went looking for the showers that were supposed to be around somewhere. There was much wandering and inquring and confusion, but once we were inside the right building (which was only chance, there were like 15 buildings it could've been) there was a great big, clear sign that said "Showers." Dur. Another good cultural exchange was me learning what FKK stands for, and a bunch of German girls talking about how weird Americans are about their bodies and for not having group showers. FKK = Freie Körper Kultur = Free body culture. It seems to be translated to "nudism", but it's really more of an open-minded mentality about nudity.
After everyone was destinkified, we walked through the park a fair way to an exit so we could go "out on the town" (or something) and get dinner. In the process we passed the above event pavillion, where 'Ring of Fire' was playing as Germans square danced in front of an American flag! We ended up taking the first S-bahn we found to the second stop, and finding an inexpensive thai & chinese restaurant there. It was pretty much providence. Dominik met us there, in case you were wondering where he'd gone to.
That's Jan with the threatening chopsticks, and my food in the foreground...oh it was so gooooooood...
So now, tired from playing frisbee all day and entering comas from Chinese food, Alex, Tanja, Micha and I took the S-bahn back to the park while everyone else took a taxi with Dominik, who was freshly out of the hospital and walking, but barely. When we got back to the park gates, they were obviously still closed, and the keycards that we'd been given to get back in only worked in turnstiles that were beyond the gates. So we scaled the gates for the second time, as we'd had a similar problem coming back from the showers. It was very hardcore of us.
And there was yet a party to be had. There was a big tent with music playing and video footage from the tournament projected on the ceiling and everyone was dancing. It turns out that I'm not a bad dancer, I just dance like Germans! Unfortunately I was not able to dance very much at the time. The tournament was laid out so that the pools alternated, so even in a best-case scenario you had 30 minutes between games, and all the warming up and cooling down had totally wreaked havok on my legs. Tanja and I escaped the party to go to sleep on the early side, wisely.
The second day was more of the same, generally speaking. We played three games and got spanked again. In between the games we took down our tents and I had a delightful hot dog for lunch. They had pickles and onions and ketchup and mustard and I think my top-split bun and wild toppings may have looked weird to the Germans, but it was GREAT. Our games finished early so we had time to shower and then watch the finals between Endzone from Rostock and Drehst'n Deckel from Dresden. There was one girl on Endzone who was super fast and awesome. I was really glad they weren't in our pool! In the end Dresden won, and they also won the Goaltimate tournament and the party! Crazy, right?
Then there was a big award ceremony where every team went up and got applauded, from 14th to 1st. Germans are so obscenely nice about such things! And THEN one of the best parts of the tournament happened: We won the spirit award! That means everyone thought we were nice and friendly! Yay!
Then, sadly, we all had to go home. Tanja and I were supposed to take the train with Micha and Jakob, but then it turned out that the train wasn't going to get into BAYREUTH until 12:16, and that if we were going to make it back to Regensburg in time for classes on Monday, we had to go in the car. Which Tanja and I both felt rather bad about, but I keep telling myself that the Bay Bees would've felt bad if Tanja and I had had to sleep in Bayreuth and miss classes on Monday.
And that is my story.
Many of you may recognize the onomotpoeia above as being the sound that cute animals make when straining themselves. That said, today I woke up in a tent in Magdeburg, played three frisbee games, and was on the road in both car and train for a little over five hours, which isn't actually that long. I am nonetheless haggard.
So, I have made it back from Mückencup 2007. That is, Mosquito Cup 2007. I'm hoping to have a few photos within the week from others, and then maybe a whole bunch if I can get a copy of the photo CD from the Magdeburg team.
A few highlights:
- 48 hours of more German than ever before! It turns out my German-speaking brain has an automatic shutoff.
- The second time a helicopter has landed on a frisbee field during a tournament I was playing in!
- The first time I have combined camping and Ultimate successfully. Second time overall.
My apologies for not posting the promised updates about the family visit, and for not doing it this weekend either. Basically as soon as they flew home, all of my professors assigned the work that I would've like to be working on all semester, not just the latter half. I now have my topic for my term paper ("Development of the Horse"), the readings are finally being posted for "Literature and Electronic Media", and I've gotten a tutor for "Bavaria in the late Middle Ages", so I have to be on the ball so as not to insult him when we have meetings. Plus, I had JUST decided to sit down and start doing my thesis translation a little bit each day. I'm up to 12.5 pages!
The reason I will not be updating later this weekend is that I will be going to my first Ultimate tournament on German soil! A woman named Tanja from Regensburg and I are going to Bayreuth at 2 today, and from there we will drive the relatively-long-for-Germany haul to Magdeburg, which is horizontally halfway between Berlin and Dresden, and vertically halfway between Berlin and Hanover. It's supposed to rain all weekend, and we will be sleeping in tents, which we will only be able to set up at probably 10pm at the earliest. It should be fun?
And thus, my excuse for not being able to wish my father a Happy Father's Day on Sunday. Though now that I think about it, seeing as Boston is 6 hours behind, I can probably make it happen. Assuming I am not asleep by 5pm my time. Distinct possibility.
Well, the family has gone back to the US of A, and after eleven days straight of "activities" I could once again sleep late this morning. All the way up to 6:52, when the construction on the street starts. I don't understand why they didn't do the construction BEFORE the tourist season. There's a ton of scaffolding and machinery in this 'burg and it's driving me up the wall (which is abnormally easy to scale, given the scaffolding).
Here is the itinerary that Family Foos followed over the last week and a half (incl. what we did for dinner):
5/31 - Arrival, dinner (at die Alte Linde), crankiness, sleep
6/1 - Marianna's walking tour of Regensburg, ending with a Danube river cruise to Walhalla. Plans for an hour train ride to a beer festival were vetoed in favor of not falling asleep standing up. Dinner at L'Osteria.
6/2 - We arose at the crack of dawn to take a train to Salzburg, where we spent a few hours before heading to our hotel in Bayerisch Gmain. Where we napped for several hours. We walked into the larger town of Bad Reichenhall for dinner on the Rathausplatz, where Dad and I got racks of ribs larger than a breadbox.
6/3 - We boarded a train to Berchtesgaden and then a bus to Obersalzburg before taking a yipes-inducing bus ride up into the Bavarian alps to The Eagle's Nest, Hitler's former teahouse. Then it was back down to Berchtesgaden and onto another bus to the Königssee, where we took a boat cruise on Germany's cleanest lake. Then back to Regensburg (on the last train! eep!). Dinner was Döner kebab in the Munich train station.
6/4 - Back to Munich for a brief I-haven't-seen-that-much-but-here-it-is tour. Highlights included fresh sour cherries, the Chinese Tower biergarten, and getting back to Regensburg in time for cheap pizza at Peaches. (Happy Birthday Peter? Am I close?)
6/5 - After class (wah wah!) we went to the Schneider brewery in Kelheim for my 21st birthday. Despite poor planning, it was almost a disaster, but through divine providence we made it. I believe dinner was pastries, Döner, and milk from the grocery store.
6/6 - We took the bus to Donaustauf, 15 minutes outside of Regensburg, and climbed up to the ruins of a 10th century castle. Greg said it was his favorite part. Back in Regensburg, we had "kaffee und küchen" in Cafe Prinzess, the oldest coffeehouse in Germany. Mom and I had dinner in the Ratskeller (aka the basement of city hall, if you didn't know). Then I threw myself a grand birthday party with all the program kids, their guests, and the fam.
6/7 - Not partied out at all, (or were we?), we headed off to Nürnberg to check out a handful of things, notably the castle and the Reichsparteitag - including the Zeppelin field where many a Nazi rally was filmed for propaghanda reels. I believe dinner was pizza outside on Haidplatz (best atmosphere ever?).
6/8-9 - Greg and I went to Prague, a trip which I simultaneously want to complain about and pretend never happened. There were a few snafus that were so horrendously wrong that the feeling is more of wonder than outrage. I'm not really sure what the parents did, though I think it included Farmers' Markets. You'll have to ask them. Greg and I had some great fast-food Mexican in Prague near The Worst Hostel Ever. When we returned, dinner was at a DIFFERENT outdoor pizza spot on Haidplatz.
6/10 - To round out the "understanding Germans" experience, Greg and I went to Dachau on Sunday. It was an intense experience, and bears greater discussion than the lightning round I'm spinning here. If I decide to put photos up, they will be linked from the blog rather than integrated. Dinner was at Hotel Orphee, which I've wanted to go to since day one. It was a good end to the visit.
So that's the teaser for now, I have to work on some questions for my history tutor, and get my act together for the Ultimate tournament that I might be going to this weekend!!!
Some Photos:
Alright, back to...work?
