Another week (a better one, at that) and I am still here in Regensburg! I am sitting in my room wishing I could be anywhere but here thanks to the ridiculous amount of noise coming from my open window from the construction outside. For about a month now there has been on and off again construction on the sidewalk and bike path in front of my apartment. It has involved everything from jackhammers to rowdy German construction men, and just when I thought it was almost over they tore up the entire sidewalk again! However, once I wrap this up I plan on taking a nice walk to school to get a little bit of work done on a few assignments I need to complete. Hopefully that way I can maintain my sanity a few mornings longer.
Other than not having the ability to sleep past dawn, everything here has been a little bit better than the few weeks before now. I know a lot of my friends here have been feeling the same way that I have about being here such a long time and it has helped knowing that I'm not the only one wondering why it's not always one big party here in Germany. Also, I will be leaving in seven weeks which gives me just enough time to enjoy what's left to see of Germany while still getting me out of here in a timely manner. School ends on the 28th and I will either be flying home from Berlin on the 29th or the 2nd. My mom and I are still in a battle against Lufthansa, so we will see how that plays out. As for the whole school thing, which I seem to always forget is the reason I am over here, everything is easy as can be. Thanks to the Catholics, we have 5 holidays this month which has translated into me only having a handful of class days this month. This week is actually a full week, but after that I am free all of next week and then all but two classes in the week after that. How do I get away with this again? However, despite the free days, I actually have to scrounge together a couple of presentations and an A+ test before I can flee to Scotland and Austria for a few days at the end of the month. I guess I'll finally have to use my computer as something other than a Skype and Facebook device.
This past week went by rather quickly. I had class on Monday and Tuesday and then was off for the German style of Father's Day. Instead of being a Hallmark holiday like it is at home, Father's day here consists of the men getting shamelessly wasted the entire day and going on a long pub crawl. However, I did not take part in the festivities, mostly because I am not a father and partly because I was sick. Wednesday I started feeling a little funny and Thursday I was unable to even wake up at all. My friendly program directors took me to the doctor who prescribed a lot of Ibuprofen (yes you need a prescription for it here) and basically didn't help at all. Anyways, 30 euros later and a few days of sleep and I felt good as new. Lesson learned: The inefficient, frustrating nature of German bureaucracy extends into the Medical realm. That's all I have to say about that. Luckily I felt well enough on Saturday to plan on going to Munich with my friend Liz and her host dad. The only bad news was that he ended up being busy so we were unable to go that day. Instead, he picked us up early Sunday morning in his fancy Audi and we started the trek to Muenchen.
I have ridden in a car for a few short trips around Regensburg, but before Sunday I had yet to experience the German Autobahn. It really was rather exciting. All I could think the entire trip, while Liz's host dad (Carl) was going at speeds of 170 km/hr, was how much I would love to be able to drive that fast in the States. It drives me absolutely crazy to have to only go sixty on my long 30 mile drive from work into Lexington, and this craze may or may not have been what contributed to my speeding ticket I got last summer in Paris, KY (I still blame you, Rudy Aguilar.) However, it really was frightening to be going so fast and especially to be getting passed by people going over 200. In any case, we were able to make the 100km trip to Munich in less than an hour.
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| Pretty much what our trip looked like on the road |
Once we got to Munich, we searched for a parking place and then headed to the Deutsches Museum of Science and Technology. If you remember what I talked about when I was in Berlin, the museums in Germany tend to be 3x more awesome than the museums at home and this museum was no exception to that rule. We only had about three hours, so we didn't even cover half the museum, but we went through an entire history of coal mining in a really cool recreated cave, saw a crazy electricity show, a Planetarium show, and about a million airplanes and ships. It was really awesome!
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| electricities |
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| In the coal mine! |
After we toured the museum, we went to the Olympic Village which still stands from the 1972 Summer Olympics, the same Olympic games where the Munich Massacre occurred. We first went to the top of the Fernseher Turm (Tv tower) to look out over the Olympic stadiums and all of Munich.
At the top of the tower, there was also a Rock Museum (?) on the inside of the viewing rotunda. There was a pair of blue sparkly pants that Britney Spears wore. Very exciting. After we were back on the ground again, we walked around and looked at everything in the area before a thunderstorm chased us back to the car. I slept the entire way back (typical) and then we went to Carl and Eva's to eat dinner. Normally, I adore everything that our host families cook. They are really great at hosting dinners! However, this one took a turn for the worst.
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| Worst nightmare |
This is Suelze and it is a traditional Bavarian dish. It is basically some meat and eggs and vegetables drowned under a coating of gummy bear goo. Liz and I both took one bite, and luckily they were expecting us to pass on it and then brought out some meat made the good, ol' fashioned, less gummy covered way. Much better.
This week I am working on getting all of my work together for school and then considering taking a short trip somewhere around Germany this weekend. It would be nice to get out of Regensburg if only for a day or two. Oh, and as the title shows, everyone here in Regensburg has thus far sworn off the Ecoli mania that has plagued Germany, so no worries!
Love Ashley
