21 posts tagged “weird”

Sometimes, you just come home from frisbee practice and there's a jazz festival on your street.  Especially likely to happen when you're wearing a sweaty trucker hat backwards and kinda smell.

Other non-news:

When I move out of my room, I have to wash the curtains and the windows, and dry clean my pillow and blanket.  I also have to make an appointment with the Hausmeister to go over the room to assess damages.  I have to do this ON THE DAY I LEAVE and then give the keys to him when I walk out the door.  The problem with this is that I have an international flight at 11:50 from Munich, which is an hour and a half away, and everyone in the program has to do this procedure after 8 am the same day.  When I asked the program director how we were going to do that, she looked at me quizzically and then repeated the last, unrelated thing she had said before I had asked.  Par for the course.

I have a paper due on the 17th, and then two finals on the 19th.  Then Will leaves on the 21st, and I will probably go to a frisbee tournament in Spessart that weekend.  Then, I clean my room furiously,  buy gifts furiously, pack furiously, and then go to Dresden for two days before returning to Regensburg, taking photos furiously, probably going to ANOTHER frisbee tournament, then *washing my windows* and getting the hell out of dodge.  The long term goal is for my plane not to crash.

Two reader participation items:

1)  If you want a specific German trinket, and are crossing your fingers that I will buy you one, you should probably instead send me an email telling me what small, inexpensive item you will surely die without.
2)  I own too much crap.  I am unsure if I will be able to fit it all into my previously owned suitcases.  Does anyone know anything about bringing an extra piece of luggage on a flight OR exactly how people do this shipping thing they're always talking about without spending $200+.

Mah plump self making pretzels of late

This post is going to be all pictures, because there isn't really much to say about the content of those pictures.  That said, by the time I finish this post, I'm sure there will be plenty of text.  Like that.

And that.

And that.

Just kidding, but I do want to say two things:

1) Janice, if you're reading this, I just wrote you a post card, got interrupted before finishing it, forgot that I hadn't finished, and mailed it.  So sorry that it's weird and unsigned, among other things.

2) I shouldn't drink out of white mugs here.  The water is yellowish in both the kitchen and the bathroom, but there are fewer specks in the bathroom water.  Just a tip for y'all there.

Kreuz und Quer - my German frisbee team

(We won the Uni Tournament on Monday.  We were the only non-gym-class team there.  L to R: Back row: HaJu, Max, Ingrid, Moritz, Thomas.  Front row: Michaela, me, Wolle and Clemens)

Greg's newest beer glass

My newest beer glass - with bicycle bell!

A rather delicious slice of raspberry cake from "Sweet Cuisine"

All of the stuffed animals I somehow have here

(Xue, I sent the bunny baby home with my parents.  From L to R: Romero (from Ben), Admiral (from Betsy - I got him for Xmas and didn't want to abandon him in January), Monkey (from Luci and the Dans - a farewell present), Las Vegas (from Nagler - for my birthday), and Johann (my souvenir from Switzerland))

A really narrow alley!

The Oswaldstift kitty!

Grilling in the rain on the 4th of July

The weather clears up

The Finns get in on the action

Rachel & her very American apple pie

The "updated" Black Forest Cake I made for the other 4th of July party

(The update is twofold.  The first I think you can figure out for yourselves, but there are also about 2 teaspoons of ground chiles in that cake.  It was the perfect heat, I couldn't have wished for a better result)

The chemistry building cafeteria where this took place

Chiemsee

Ludwig II's Schloss Herrenchiemsee

The best fountain ever

And subsequent photos (the third one is Fraueninsel, another island in the Chiemsee)

In which Germany looks like Penobscot Bay

Renaissance Faire

In the longest castle in Europe

(no, seriously)

Dig the random small child playing on the ground (Germany in a nutshell)

Eight-year-old Greg would flip out!

(The Renaissance fair gave me a chance to tell Maya the "look what I shot" story)

What can I say? Fooses like dead stuff.

Ideally, by this time Saturday, I will have paid my respects at the grave of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel.

Unanticipatedly cool.

1)  The Circle of Life:  In a recent post, I discussed Obazta, a Bavarian cheese dish.  I promised that the next time I ate it, I would take a photo.  I ate it today, but I didn't have my camera.  Then, Jess sent me a photo of some Obazta we had in Bamberg.  That's Gretchen on the right.

See how it resembles a cartoon dead caterpillar?

2)  I have been making my way through "Von der Natur nicht vorgesehen", and the author at one point mentions the places she'd been in the United States: New York City (naturally) and Vinalhaven!  The same, 1200-person Vinalhaven that we can (theoretically?) see off in the distance when we visit the beautiful summer home of family friends on another island in Penobscot Bay.  In other news, I'm definitely translating that for my thesis.  *gulp*

3)  On Wednesday, I leave for Vienna for three days.  The plan is to get there around 4 pm, stay Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night, and then spend as much or as little of Saturday there as I want.  Hopefully I will not go crazy with solitude as I did in Switzerland.  I've gotten four guidebooks from the library, as well as the Rick Steeves' "Germany and Austria" that my Dad left here.  I think Rick Steves is kind of a stupid jerk, and normally I'd say that at least it was useful for the maps, but he draws his own, because he is kind of a stupid jerk.  So...I'm using it to get an overview before using the German-language guides for more specific items.  RS promotes this BS-type of "have-your-eyes-pass-over-everything-without-seeing-anything" tourism.  It's like, "Here is how to see everything "important" in a city in one day", and it's unfortunate.  It also makes him look dumb when he refers to anything in his best-selling guidebooks as "off the beaten path."  And lastly, today, I found this in the book (referring to cake shops): "Shops like this boast "K u. K" - good enough for the König und Kaiser (king and emperor, same guy)."  I am currently enrolled in a class for four hours a week about how König and Kaiser are not the same guy.  I am not going to get into why he's wrong, but what really gets me is that he made this fairly obivous error while saying something that had no other purpose but to make him look "smart".  Okay, I'm going to stop myself there.

4)  On...Thursday? I went to the Trinity Church (Dreieinigkeitskirche) on Gesandtenstr. (here in R'burg) and climbed up into the steeple, as it is open for a nominal fee during the summer.  Here are a few photos from the visit (click to embiggen):

The organ pipes

The sanctuary

More or less the money shot

(The rest of the photos are also in the "photos" section of the blog.

5)  This weekend I went to Aschaffenburg, which is near Frankfurt right on the Hessen border.  Our friend Regina's parents and brother live there, so five of us went to visit and stayed with her and her family.  The biggest deal in Aschaffenburg is the castle, which is quite large and is red.

See how it's refreshingly different?

This is the tiniest garden

The castle grounds extend (or seem to extend) around the bank of the Main a little bit.

Ludwig's Pompejanum

This is a replica of a temple from Pompeii.  King Ludwig I (who was not a kaiser!) built a lot of neat stuff, in fact, he paid for the spires on the Regensburg cathedral!  (Tangent: last week I went into an antique shop and saw a postcard of the cathedral in the early 1800s before it had the spires.  It was pretty funny looking.  I should go back and buy that.)

We also walked around the shopping area of the downtown a little, looking for a mothers day gift for Regina to buy for her brother to give to her mom.  Hah.  Unfortunately, my camera died right before I was able to take a photo of a giant knife that served as the sign for a kitchen store.  I was able to take one photo in the toy store:

I am obsessed with wooden toy food

We didn't do that much else, though we had two GREAT homemade dinners at Regina's parents house.  Homemade sauerkraut is about the best thing ever.

We went for a walk through the neighborhood and into the hills on Sunday before we left:

My ideal house

The view

6)  On Saturday night we went to a party at Regina's friend's house to watch this truly bizarre event called "Eurovision".  Basically, a bunch of european nations hold American Idol-like singing contests, and each country's national winner performs at Eurovision.  Then, all the countries vote (they're not allowed to vote for themselves), and the winner is decided by popular vote.  The reality of the matter is that every single act is more outlandish than the next, and in the end, everyone votes for countries to which a) they have current or former political ties, or b) they feel bad about exacting a genocide on.  Evidence:  All of the former Yugoslavia voted for Serbia, most of the former East bloc voted for either Russia or Ukraine, and Turkey voted for Armenia.  Germany had a really classy jazz performance, and if it had actually been about talent, they would've won.  France also had a great show, including a stuffed animal cat sewn to one of the singer's shirts.  He occaisionally sung to it.  The best, however, hands down, was the Ukraine group, headed by a drag queen dressed like a disco ball. The link is to a *highly* recommended video.

The following cat was not interested in the competition:

Mildy surly cat

The cat did find time to meddle in our game of Werewolf, which is basically a children's camp game.  Americans mostly know it as "Mafia".  The Germans had a handful of great twists on it, though.  The game is this:  Everyone in the group is assigned via secret slips of paper to be either a "dorfbewohner" (villager) or a "werwolf" (werewolf).  There are about two werewolves for every four villagers.  There also needs to be a moderator, who oversees the game.  The moderator declares it "night" and then tells the werewolves to open their eyes and see who their partner(s) is.  Then they silently agree by pointing which villager they want to eat, and then they "sleep" again.  The moderator then tells the group who got killed.  Then the entire group discusses who they think the werewolves could be and decides by show of hands who they want to sacrifice for the public good.  The challenge is to keep suspicion away from yourself and identify the right werewolves based on aural clues and pop-psychology.  Either they villagers win by killing all the werewolves, or the opposite situation comes to pass.  Here are the twists:  There is a hunter villager, who can take someone with them if they are killed, thus complicating "revenge for finger pointing" killings by the werewolves.  There is an oracle villager who can as the moderator every round about the werewolf status of ONE other player.  The rub is that nobody knows you're the oracle, so you have to convince the group who to kill without sounding like you're passing the blame.  The last twist, which was great, was having a "Romeo and Juliet."  Two players are secretly chosen by the moderator at the behest of a villager designated "cupid", and then they identify each other by "waking up" during the night when directed by the moderator.  They do not know if their partner is a werewolf or not, but if one of them dies, both of them do, so they have to defend each other from the torch-waving villagers.  It was pretty great.

7)  One more photo from Regensburg:

Haidplatz

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!

Gasp!

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.

Squeeeee!

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.

I also went to the Englischer Garten, which was actually more of a park than a garden.  I'm glad I found this out before dragging my mother there.  But don't worry, Mom, there is also a botanical garden, as well as a fancy garden at the Residenz.  One really cool thing about the Englischer Garten is that it has a giant Chinese-style tower in it which is in the middle of a beer garden.  They stick an oompah band in the tour to play while you drink.  A good tip about this beer garden:  it's self-serve.  Though it may not seem like it, this is a HUGE advantage to the foreign tourist, as you can point to the food you want, or at least see it before you order.  I've been to a few beer gardens, and while they're all pretty neat, this one was EXCEPTIONAL in it's beauty and atmosphere, and (as embarrassing as it is) accessibility to tourists.  Oh, it's called "Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm".

Quick Alissa! Do a double-take! (maybe a spit-take?)

Also in the Englischer Garten is a stream called the Eisbach ("ice brook") which is, surreally, absurdly, host to SURFERS!  In a man-made stream in land-locked Bavaria.  It's redonk.

Hängen zehn!

(And yes, the sign does say "Surfen verboten", and yes, that does mean "no surfing".  In Germany, they just put up signs forbidding stuff so it's not their fault when you crack your head open, etc.  In fact, some of the pathways between buildings at the Uni have signs that say "No entry, danger to your life!" (no good translation) so the Uni isn't at fault when you trip over a tree branch that they didn't pick up)

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:

The Kaiserdom

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.

fate

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.

Wisteria between Domplatz and Teufelsgraben

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.

One entrance to Altenburg

Bear Cage

This is pretty typisch Deutsch (typical German).  There is a bear cage in the castle.  If you look closely, there's a stuffed bear in the cage in the photo.  The last bear to live there did so between 1952 and 1982.  WHAT?  So weird, this country.

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.

Create your own visitor map!

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!

Baltic

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.

What? I like posing with giant ice cream cones.

(clearly)

I have just realized that I play window-shade chicken every time someone checks into the hotel room across the way.  As you can see from this photo:

Mein Zimmer

My room looks directly into a hotel room.  An EXPENSIVE HOTEL ROOM (ha ha!).  THIS expensive hotel room.  My ethernet outlet is right next to that window, and so my computer is too.  Basically, when someone walks into that room, they set down their bags, and walk to the window to gaze upon their 200 Euro view of...an American reading boingboing.  (I'm pretty sure my father's 43 Euro hotel room looked out onto a music studio with lots of plants in the windows).  Either way, I effing live here, so unless I'm disrobing, my blinds are staying open.  Usually their blinds close immediately.  I have only once lost this little game of chicken.  I don't want to talk about it.  Modesty means different things in different countries.

If this were a book, there would be three spaced-out asterisks here to denote a change of topic.

I was moping around my room at four in the afternoon, and decided to respond to an email that A.J., a former frisbee teammate, had sent me while I was in Switzerland.  Halfway through the email (about frisbee), I realized that I was missing ACTUAL frisbee practice, and went for the first time in two months.  My German had improved (slightly), my playing had worsened (greatly).  It was about what I expected, but it was fun, and we went out to a Biergarten afterwards.  I think I have surmounted the language-barrier awkwardness, if not the language barrier, and feel better about going back next week.  They're starting practices on Wednesday, in addition to Friday and Sunday, which is great because I will still be able to play twice a week if I'm gone on Friday.

3 x *

Gretchen and I left Berlin on Tuesday at 7:30, and arrived in Rügen around noon.  I think.  We weren't sure if the hostel was open for guests yet, so we locked our bags in large the train station.  It wasn't actually large, in fact it was quite small, but not as small as that of the narrow-guage iron railway a few blocks down.  The beach/boardwalk was only a few blocks away, straight ahead.  On the walk there, we appreciated all of the soviet beach condos, which, ironically, make Binz (that was the name of the town: Ostsee-Bad Binz) look like every American beach-front city I've ever been to (Tybee Island, GA, Wildwood, NJ, Nantasket Beach in Hull, MA).

Where's the Pinball!?

The beach was pretty, and the homes that actually faced the water were lovely: beachy and Victorian.  Unfortunately it was a little overcast, and the photos are ugly:

Obviously, the third photo is a hotel.

We were a little overwhelmed, because we wanted to see the beach, but we also wanted to see the Jagdschloss, which is a fancy hunting lodge from the early-mid 1800s on a hill overlooking the whole island.  AND we had to eat seafood for dinner, buy snacks for our respective 9+ hour train rides the next day, and check into the hostel by 5pm.

We were going to get lunch from this "fresh fish" cart on the promenade, until we saw a) that the fish still had the shiny part on it, and b) the smoked eels, which looked like those giant novelty pencils dipped in tar.  So we put that off, wandered around the boardwalk aka promenade a little, and then decided we should go to the Jagdschloss ASAP because it closed at 4pm, whereas the beach did not.

We were tricked (aka I forgot to read the guidebook) into taking this cute but absurd little train/car thing up to the Jagdschloss.  It looked like a locomotive, but it was really just a car pulling two carts.  The first...10? minutes of the ride was just bumbling around Binz very slowly while plugging restaurants and hotels.  It was dumb.  Very dumb.  Eventually, we made it to the Jagdschloss ("hunting palace"), which is inside a nature reserve, and surrounded by (apparently) beautiful hiking trails.

I know this is a family blog, but I have to say - the Jagdschloss was a little phallic.

totes dreary.

less dreary.

I say that mostly because the building is really oddly proportioned, in the sense that it has two floors - except when it has six.  That makes the climb up the tower REALLY long.  Also contributing to how long it feels, is the fact that the staircase is cast-iron and snakes around the inside of the tower, thus feeling rickety and leaving lots of room to look down.  I was too nervous to take a photo, so here is someone else's.

Here are views from the top!:

Here are views from the inside!:

Pretty neat. Pretty dead.

There were also a few museumy rooms on the first floor dedicated to Caspar David Friedrich and Karl Friedrich Schinkel (the architect of the Jagdschloss and other buildings, including the Neue Wache in Berlin, though he isn't responsible for the most beautiful parts of it), and two rooms full of truly heinous modern art that lacked an artist's name.  Good choice.

We did finally walk on the beach and eat after we returned from the Jagdschloss.  I had pad thai and Gretchen had currywurst.  Woo, seafood...

Strandkörbe

All along the beach they had these little beach chairs (they're closed in this photo).  They're wicker with fabric lining, and very, VERY cute.

The Promenade from the Pier

It was very windy, and we couldn't stay on the pier for long before going back toward land. 

Gretchen has great teeth.

It was late enough for us to then get our bags from the train station and check into the hostel, which was a bit of a pain, because "Hostelling International" has different standards for Swiss and German hostels and the card I had was...weird.  It was the first Swiss one the guy at the counter had ever seen.  We then went to the grocery store and bought apple juice and cookies and the like, and dragged ourselves back to the hostel to drop it all off before heading out in search of dinner.  Fancy, seafoody dinner.  We scanned a lot of menus and found that they were all around the same price: expensive.  We were stopped in our tracks at a restaurant called Fischmarkt (like my bus stop in Regensburg!) when we saw the "shrimp cooked with rosemary and garlic and served with tomatoey-goodness sauce, pesto and french bread".  Gretchen ended up getting something else, but I got the above mentioned drool-fest and was quite pleased with it.

Then, of course, we went looking for gelato.  Because that's how they roll here.  Gelato, all. the. time.  We ended up getting waffles from a gelateria (because that makes sense).  I had one with raspberry sauce and whipped cream, and Gretchen got one with Nutella all up on it.

I imagine that from there we staggered back to the hostel and went promptly to sleep.  I think that sounds about right.  Oooh, and then the next morning I took my first shower in three days because the apartment in Berlin had something wrong with the shower drain.

So I think that's it for Binz.

Ciao.