ashleigh's german adventure

days 37-47: ulm/prague

2009-06-22T21:35:00.010+02:00

Flo and I decided to go on a spontaneous trip to Prague. We were going to go camping on Thursday, but the weather in Konstanz was pretty bad. Thursday was a holiday and I already took off Friday, so we decided to take a trip somewhere in the 4-hour radius of Ulm. Prague was 4 hours 20 minutes by regular car and we took a Car 2 Go. So that took us 5 hours in a Smart. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did.

Germany -> Prague
First, Flo and I couldn't find our Car2Go. We looked up and down the street and finally found the car a street over. Then everything was going well, we were doing about 130kph (~80mph) and all the sudden Flo couldn't accelerate and we couldn't go faster than 80kph (~ 49mph). Cars and trucks were flying by! This was around 10:15 am Friday. We pulled off the autobahn and waited a while for ADAC, the German kind of AAA, and that guy couldn't help us (12:30), so we had to drive to the Smart dealership so they could either fix or replace our rental car. Finally around 2pm we were on our way again. The trip was pretty uneventful until we got to the city of Prague. The Google directions wanted us to go down the wrong way down one way streets. Somehow we ended up in the underground parking lot of a mall once and couldn't figure out how to get over the river to the hotel. We finally got to our hotel about an hour later (about 6pm. we were supposed to be there at 1).

Prague
We got to our hotel, Hotel Manes, finally. We parked on the street checked into the hotel. Our conversation went kind of like this:
hotel: Hello, welcome...
me: hi, blah blah... Where can we park our car?
hotel: anywhere on the street. It's the weekend, so it's free.
me: ok, I am already parked there. So it's ok to park there? we're not going to get ticketed or towed? It's safe there?
hotel: yes, we can see it. It's no problem.
So we checked in and went up to our room. The hotel was really elegant and the staff was really friendly and helpful, but when we got to our room, it sounded like someone taking a shower or someone pouring water into a bucket above us. I asked the reception and they said it would go away, just wait it out. So we went and took a walk and got lost for another hour in Prague walking around. My favorite part was when Flo said as we were turning the corner "so we finally made it back" and we realized we were actually in the city center old city area and just walked in a GIANT circle. haha! Now I think it's hilarous, but at the time it was about midnight and it wasn't so funny then. We were back in the room, and the water noise was a lot louder, not really quieter. Luckily, the hotel moved us to a smaller, but much quieter room and that was it for the night.

The next morning Flo and I were eating a delicious breakfast and he wanted to do something with the car and I was waiting for the breakfast lady to put out a fresh plate of fruit. She came out and I loaded my plate, then Flo came over and told me the car was gone. It turns out that the city of Prague cleans the streets once a month and it was just our luck that the one day they clean the streets was the day we were there and they towed our car.

The hotel management apologized, and said they didn't see the sign and that we could check out late and help ourselves to the minibar. So we cleaned it out.
that was it for the bad luck. Somehow Flo and I always have fun and even with all that bad luck we had a blast in Prague. Next time we should stay for more than one night :)

I think the theme of this summer's trips is something will go wrong. But this way we have a good story and the big debacle of Flo's camera resulted in a midnight tour of a castle! Fun fun!

days 21-36: ulm

2009-06-11T20:43:00.003+02:00

Lasagna Cookoff 2009!
It was the Third Annual Lasagna Cookoff last week in Ulm! Let's take a look at the previous Lasanga Cookoff highlights:

Lasagna Cookoff 2007:
Ashleigh & Jonas: Titled: "lazy lasagna" Consensus: made from a box. Very tasty, enough to enter the same recipe in next year's battle.
Flo & Stefan: Titled: "we worked too hard on our lasagna", Consensus: Adequate. not bad.

Lasagna Cookoff 2008:
Ashleigh, Jonas & Matze: Titled: "our lasagna is from a box and it still tastes the best" Consensus: Matze joined the team and the made-from-a-mix lasagna still tasted the best.
Flo & Stefan: Titled: "making the lasagna from scratch doesn't make it taste better a year later either" Consensus: we begin to see a pattern.

Lasagna Cookoff 2009:
Matze: Title: frozen deliciousness Consensus: Good appetizer, best lasagna to get the crowd excited for the next lasagna!
Ashleigh & Jonas: Title: III Consensus: best lasagna yet. in three years.
Flo & Stefan: gold medal for participation.

Next Peach Cake Day should be awesome!

days 5-20

2009-05-26T20:29:00.002+02:00

Ok, bad start to the blogging summer. 2 weeks is a little too long, but it can only improve! But there has been a lot going on in the past 2 weeks!
So about two weeks ago, we had to get a new toilet seat. I didn't think any bad things about the last one, but it developed this crack in it, so it was time to get a new one. I'll put in a picture...

Thursday was a holiday in Germany. I'm not sure which one it is because they have so many of them, but I got Thursday and Friday off work! Just to show how many holidays there are here, the next one is on Monday (the 1st), then another the following Thursday (11th) . It's crazy! Happy Memorial Day, by the way. I did have to work today, however. Nokia doesn't celebrate American holidays in Germany at least.

Thursday, the mysterious holiday, was pretty laid back. Not much going on, except we went to the giant pizza place in Deitenheim! It's the same one from one of my June 2007 posts. Is that ok to link to your own blog? I'm not sure about this blogger etiquette, but I guess it's mostly the fam and friends reading this, so whatever. Now you'll click the link and see what I'm talking about. The restaurant looks the same as the last time, but this year I went with Flo and Stefan's work collegues + families.

Friday I took a day off work and had a long weekend. Flo and I went to the Brot Museum! It's an entire museum about bread! I always pass it and finally went in. I had no idea how many exhibits you could have...about bread. In case you're interested, the main exhibit is about Jewish bread. Nevertheless, I forgot my camera, but trust me, there are floors of information about bread. It made me hungry. Later, we all went to see an English movie! It's Illumaniti to the Germans, or Angles and Deamons for the English speakers. I think I found the untapped English speaking people of Ulm - they're all either in Stuttgart at the English movie theater or at the 5pm English showing at the cinema in town.

Saturdays are market days!!! We bought some cheese and fruit for our picnic (see the next paragraph) and food for the spargel dinner. It's basically asparagus, potatoes, ham, and this Hollandase sauce that's poured over the asparagus. I think it's pretty German. We had it a few years ago...I can't find the post otherwise I would link to it again :)

Sunday was a fun day! Flo and I rented a Car2Go and drove to the Alps! We had all this food from the market and brought a blanket and had a picnic on someone's farm. The day started off kind of rainy when I got breakfast at the bakery, but turned pretty nice and warm once we reached Kempten, a town kind of south of Ulm. There was a carnival going on! We didn't stay for it, but it reminded me a lot of Lake Winnepesaukah in Chattanooga. We walked around the town, saw dead bodies (!!!) in the church, I still need to find out if they were real, and went to see the ruins of a Roman temple. The temple ruins were pretty cool, but nowhere nearly as awesome as the ruins of the city of Salamis in North Cyprus. After our Roman adventure, we took our picnic to a field overlooking a village and the Alps. Later, we went to tour some castle ruins in Eisenberg. We liked the castles so much we went back again later! But more of that a little later :) The castles were fun, there weren't so many people there which was nice. We came back to Ulm and had dinner at this Indian restaurant that was pretty good. I walk by that restaurant almost every day here and it's nice to finally go in.
Last night around 12, Flo realized he left his camera at one of the castle ruins. After an extensive search of the car and apartment, we gathered light-emitting electronics and headed back to the Alps. It's pretty cool to go wandering around castle ruins in the middle of the night. And Flo found his camera :)

days 1-4: ulm

2009-05-11T08:13:00.004+02:00

I arrived in Ulm Saturday! It was a long flight: Chattanooga -> Chicago -> London -> Stuttgart. Whew. Flo and Jonas picked me up in Stuttgart and everything was pretty good until British Airways lost one of my bags. The bag with all my underwear and socks, so one of the first things Flo and I did in Ulm was go to H&M and buy some until my bags came back. I didn't know that at 9am the next day they would bring my suitcase to Ulm! I had some trouble with German customs, but hopefully all those charges will be cleared soon haha

So on Sunday I went to a bbq with Flo and Stefan and all the Ulm friends. We played Matze's game, Kubb. I forgot my camera so there aren't any pictures, but I'll post them next time (if) we go.

Work at Nokia started today, it was fun to see all the people from last year, and meet all the new ones!

days 76-92: ulm

2008-08-13T17:12:00.005+02:00

so it's been a while again since the last post. And I haven't taken any pictures with my camera since July 29th! So some of these pictures are from my camera phone. That needs to change. Starting today.

Lets see...Last weekend was the strangest thing. Flo and I went to a traveling French Village. It was so weird. But kind of cool. When you walked in from the outside it looked like the backs of walls (because that's what they were) then inside it's like a French village with fake stores painted on the walls and a miniature Eiffel Tower and Moulin Rouge.

The weird mushroom looking thing is a booth were the traveling French people sell...mushrooms...

This is my last week of work! Then a day of flying home, day of moving back into the apartment, then classes start...not much left of the summer. But 92 days so far in Deutschland is not so bad. Ooooh, and now it's day 2 of using my visa! wooooooooooooooo

days 72-76: ulm

2008-07-28T20:52:00.002+02:00

No pictures this time since I forgot my camera in the car for Nabada 2! Saturday we floated down the Donau and had a bbq after. Something's missing without the pictures :(
Here's something random...noodles on my back...

days 52-76: ulm

2008-07-24T22:16:00.000+02:00

So it's been a while since the last post...but a lot has been going on and I hope I can remember it all. At least this post is a little more interesting than last time.
Week 1 of July:
It was the Lasagna Cookoff 2008! Lasagna Cookoff 2007 was really good. Team Slackers vs. Team Make-Lasagna-From-Scratch. I think the Slackers team won. I think the Slacker team won again in '08, even with using the premade spices intended for another dish. That was on Tuesday...Friday was the 4th of July. I celebrated with Flo and the German band, Tomte in the park. They were playing at Ulmer Zelt...even though all the talking was in German it was still pretty good.
Then the next day Flo, Stefan and I went to their hometown in Edertal. The first night I bbq'd with Flo's fam, roasting bratwursts and making s'mores. It was kind of hard with the s'mores because it's almost impossible to get all the ingredients. I got "American style" marshmallows, chocolate and the closest thing to graham crackers I could find, but it wasn't the quite right. Next time I think I'll bring some Hershey's chocolate and real graham crackers from home. Monday we went to Kassel with some friends of Flo from back in the day. We walked up this trail in search of the fake castle, but ended up walking up a closed trail for a really long time then the castle was closed. But that didn't matter, it was still a cool looking castle, even though it was built in the 1800's. Good times.

(the cow is to show it was in the country)

Week 2:
Normal work week...That Friday I experienced my first festival-like event. I don't think I'm quite cut out for the whole festival thing. I like the music most of the time, but it was so cold and wet. The next day was really fun! I promised Laura if she came to Germany I would buy her a beer, so on the 12th I met her in the main town square in Munich and bought her a beer at the H ofbrauhaus. There was a Gay Pride rally in the square. Lots of drag queens and people in slave costumes...We walked around Munich most of the afternoon and she had to meet her group at some beerhall in the Munich suburbs. So after the Hofbrauhaus experience I tried to get directions to the other beerhall and could only find directions to another business on the same street. We took the s-bahn out of the city and got off at the stop and it looked like we were in the middle of a residential neighborhood and a factory...then we started walking through the neighborhood toward the biggest building we could find and somehow found the sign on a random road. that was really lucky

Week 3:

Now! It's been a pretty crazy week. Friday (18th) we went out to eat at Jonas' Asian place, Saturday we met Basti and Sarah for dinner then went to the Light Ceremony, the beginning of the Schwörwochenendes. We went to the Donau to watch thousands of candles float down the river at night.

The picture doesn't really show how pretty it was. Sunday was a pretty chilled out day. Then Monday was Nabada, (or NObada) because of the high water and random trees floating down the river it was cancelled :( So Saturday is Nabada 2, and we'll see if that happens.
Wednesday was awesome! We had our Team Event in Immenstadt. There was a high ropes course for 3 hours, then dinner, then an alpine slide down the mountain. I can't decide what was the best part...either the ropes course or slide...Right this minute I would say the slide because every muscle in my body aches right now because of the ropes. It was kind of hard at first because 1) the instructions were in German and when you're swinging around the trees it seems kind of important to know what exactly that guy was saying and 2) it was really really high.

1. floating candles down the Donau
2. the high ropes course
3. my coworkers, Sven, Michi, me

days 43-52

2008-06-30T21:16:00.002+02:00

52 days already!?! too fast. Zu schnell. Not much is new here. I finally beat Flo in chess after about 7 consecutive defeats. After working all the time, there's not much to report back home about. If you want to waste some time, try Grow Island.
Next week there's a concert, the 4th of July, AND trip to Edertal, so the next post should be a bit more interesting.

days 38-43: ulm

2008-06-21T12:07:00.004+02:00

Germans are crazy. This video is from the Germany vs. Portugal game where Germany won 3-2. Since Germany now goes to the semi finals for the Euro Cup, it was crazy on the streets:

This one I wish I had more room on my memory card because it cuts off right before the "oompa ooompa" bodyslam song.

And this one is the mob shaking a bus.

days 31-38: north cyprus (part I)

2008-06-16T20:53:00.015+02:00

The last few days were soooooooo much fun! Flo and I went to North Cyprus for a nice summer holiday. It was kind of nice taking a holiday during my holiday (kind of holiday) this summer. I think Jonas is reading this blog, so shout out! He even quoted it in the bus today so he gets a special shout out. We left Ulm at 4:00 pm Wednesday, took the train to Munich then hung around the airport until it was time for our flight to leave. Just in case you ever need to spend a few hours in the Munich airport, there isn't much for dinner unless you want to spend around 12 Euros for a nice meal, so go ahead and eat the Burger King outside. We thought about eating outside but then decided there would probably be some in the airport too, but we were wrong. So yeah...our flight was delayed a few hours so we played some Fußball that Lufthansa had out because of the Euro Cup.

Around 3am our flight landed in Larnaca, Cyprus. From there we hired a taxi that took us to the border because you can't rent a car from the South to the North, so we were dropped off at the border and picked up our rental car. The guy didn't speak English and Flo and I don't speak Turkish, so our directions were kind of messed up. He kept making some weird motion with his hands and saying "very improtant" which is what that semi-circle shape is on the picture to the left.
I kept critiquing the roads but they kept getting progressively worse.

We arrived at Burhan's Place around 7am Thursday morning. It felt very isolated there, and the electricity cut off at midnight but that added to the whole feel of the place. Burhan was nice and so were the 2 other staff members, Enver and Mustafa. As soon as we got to the bungalows, we crashed for a few hours then went to the beach for our 100% relaxing/no work at all beach day.
The water was so clear there, one Flo-length deep and I could still see the lines in the sand on the floor from the waves.

One weird thing about North Cyprus is there were lots of half-built buildings and houses. It was like they started building then took a break and kind of stopped sometime before the second half of the house was finished. Or if the buildings were falling down then the people moved out and built a new house next door without tearing down the old building.

We drove around Dipkarpaz and walked around the ruins of the Ayios Basilica built in the 4th century, A.D. It was pretty well preserved for being around for about 1,700+ years.

end of part 1.

days 30-31: ulm

2008-06-09T21:01:00.007+02:00

The Euro Cup is making me post more. There are about 25 more soccer games left. They're not boring, but it's a lot of soccer to watch. Germany won last night, and there were riots in the streets. Around 11pm, the game ended and Germany won against Poland 2-0. Cars started making laps outside the apartment and other people with flags wouldn't let cars pass until they honked their horn and showed their love for Deutschland. I thought the cars were going from somewhere to somewhere else, but the
longer you watch, then you could see they were the same people making loops around the city.

I have fallen in love while in Germany.

Not in love with soccer (or Fußball) but with Brunch. Not the mid morning after-breakfast-time-but-before-lunch brunch, but Brunch the spreadable deliciousness I love. It's getting to be a problem. I will eat bread because I love the taste of brunch, not so much the bread. I need to remember to look into ways to bringing this back to the US. Maybe dry ice?
Brunch is cream and cold, like a delicious cream cheese. So far, I've only tried 2 of the 3 flavors, although the "Plain" one doesn't look too good, but I hear it's good under strawberry jam. I would dedicate a whole blog entry to my favorite flavor, but right now it's a draw between the Paprika Peperoni and Feine Kräuter. The Paprika is spicy and tangy but the Feine Kräuter is herby and the first one I tried, and the original source of my Brunch Love.

days 28-30

2008-06-08T20:54:00.003+02:00

um...I'm not sure how many days I've been here so far, so that's why I posted earlier today as day 21 but this post was posted on the same day but titled "day 30"...that is going to look weird but whatev. Maybe it would be easier to measure things in weeks, but there's already this counting by days thing going...all the way from last year. It definitely is day 30, I just checked. Here.

The EuroCup is what's in here in Germany. Germany is actually playing right now (and that's why I'm blogging right now). It's Germany vs. Poland. I bet Germany would win 2-1. But now that I've seen them play I think it's going to 2-0.

Also, it's a slow night for news and a pretty laid-back weekend and one of the few posts without pictures, Charlie the Unicorn came out with a sequel!
Here's the original:

and now here's the sequel.

I can't decide which one is better. The more you watch it the funnier it is.

days 21-28: ulm

2008-06-08T13:42:00.002+02:00

(alt. title: How to get screwed by the German Government)
I've been having lots of problems with getting my German visa situation worked out. I applied for my visa in January from the Atlanta German Consulate and finally got a response at the end of March.

In case you're Googling how to get a work permit in Germany, here's the step by step things you can do to make the whole process much easier:
- Apply early: it can (and probably will) take up to 3 months to hear anything back.
- Since you have to apply in person, make sure you have everything with you when you get there and make copies of everything! Things you need when you go to the consulate:

An application form (available at the website)
Two passport photos. I had to go to 6 different passport photo places to get one that would be accepted by the German government. Wolf Camera was the only place that took pictures that fit the specifications. Even those taken by the US Passport office at the Knoxville courthouse were wrong. See the details of the exact requirements.
A valid copy of your passport
A bank statement or a statement of how you plan to pay for your stay in Germany. I didn't have one of these so a contract from my employer worked here as well.
A statement from my health insurance that I will be covered while working in Germany.
$68 in CASH, $50 for the fee of processing your application and $18 for shipping
A copy of my background check signed by the Chattanooga Police Department.

Then wait about 3 months and you'll get your visa. But what we weren't told was that this was just an entry visa. I still needed to register with the foreign office in Ulm then pay an additional 50 Euros (~$80USD) to get the visa extension.

But it's all worth it :) And now I can stay until my internship is finished. Hopefully. Otherwise there will be another frustrated blog entry in August.

days 8-21: Ulm

2008-06-01T22:19:00.001+02:00

Well, guess what?!?! I can stay in Germany for the duration of my internship!!!! I will write a post later on how to get a German work/residency visa, but it's late and I have to work early tomorrow.

Last week was the Eurovision Song Contest. We had a little bet going between Flo, Stefan and me. Every country gives out scores after all the contestants sing a song, so we did that too at the apartment. The winner didn't have to do the dishes. I lost. For dinner we ate Raclette in front of the contest. The dinner was so good, but lots of dishes to clean later :( The next day we went to Charlottehöle, a cave about half an hour away from Ulm. I should have taken more pictures to show, but all I have is Flo and Stefan in the beer garden after and there's no shortage on this blog.

This week was filled with the usual working in the morning and coming back home in the late afternoon. Tuesday was such a beautiful day (schön tag!) I took off from work a few hours early and went for a walk and read in the park with Flo.

This weekend's trip was to Stuttgart to see the Indiana Jones movie!!!! Flo and I took a train from Ulm to Stuttgart, about an hour to the closest English movie theatre around. The Corso Kino is this small theatre a short train ride outside the city playing movies in their native language (mostly English!) I found out that's where all the Americans in Germany hang out on Saturday nights. Before the movie, Flo and I made a day out of seeing the city of Stuttgart. It all started with a walk in the park but ended up taking most of the day. I liked it because we walked a good part of the city, saw the royal gardens and walked around the outside of the Wilhma zoo. You don't even have to buy a ticket inside to see the polar bear exhibit! Woohoo! Free sights of polar bears! You can even see some donkeys and ponies too, but the polar bears are so much more exciting. They were supposed to have a baby polar bear, but maybe you have to pay to see that. Come to think of it, you can do most things in Stuttgart for free. We didn't pay to go to the Stauffenberg Exhibition. You can see everything from the entrance and the guy taking the money gave us a German and English pamphlet so we took them and read about the museum exhibit in the park. Even the castle was free. You can go up to it and look through the windows and see inside without going inside (see the picture below). We're kind of cheap. . ...

days 1-8: Ulm

2008-05-19T18:58:00.000+02:00

Woohoo!!!! First post of the Adventure Blog, part 2!!! I should have updated sooner, but in a nutshell, here's what's been going on:

The Airport:
I flew Chattanooga to Chicago, not so bad, but had a 13 hour layover in Chicago. I had my whole day planned out: make some phone calls, watch some movies and tv shows, surf the internet blogging, get a chocolate milkshake (around hour 6 or 7), but then my power cord to my computer didn't work so I made an impromptu trip to Chicago. I've never been to Chicago, but the people at the airport told me to take the Blue line all the way to the Washington stop to the middle of the city. From there I wandered for a few hours looking for a Staples/Office Max/Best Buy sort of store but I couldn't find my power cord anywhere :( The rest of the airport was pretty uneventful after that. From Chicago, I had a flight to Frankfurt where I met Flo and Stefan at the airport!!!!

Germany:
First few days were not too interesting to blog about...drove to Ulm, got caught up on some sleep, the usual trans-Atlantic transition stuff. The weather was so nice here Flo and I went to a few beer gardens and read in the park.

Work:
I have an internship with Noki a in Ulm. The building I'm in is pretty cool. It's the Energon: the world's biggest passive house office building, which means it's very energy-efficient. I can't find an English site for it, but the pictures are pretty good.
The people are really nice and last week we got happy hour cocktails:

Some other random stuff:

We went to Ikea Friday to get some boxes. The boxes are a lot better for my clothes than piles on the floor. they look a lot better now and the labels Stefan and I made are sehr gut for my german. last night was taco night...and I finally took a picture of this clock at the Rathaus (town hall)! Every time I walk by there's a group of tourists taking a picture of this clock. I just found out that it's been ticking for over 490 years. This clock tells the time, zodiac signs, and some other things. Also, market time is back!!!!!! The last one is a picture of the Munster with some German flags.

back in the states: chattanooga

2007-08-13T04:46:00.000+02:00

I got a pet today. Actually, I got three, but they are the coolest pets ever. It's an Eco-sphere and I don't have to feed them or clean the tank or anything. It's perfect. Their names are Jason, Chuck, and Jackie. For Jason Bourne, Chuck Norris, and Jackie Chan. They are badass shrimp.

days 70-78: new york city

2007-08-10T08:22:00.000+02:00

This is the first blog entry since day 38 that Flo hasn't updated my blog! Hurray for freedom of the internet! My time in NYC has had sketchy internet I "stole" from unprotected wireless networks around other apartments. I'm not sure if it qualifies as stealing because since they didn't think to put a password for their network, it's kind of like asking for people to use it. Anyway, it wasn't that reliable.
I arrived at JFK around midnight on the 2nd/3rd and took the shuttle to the apartment in midtown. It was a pretty nice place, and good thing there was no need to take the subway because of the monsoon they were closed and people were getting crushed. The real reason of the trip was to see the Broadway shows.
Friday: Altar Boyz
Saturday: Wicked and Rent
Monday: Spring Awakening
Wednesday: Legally Blonde, the Musical

Jill won lottery tickets to Wicked, so we were front row for cheap. the reason the tickets are so cheap is because the actors are so close you can get showered in spit. I really wanted to see Rent because the 2 main original characters, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp, were reappearing in the show after 11 years. I could only get standing room, but I love Rent, so it was worth it. Spring Awakening is this play written by a German guy over 100 years ago, but because of censorship laws it was forbidden and forgotten until a few years ago when they made it into a Broadway show. Jill and I were in line waiting for student tickets at 4:30 am and we weren't even the first ones there. The play was really depressing it seemed like they tried to smoosh every kind of teen angst from suicide, coming out, pregnancy, losing the v-card, incest rape, and some other things I'm probably forgetting. It was kind of a downer, but good and not quite wake up at 4 am good. Legally Blonde was really good. Jill and I were at the theatre by 5 for that one. The only thing was it was one of the biggest storms NY has seen and there were tornadoes in Brooklyn, so it was raining like a monsoon or something there. That's the only time I thought it was crazy we were out there waiting for musical tickets. I'm not kidding. The rain was falling at a 45 degree angle and the thunder was clapping shaking the windows. crazy.

days 67-70: xi'an

2007-08-01T23:48:00.000+02:00

The train to Xi'an was a long one on the way up there. Alex and I pimped out our Chinese-speaking companion to flirt with the conductor to get us some sleepers. And it worked! So the 12 hour ride wasn't so bad going up there. I was glad to get out of sitting on benches. We arrived in Xi'an around 7 in the morning and went straight to the Xiangzimen International Hostel. It looked really nice and the people spoke very good English, but they made us buy an extra bed and wouldn't let us just rent the 3 beds we needed, which was a little weird.

That morning, I brushed my teeth and went out to the tour group going to the Terracotta Warriors. Before the Terracotta Army, we stopped by the Danpo village, a village of ancient Chinese that dates back to 6,000 years ago. Then finally we got to see the Terracotta Army! There were rows and rows of life sized terracotta soldiers, archers, generals and horses lined up in perfect formations. When they built the underground caverns of terracotta people, the emperor killed every artist, construction worker, and anyone else that had anything to do with building the tomb, as well as their friends and families. The total number of people killed making it was over 700,000. I had no idea that happened.

That night, I got a traditional Chinese massage. Not knowing what a Chinese massage was exactly, the guy ended standing on my back and popping every bone he could. At one point he was pulling my hair, and that bit really hurt. At the end it was all good and (kind of) relaxing. The next morning, we slept in and shopped around the Muslim Quarter. The market was fun and filled with all this weird food. My favorite Xi'an food was this pancake filled with hot veggies and other stuff I have no idea what it was, but it tasted good.

The train ride back to Beijing was probably the worst train ride I will ever have. We couldn't get sleepers this time so I was already expecting a 12 hour train ride on a bench where they don't turn off the music or lights all night. The people also spit on the floor and kids just squat and take a shit there on the floor. That's really gross even not in an enclosed space. That night it was raining and the tracks were flooded so we spent a few hours waiting for the rain to be siphoned off the tracks, which in total took 9 hours. I couldn't wait to get off that train.

But overall, Xi'an was good. :)

days 68-69: xi'an

2007-07-31T21:54:00.001+02:00

I ate dog, and it was delicious.

days 62-67: beijing

2007-07-27T09:56:00.000+02:00

This was the last week of teaching and the end of Summer Camp. Wednesday was the final competition and my group won 3rd place (out of 3500!!!) for singing "Go West". I'm so glad I will never have to hear that song again. The Final Competition and Closing Ceremonies were fun. When the students were walking in, the teachers were on the stage dancing the Macarena and electric slide. It wasn't until dancing in front of everyone that I found out how long the Macarena actually is. It feels like 10 minutes when you're doing the same dance over and over ..go west Then after the opening public humiliation, we sat through 24 acts of a solo, small group, and chorus of all 8 provinces. Then at the end, we got on stage and sang a song to the tune of "Let It Be" but instead sang "In Beijing":

I tried to learn to speak some Chinese
And the only thing that I can speak
Tsinghua Daxsue
And that took three weeks
In Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing
Wo-ai Tsinghua Daxsue - In Beijing
All 10.000 people eating in the canteen they do agree
Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine people use those green plastic chopsticks
Better than me
In Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing, in Beijing
Eating pizza with my bare hands at Qing Qing
Wu Lun Ge Chang Bi Sai
Hshi Yan Jiang Bi Sai are so amazing
Qing Hua Xue Sheng De Chuang Ye
Zhen Niu B~

The last part made the crowd go crazy because "Zhen Niu B" means fucking amazing and something about the students at summer camp.

Then yesterday, we had our class party. The party committee bought the cake, chips, some Pepsi and a case of beer. I taught them how to shotgun beers. That entertained them more than anything else I've done for them. Not only that, but only a few people were drinking the beer but as soon as shotgunning caught on, we finished the case in about 10 minutes. The only thing is that my Chinese students hardly drink and all the sudden they were downing entire cans in a minute. Then I went out for pizza with 15 drunk Chinese boys. Oh, and it was 10 in the morning.

After all that fun, we had the teachers banquet...not too exciting. Everyone got dressed up and took pictures and ate a really good meal. We went out to some Huo Hua, the nightlife district of Beijing before going to another R&B club Mix and across the street was electric/trans club Vics.

days 56-62: beijing

2007-07-22T15:20:00.000+02:00

To stop reading Harry Potter, I'm writing another entry. This week has been filled with disgusting foods. None of these I intentionally ate, but only after I gulped it down did I know what it was. Earlier this week, I went out to dinner with some teachers and a Tsinghua volunteer. The Tsinghua volunteer took us out to an authentic restaurant outside campus where they serve grilled kebabs and hot pot. Hot pot is just a pot of hot oil and spices and meat on skewers that you just pull out and eat. The first meat I tried tasted exactly like a fatty skin, but I just ate it like anything else. The second meat was kind of chewy and I couldn't really chew it properly. I asked the Tsinghua volunteer what it was and he told me to just swallow it, so I did. And he told me the first was the lining of a sheep's stomach and the second was the intestines of a pig.
Gross. Then, last night, I went to a Mongolian restaurant with a Mongolian and ate this black stuff. I asked him what it was and why it was black and it was sausage made from blood. I can't really decide which one is more disgusting.
This makes a good story, and now I feel warmed up for trying dog meat later.

I'm not sure what I would do without the help of the Tsinghua volunteers and my students. My Tsinghua volunteer got me 80 more hours of internet time and is making copies of my Monday's lesson. I took one of my students with me on Friday to help get a train ticket to Xi'an. My Lonely Planet says to get the hard sleeper for 300 RMB (~$40US) and if that's not available, pay the extra 200RMB (~$26US) for the first class sleeper. Unfortunately, the train was sold out of hard sleepers, soft sleepers, and soft seats, leaving me to ride on an 14 hour overnight train ride on a crowded hard bench. This should be a good story and it was cheap. I'll be able to travel to and back from Xi'an for the amount I was willing to spend on one ticket.
It rained the other day and the sky was blue! About every week, it rains and cools down the city. My favorite part of the rain is that the smog seems to go away for a day and you can actually see the sky and clouds. Usually in Beijing, the city is so polluted it's constantly hazy and gray, even when there are no clouds. This is the view from my room:

Classes this and last week were good. The highlight was on Friday we played "Cannibal Island." Each person had an occupation associated with their numbers. Like ones were doctors, twos were lawyers, threes were entertainers, fours hunters, fives construction workers, you get the point. They were split up into their own islands and then the big decision came: who will you eat first? Once they fought and argued for a while, they had to send someone up to the "dinner table" at the front. Then the meals had to first explain to the class why they were chosen to be eaten and then second, they had to argue between themselves who from the dinner table would be eaten first. Sadly, my two favorite students were eaten first in both situations :( This is Albert explaining why we shouldn't eat him first: (from left to right: Evan, Tony, Belinda (behind Tony),Mickey, Albert, Tomas)

Another thing about my class is we won our singing competition! We had to compete against 7 other teams in our province, and since we won first place there, we're going to nationals to compete in front of the entire 3,500 person camp! Our 50-person chorus is singing "Go West" by the Pet Shop Boys. Before the competition, I was looking forward to never hearing that song again, but since we won, we will practice every day until the final competition Wednesday. I wikipedia'ed "Go West" and actually it's about the gay movement in the United States moving west to San Fransisco and the spread of AIDS. And now my class is singing it, but I think they think it means go west to the USA...from the east...very literal. I'm including names because I worked very hard to learn them (from left to right, back row: Enya, Amily, Belinda, Tony, Faye, Julie; front: Connie, Candy, Misha)
(front: Jerry, Albert, Ivan, Elephant).
It's the final week of teaching and I finally got their names.

Today I went to the Temple of Heaven. If I knew more about temples, I'm sure it would be a lot more impressive and have more of an impact on me, but I was hot and tired and hungry so our group left early to eat and go shopping at the Pearl Market. By the way, let me know if you want any pearls. They are really cheap here. Like $25US for real pearls. I got Flo a shirt in exchange from the ones I stole from him. It's hilarious. He'll never wear it because of all the pandas on it, but I thought it was funny. He is going to post this now and Flo still hasn't seen the shirt :) muhahahahaha

days 47-56: beijing

2007-07-16T09:31:00.000+02:00

I've finished my first week of teaching and have learned it's a lot harder than it looks. I feel like I have homework every night thinking of something to teach the next day. Tomorrow's lesson is an in-depth look at slang...like, whatever, so, stuff, and idioms are in the lecture tomorrow. Then I'm looking forward to Tuesday's lesson: speed dating! This other teacher with mostly girl art students is combining classes with my class of mostly boy engineers and they're going to speed date in English followed by a lesson of dating culture in America. We had our singing competition Friday and the small groups sang songs from the Backstreet Boys, Country Roads, and some other random pop songs I've never heard of. I'll upload my movies of it to YouTube later.

This weekend was kind of crazy. Thursday, some of my students and volunteers took me out to this beer garden where you could get "traditional German deer" in different flavors. My favorite was a Wheat Juice flavor that was green. Friday, I went out to celebrate the end of the week with some people and we got American pizza from this place down the street. The celebrating was fun until we left. It started pouring rain as soon as we got on our bikes and was just far enough away to not make it back soaked. And I almost got hit by a car.

Saturday was an early start. The buses left for the Great Wall at 8 and it took about 1.5 hours to get there. I had no idea how hard it is to climb the Great Wall. Not only do you have to hike up this hill to get to the thing, but once you're on it, it's so freaking steep!!! And they aren't kidding when they call it the Great Wall. It's really long. They call it the '10,000 Li Wall' here (one Li = 500 m). Even though it is so long, not all parts are accessible to tourists. My favorite part of the trip was stepping over the barricade where you're supposed to stop and walking on the closed part of the wall. It was overgrown with all these plants and there must have been a bee hive somewhere close by because there were bees everywhere and I'm still amazed I wasn't stung at all. I walked down maybe 300 m down the wall until I got to this really old tower, then walked back to the touristy part.

We got back to Tsinghua around 3 and I had a short nap before the Great Wall Beach Party. The party was a rave where the great wall meets the ocean. It didn't get off to a good start. The buses didn't leave the station until an hour after they were supposed to and instead of the 3 hour ride they advertised, it took 6 hours to get there because the driver got lost. I was in a pretty bad mood when I got there around 1:30 because of the long ride and puking on the bus, but vodka and red bull changed that. I met this German girl and we talked in English/Deutsch but mostly English, but she was from around Kassel and had heard of Edertal and Ulm. And then I found 20RMB (US$1 = 7.5RMB). Seriously. I found it in the sand. The Great Wall Beach Party was fun once I got there, but it doesn't compare to the Full Moon Party in Thailand. I didn't really want to go to the Great Wall party when I got on the bus, but I thought maybe I should start a tradition to hit up a rave every few international landmarks. The music was good, the food was expensive, I really liked that the bartenders would let you pour your own drinks, but the trip there took way too long from Beijing. This morning, everyone looked like they were up all night partying and I went with another girl from Tsinghua to eat an overpriced American breakfast. Now I have about 10 more hours to recover before week 2 of teaching starts again.

days 46-47: beijing

2007-07-09T19:13:00.000+02:00

Today was my first day of teaching and I think it went pretty well. This morning was the opening ceremony that explained the outline of the camp and showed the creativity of previous years students. My ipod alarm didn't go off and thank you, Flo for letting me use your alarm clock because it saved me and gave me 15 minutes to run out the door with everything. I rushed to the building across campus with 5 minutes to spare only to find out that the class started 30 minutes after I thought...so I was 35 minutes early...Anyway, the opening ceremonies were kind of boring with cheesy inspirational music and definitely not worth being rushed that much, but I had to be there. My two classes afterwards were much better. We played a good warm up/get to know you snowball fight game and introduced myself and volunteers. One activity I did was each of 5 groups had to write any questions for me or the volunteers and every one wanted to know about our boyfriends. Like, how many we had, what is our ideal boyfriend, do we like Chinese boys, and my favorite, do you share a piece of love with your current BF? My other favorite answer was this one guy's favorite color. He said something like "#345674 (RGB)" when everyone else put down "blue" or "white". I hope tomorrow runs as smoothly as today. As far as first days go, today wasn't so bad.

This afternoon wasn't as smooth. An other teacher and I tried to coordinate the singing competition, but that will be better tomorrow. I really hope it's better tomorrow.

days 39 - 46: beijing

2007-07-08T17:56:00.000+02:00

It has been quite a while since my last entry. My last days in Ulm were wonderful. My blog is blocked here and I can't remember the last entry I wrote, but I think it was the pizza. The day before I left, Flo and I went to the park and played a giant game of chess and then went to read under a tree. It was perfect weather and a good way to end my time in Ulm. That night, Flo, Stefan, Jonas and I went out to eat at a German steakhouse and got ice cream after. That Monday was kind of sad and I packed and got the last of my things together before going to the Frankfurt Airport. I said bye to Stefan and Flo at the airport and made my way to Dubai.

The trip to Dubai was uneventful, which I like on trips on airplanes. I got the entire row for myself and was pleasantly surprised with Emirates Airlines. My favorite part was by far the little stickers that went on the top of your seat that read "Wake Me Up For Meals" and "Do Not Disturb." The Dubai airport was very crowded and chaotic. All the women wore those clothes that covered their heads and faces and there were souvenir camels all over the place. On the plane to Beijing, I flew over the Himalayas and crossed a huge desert in China. I arrived in China and found a guy with a sign that read "Tsinghua University" and met the other two teachers on my flight. We came back to the University and after a long process of checking in, I finally went to bed. The next few days were full of going to seminars about teaching English as a second language and meetings with my province, and meeting with the other teachers and volunteers.

I bought a bike and named it Steve Irwin. The name has nothing to do with Steve Irwin, but it was the cheapest one I could find and another girl has a bike named "The Stingray" and we race. Unfortunately, and like in real life, The Stingray won. There's not much to write about Tienanmen Square except right after I bought a kite from a vendor, he was chased by the police and he got away. Going out here is kind of a blur. There are lots of clubs that are more than happy to welcome foreign tourists and give them free entry and drinks. As a foreign tourist, I like that a lot. A few nights ago, I went out to karaoke (or KTV as they call it here). That was like a really nice club and you sing in a private room instead of in a bar where everyone can laugh at you. Yesterday, I went to the Forbidden city with three other people in my group. My favorite part was the most random situation so far. Some lady handed me her child and I thought I was about to be mugged when she pulled out her camera and started taking pictures. Then a crowd formed and other people got into the picture and the people I was with came over and the crowd got even bigger. I took a picture of people taking pictures of us. Very random but funny. I guess that's my 15 seconds of fame. My favorite part of this picture is the guy in orange that's smiling for my picture.

We walked along the hutongs (narrow alleyways), the homes of 1/4 of the city. They're the poorest and oldest houses in Beijing. Last night, I had some Peking Duck. I really liked it. The skin kind of melts in your mouth. Our duck, Frodrick, was the 30,000 something duck cooked in that restaurant. You can even go out back and see the duck pin and choose the duck you want for dinner. If this is how restaurants work in Beijing, I can't wait to try dog. Only kidding...kind of. It's getting late and I have my first day of classes tomorrow!

-As dictated to Flo 8/7/07

days 37-38: ulm

2007-06-30T13:50:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, I fed the German belly and today I'm trying to get over the events of last night. Flo, Stefan, Basti and Sarah went out to a pizza restaurant outside of Ulm to eat the biggest pizza I have ever eaten by myself. The waiter had an Italian accent, but when he spoke German, I had no idea. It all sounds the same when you can't really speak the language. Actually, I didn't eat it by myself, because I had to take home about 3/4 of it and I hope Flo and Stefan help me finish it. I brought my camera, but forgot my memory card, so I could only take 4 photos stored on my internal memory on my camera. But maybe you can see ju st how big these pizzas are:

days 34-37: ulm

2007-06-29T10:51:00.000+02:00

The countdown for leaving Ulm has begun :( but the countdown to China has started. I finished my second lecture this week about the Olympics. I think I'm going to split the class into 5 Greek states and we're going to hold our own classroom Olympic events like hum identifying, Pictionary, and random fun stuff. And I ironed out my activity of playing Mafia one day too. So now I just need to finish my last lecture, but I have about 3 weeks to finish that. The topic has to be a controversial issue, but not too controversial because it needs to be censored enough for a Chinese classroom. Flo had the idea of presenting something about the Great Firewall of China. I just found a pretty cool website to test if domains are accessible in China. So now the plan is leave Ulm on Monday night, arrive in Dubai for a few hours before hopping on another plane to Beijing and arrive in China very early Wednesday morning.
The other night, Flo, Jonas and I went to the Mexican restaurant for drinks next door to Flo's apartment. It was a change from drinking wine every night to drinking wine and cocktails.

Flo and I just got back from mini-golfing in the park. The game looked pretty good for me at half time, I had a hole-in-one and Flo had a 7...but that all changed in the 2nd half. A few sneaky 7's and I lost the lead. Flo got a hole-in-one and I kept getting 7 after 7 after 7. But the last hole, was a hole-in-one again and I lost by 8 points. Now I owe Flo an ice cream and a beer.

this is how we mini-golf.

days 30-34: ulm

2007-06-26T23:51:00.000+02:00

FRIDAY...let's see. 10 years after not eating beef, I couldn't stand it any longer and went to McDonalds to reunite with cows. I had a cheeseburger Happy Meal and Stefan ate a Los Wochos Bacon Jalapeño Burger. It was kind of dissapointing that the cheeseburger happy meal didn't really taste like anything.
Saturday, Flo and I took an early train to Friedrichafen, home of Germany's largest lake, the Bodensee. Then we took a 2 hour ferry to the island where we hung out for the day. We had lunch around the Schloss, and I was stuffed from a bratwurst und pommes and 1/2 liter of Radler, so we counted nipples on art and explored the island. The ferry ride back was relaxing and looked like a nice evening. For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant in Friedrichafen, then got cocktails at the Beach Club! Too many later, we took the midnight train back to Ulm.

Sunday, we made salmon with spinach and linguine, except the linguine was black and black pasta doesn't look too good. I mean, it still tastes the same, but I think it looked like witch hair. But the salmon/pasta was still very tasty. We had the leftover black pasta again last night, and half of it came out of the pan and mixed well with the spaghetti sauce, but the other half stuck to the pan and Flo dug it out to make a nice black pasta cake. yum. actually, I couldn't eat it, but it looked unlike any pasta I've seen before. I'm just writing this now because I just cleaned the pan and it was really hard to scrape the pan and I had lots of time to reminisce about the black linguine.

days 21-30: ulm

2007-06-22T19:06:00.000+02:00

I keep starting to update, but something else is always going on, so I stop in the middle. Seriously, I started this post on Wednesday and now it's Friday. But last time I stopped blogging it was to finish the last 2 episodes of Heroes, and that was definitely worth it. So it's week 4 in Germany... Here's an update from the past week: Stefan got his Thinkpad finally on Tuesday. Here's a picture commemorating the event.
Last Thursday was a uni party with cheap drinks and it was all good until it started to rain and there was no way I could return my cup and get the 2 euro refund, so now Flo and Stefan have a new glass for the kitchen. The next morning, we started the 4 hour drive to Edertal. On the way there, we stopped by McDonalds. German McDonalds crack me up just because the promotion for Tex-Mex is called "Los Wochos". We arrived in the village of Bringhausen around 3, met the fam, dropped off our stuff and headed back out to the dentist and meet Stefan for coffee because we haven't seen him in a few hours. Saturday was a packed day. First, we drove up to the man-made lake at the top of a hill that overlooked the villages. It looked like it was going to rain, so we decided to skip the dam for now and go visit the castle. The Schloss Waldeck was not only a castle, but also a crime and punishment museum! All for the kinder/student price! After the tour, we got coffee at the castle. Actually, Flo got coffee and I got hot chocolate. [this is new] Flo just reminded me about the weird German hot chocolates here. They always ask you if you want cream or milk in the chocolate. I always say "milch, bitte" but they bring me a bowl of cream beside the hot chocolate anyway. I have no idea what's going wrong because even native German speakers are befuddled also...i'm giggling about writing the word "befuddled"...anyway, the hot chocolate at Schloss Waldeck was probably the best hot chocolate I've had in a really long time. If you see in the picture, they make a little pot of hot chocolate and bring you your own cup, so instead of the standard one cup of chocolate, you get about one and a half. And who doesn't like 1.5 cups of hot chocolate?
After coffee/hot chocolate, Flo started talking about sledding in the summer and I was just confused, so we took a spontaneous 5km drive to the sledding place. It wasn't until I was being pulled up the hill I got what was going on. And there were all these signs in German that looked important...like warning signs or how to operate the sled written in big red German words but it was all good and I didn't die. Sledding in summer was one of my favorite things we did that day. You were pulled up this hill on an automated thing and once you were at the top you could pull the lever forward to go faster or pull it back to slow down and it was kind of like sledding down a slide on a sled with wheels. It reminded me kind of bobsledding. By the time we finished that adventure, we went to the dam that was bombed by the British in World War II and had a waffle lunch at a restaurant there. The waffles came with ice cream and heaps of cherries. I couldn't eat all the cherries. By then, it was in the middle of the afternoon, so we went back to the house and hung out until we went out to dinner at the restaurant where Flo's brother works as a chef. I have no idea how I finished my plate, but there was so much fish, bruchetta and salad. After dinner, we went to Dorfest 2007! There, I met some German readers of this blog, so shout out to them! There, you can buy 10 beers on a handy carrier and you get the 11th for free. I think this was as close as I'll get to a German beerfest, but I kind of get the point. Even better, there was a guy dressed in lederhosen drinking beer from one of those 11-beer carriers. Sunday, we had a huge brunch late morning and I ate 2 croissants just so I could eat more homemade strawberry jam. Then we drove through the woods to attend Flo's 3-year-old nephew's birthday party. I still can't speak German, but I think I improved a bit last weekend. This week was pretty good...we went to Ikea yesterday, and it's always a good time at Ikea. The unlimited drinks is what makes half the fun. Then we spent a while at an electronic store, but we didn't find a radio, so we walked home and bought some wine and polished them off last night. Good times in Germany.

days 17-21: ulm

2007-06-13T11:33:00.000+02:00

** I just made 15 cents returning a bottle! recycling is fun and profitable! It's been exactly 3 weeks since my arrival in Ulm. I missed the market this morning because I'm at uni with Flo...But it's not that bad, we got to walk past and see all the old ladies with their baskets walking around the square, so at least the market wasn't forgotten completely. Not much has happened since the last update, except that I've been working on the midi and Tsinghua projects. During Flo's lecture today, I came up with my first lecture for China. The week is themed Music & Culture and my lecture is about how airplanes are bad for rock & roll.
So far, this is my list of rock artists killed in plane crashes:

Buddy Holly
Richie Valens
The Big Bopper
Otis Redding
The Bar Kays
Jim Croce
Lynyrd Skynard
Randy Rhodes
Ricky Nelson
John Denver
Aaliyah

The next week's lecture is supposed to be about the Olympics because Beijing is hosting in 2008 and I want to talk about Trampolining, but I'm having trouble coming up with an entire lecture that can include my favorite Olympic sport. My last week's lecture is supposed to be about a hot topic, yet appropriate for a lecture, so i guess legalization of marijuana is out of the question. Maybe a lecture about the health benefits of chocolate will be good. Just because I can bring chocolate for the class because everyone likes food. The only thing is chocolate isn't that controversial.

days 8-17: ulm

2007-06-09T21:17:00.000+02:00

So it's been a while since the last update. Not too much is new. We watched season 1 of Man vs. Wild. Now I question all of my survival techniques and ask myself, "would Bear do this?". So anyway, last week, Jonas, Stefan, Flo and I went out for cocktails first at the movie theatre, but that was too crowded, but the bar across the street looked ok, so we settled there. I really liked it and two cocktails and I was good for the night. But just so you know, Jonas had the same amount as me, and so pound for pound (or kilo for kilo, whatever), I can hold my alcohol pretty well compared to a full-grown German boy. The picture to the left proves my point. There, Jonas is drinking a candle, not his drink.
The next morning, I didn't feel too good and unfortunately that feeling lasted the rest of the week. The next night, it was Lasagna Cook-Off 2007! The question if homemade lasagna or box lasagna is better was tested. Team Us (Jonas and me) vs. Team Them (Flo and Stefan). Team Us made box lasagna and Team Them spent an extra few hours in the kitchen making lasagna from scratch. Ours was just as good. But I think everyone was starving and the box lasagna was the first one we ate. I think we should have a rematch, but this time with a different dish...maybe ravioli or something...

Flo and I had a nice trip [changed from "outing"... Flo says this is means gay in German]. We borrowed Stefan's car and drove about 30-45 minutes to Blautopf, a spring that's...blue. It was a public holiday in Baden-Württemberg so it was filled with lots of visitors. It was nice and warm so Flo got some strawberry cake and I got chocolate ice cream. Now I'm just trying to fill in enough to get to this line. YES! finally! Now I can start to write about the castle!

Burg Helfenstein is the ruin of a castle built around 1100. To get to the castle, we had to walk through the woods and across a small bridge to get to the ruin. Definitely not a Neuschwanstein type castle, but kind of better because it was actually a working castle and walking there wasn't an hour long strenuous hike up a mountain. After walking up the tower and around the fort, Flo got a Radler and bratwurst and I had a Sprite-type of drink to settle the stomach from too much castle exitement.

This is the most German I've ever seen Flo:

days 7-8: ulm

2007-05-31T14:44:00.000+02:00

So right now, I'm amazed at the new Harry Potter theme park, The World of Harry Potter. Not quite sure what to think of this, but I'll be going on a road trip to Orlando to visit Harry at Universal Studios in 2009.
Today is post-Peach Cake day. Yesterday, Jonas filled me in on the history of Peach Cake Day. And even though Abraham Lincoln started Peach Cake Day, there is no Wikipedia article about it and that will change soon whenever Jonas tells me the complete history of Peach Cake Day. Our cake wasn't just Peach, but we made Jonas & Ashleigh's Choco-Peach Surprise Cake. Since the cake is gone and eaten, the surprise was little chunks of butter we couldn't mix into the batter.

I ate an incredible amount of peaches yesterday. Like 9-10 full peaches. You know the feeling when you eat an entire pineapple and your mouth feels like it's being eaten away by the acid? It felt kind of like that only with a peach flavor.

days 3-7: ulm

2007-05-27T14:56:00.001+02:00

First, Happy Peach Cake Day! or Froehlichen Pfirsichkuchentag!

This morning I went to the market in the square in front of the munster. Every Saturday and Wednesday morning from around 6 until 2, there is row after row of vendors selling anything you could want as long as it is fruit, veggies, cheese, meat, fish, flowers or honey. I bought some strawberries (Erdbeeren) and peaches (Pfirsichen). And it's cheap! 1kg of strawberries was 3 Euro (~$4.00) and 1.8kg of peaches was only 1 Euro (~$1.30). I didn't mean to buy 1.8kg of peaches, but I was talking to the vendor in really bad German and he was responding in really bad English and threw in an extra .8kg. Maybe this is why I like the market. hmmm...

Shoutout to Jonas! For teaching me about the origins of Peach Cake Day and Abraham Lincoln. Because of Peach Cake Day, we're going to make a Peach Cake. Neither of us have made a cake without mix before, so the next blog entry should be interesting.

days 1-3: ulm

2007-05-25T14:33:00.001+02:00

<-- Ulm, Germany in March 2007. I'll take another picture to show how much greener it is now. But you get the idea what it looks like . This is day 2 in Ulm, Germany. I'm not sure how this happened, but somehow blogger.com turned German. Flo and Jonas started a top 25 movies list and somehow Stefan, Flo's roommate and I decided to make a Top 25 things Ashleigh and Stefan have in common, so here it is:

Top 25 (not really 25, but it will be soon) Things Stefan and Ashleigh Have in Common:
1. We currently live with Flo
2. We like chocolate
3. We like Polo Ralph Lauren
4. We don't like the taste of beer
5. We're friends with Flo
6. We can't speak Klingon
7. We're both computer nerds
8. We like tacos
9. perfect cleaning up team, I prefer to dry while Stefan likes washing dishes
10. We cannot read Chinese
11. We work with Marc Hermann
12. We are both on Facebook
13. We do not like extreme cold temperature
14. Next week, we both will have Thinkpads
15. We both like ice cream, even when it's cold outside
16. We both have blogs
17. We like to chat to each other on Skype when sitting metres away
18. We like Grey's Anatomy

there seemed like more on this list when we made it up last night.

...I should rename the list the Top 18 things Stefan and Ashleigh have in common...
So this whole journey started in Hotlanta on 22 May. The flight was only 7.5 hours and the movies weren't too bad. The most random movie would have to be Cinderella, but I liked watching it. It was like a preview for the Neuschwanstein Castle. I didn't have that much to make the connection so there was no time to look for Dutch wooden shoes in the gift shops or anything. The next flight was only an hour from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I met Flo and Stefan and Stefan drove the 3 hour drive from Frankfurt to Ulm. By far the coolest thing I saw in a village on the way over was a horse in someone's side yard and a wind mill not too far away. We got back and supposedly watched Family Guy, but I only remember a few minutes of it before I fell asleep around 9 pm German time/3pm Eastern Standard time.
The next morning, I went to a lecture with Flo, and tried to stay awake by reviewing my German notes and reading a book, but it's hard enough to stay awake if the lecture is in English, and this was in German, so I kept nodding off and jerking back awake when my head fell forward. After the lecture about Bluetooth things, we met Flo's friends at the Mensa, the cafeteria at uni. We met Jonas later and hung out at his apartment and went to a beer garden then to another beer garden later that night.
Today was good. Flo went to uni and I slept in and went around Ulm alone. First, I went to a chemist to get some kind of antihistamine tablets because the pollen or something in the air was bothering my allergies, so luckily one chemist spoke English and hooked me up. Then, I started the multiple hour journey to find a USA-Europe Adapter. For the longest time, I could only find Europe to USA adapters, but at some travel store near the Munster had an all-converter set for any plug to adapt for any country, which is good so I can use it in China too next month. Then I took the scenic way back to the apartment and eventually found my way back and couldn't figure out how the key worked. Good thing Flo was home at the time :)

So that's about all that's happened so far. Not too bad for 2 days.

so this a post

2007-05-15T06:55:00.000+02:00

hi, Ryan. This post goes out to you. so now you have another blog to read. the posts can only get better now.