Weihnacten und Silvester

So here it is: a post in my blog.  While I was in Switzerland a week or so ago, I glanced at this thing and noticed how long it had been since I last posted anything (over a month as of this writing).  Sorry about that. I've obviously been up to some stuff since the last post, but I'll get to that later.  First, I'll fill you in on what I did during my two-week break from classes here in Eichstätt: Christmas in Switzerland, New Year's in Rome, and a brief stay in Milan.

die Schweiz (23. Dec - 30. Dec)

For the first part of the Christmas break, I headed over to Aarau, Switzerland for another visit to the Hersberger family, who were nice enough to welcome into their home for a second time.  This is good for me, because I love Switzerland, and any chance to go back is awesome.

Roxi Hersberger

  The first Christmas was with Verena's family on 24. December.

The second Christmas was with Heinz's family on 25. December.  (Note: The pictures on Facebook are of Heinz's family.)

Both were a lot of fun and, perhaps of equal, if not greater, importance, the food was so good.  The first night we had broth fondue, which I had never had/seen before and found to be delicious.  Then I had some ice cream that they added some alcoholic drink to - and then subsequently set on fire.  That was pretty cool.

L-R: Jeff, Friede Hersberger, Heinz H., Ernst H.

The second Christmas was with the Hersberger family.  Geurts Christmas was happening at the same time, so we had a Hersberger-Geurts Skype Christmas call.  That was pretty cool.  The food was great this time around as well.  (There seems to be a trend when it comes to food in Europe: it all seems to be really good.)  As a nice little addition to Christmas, my family sent me wrapped pictures of my gifts back home.


Later, we did a hike up a nearby mountain and, thanks in no small part to the beautiful weather, were able to see mountains all the way in Germany, France, and Austria.

The other major event of the trip was a trip to Bern, the capital of Switzerland.  Despite the sub-par, cloudy weather, it was still a pretty city.  The Christmas markets go longer outside of Germany, apparently, and we were able to visit Bern's.

cathedral in Bern

Bern decorated for Christmas

Eventually my week in Switzerland came to an end, and it was time for me to head off to Rome.  My plane left from Geneva, so I hopped a train Friday morning (30. December) and headed off.  Along the way, I discovered Lake Geneva (Genfersee), which I would totally enjoy living on.  Unfortunately, it's in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, so I'm either going to have to learn French (German is giving me enough trouble...) or settled for one of the other beautiful parts of Switzerland.

Some city on Lake Geneva (Geneva, perhaps?).

You can check out more pictures on Facebook.

Rome and Vatican City (30. Dec - 2. Jan)

After an easy flight from Geneva to Rome, the festivities began.  Cody wasn't going to arrived for two hours or so after me, so I went off and found our hostel, got us checked in, and headed back to pick up Cody.  After getting Cody settled, we decided to walk around the city for a while.  Little did we know that 'for a while' would end up keeping us out until 2:00 AM.  It's amazing the number of people who remain out in the centers of Rome until such a late hour.  And I'm not just talking about people my age.  I saw grade-school aged kids out with their parents walking around until past midnight.

This isn't a picture of mine, but check our the
number of people.  It was almost the same
for us, except at midnight.

We didn't realize it until later, but we actually saw quite a bit of the city during this ridiculous walk about.  We saw the Trevi Fountain, Rome's Christmas markets, the Spanish Steps, plenty of monuments and statues, and even a few ruins.  Rome definitely gave Vienna a run for its money in regards to its decorations for the holiday season: it seemed as though every street (or at least those connected to the main ones) was lit up.  My favorite was probably the Italian flag lights.

Much to Cody's chagrin, our late night did little to change our early start the next morning.  We only had two full days in Rome, and we needed to make the most of it.  Day two was spent at the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and more general walking around.  The Colosseum, although smaller than I imagined, was an awesome sight nonetheless.  Based on the decrepit condition of virtually every other ruin in the city, it's surprising (to me) the Colosseum has survived so well.

Me in the Colosseum.  It was pretty cool.

Spanish Steps by night

(NOTE: If you're going to run for three or more days, grab a Roma Pass.  It's valid for three days and gives you unlimited use of the City's public transportation, free entry to two museums (the Colosseum is counted among these), and discounted entry to subsequent museums.  What's really awesome though, is that your Roma Pass counts as your ticket, so you skip the ridiculously long line to buy tickets to get into the Colosseum or the Palantine Hill.  We probably shaved anywhere from one to two hours of our wait with this thing.)

Back at our hostel, we met Alyssa and Nathan, Americans living in Spain and visiting Rome.  They slept most of the day, but dragged their butts our of bed for New Year's Eve, which was awesome.  After cramming our way onto a packed subway car and taking it to the Colosseum, we got to watch the moderately enthralling spectacle of fireworks being shot over the Colosseum.  LOL, it was actually really cool.  It probably takes the cake as best New Year's celebration, but I will admit that I missed watching SyFy's New Year's Eve Twilight Zone marathon for several hours both before and after the Times Square ball drop (which, I will admit, I also missed a bit).  After that there were far too many people in the streets of Rome to do much else, so we wandered around until 3:00 or so and called it a night.

For New Year's Day we headed on over to the Vatican for the Pope's blessing of the new year.  When we got there, they were televising the Pope leading a religious ceremony.  This confused us, since we arrived an hour early for the noon blessing.  It didn't dawn on me me until the next day that it was Sunday mass.  At noon, the Pope came to his window and blessed the New Year in Latin, English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.  It was pretty impressive.  St. Peter's was pretty impressive, too.

We then proceeded to do more of the same: a generally walking about the Vatican and Rome.  Castel Sant'Angelo was particularly cool, which started out as a tomb to the Roman Emperor Hadrian (as well as several subsequent emperors), was turned into a military fortress in 401, only to be sacked by the Visigoths in nine years later (it must have been pretty secure).  When the (regular) Goths laid siege in 537, items in the military-mausoleum-whatever were thrown at the invaders, destroying most of them.  By the beginning of the 14th century, the popes turned it into a castle.  Subsequently added were chapels, lavish papal residences, and finally a museum (and public bathrooms, much to my relief at the time).  It's also the secret lair for the Hassassin and contained a secret Illuminati church.

member of the Vatican's Swiss Gaurd

Our last day in Rome, we checked out the Pantheon and the Vatican Museums.  The Pantheon is an old Roman temple that has since been turned into a Catholic Church.  The best-preserved Roman building, it was huge.  I'm amazed the Romans were able to build the dome which forms the roof, without the help of modern machinery and techniques.

an emasculated Hercules/Heracles
(I'm still not messing with him.)

Finally, we've got the Vatican Museums.  Having bought out tickets beforehand, we skipped to the front of the arguably two-hour line (NOTE: Buy tickets for stuff in Rome beforehand!) and got in at about 11:30 AM.  Our train to Milan left at 5:00 PM, so we didn't have a lot of time for the museum, which was unfortunate.  Nonetheless, it was pretty awesome.  In now way limited to Christian/Church artifacts, the Vatican Museums had an awesome collection of Roman, Greek, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian artwork (with an emphasis on Greco-Roman).  It's unfortunate we had so little time.  Fun fact about many of the statues: some pope back in the day decided it was inappropriate to have naked men all over the Vatican, so he sent his people out to castrate all of the statues, many of which received a leaf in the penises' place.  The best part of this story is that they supposedly saved all of the penises in a box somewhere in a back room.  I've also heard that it's someone's job to go through this big box of penises and figure out who they belong to.  Sounds like fun.  The Sistine Chapel was included in the Vatican Museums, and it was just ridiculous.  The thought of painting all of that (by yourself?) is just crazy.  (By the way, the genitalia Michelangelo included in his famous ceiling mural were painted over during the same anti-penis popes.)

Sistine Chapel

You can check out more pictures on Facebook.

Ye Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

Milan (2. Dec - 4. Jan)

Milan Cathedral

While we had run into some other issues over the course of this trip, Milan is where things got interesting.  As it turns out, a large number of the Eichstätt’s Italian exchange students are from the Milan area.  So, Cody and I figured we would round off our trip to Italy with a visit to our friends in Milan.  Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication between the two groups, and when Cody and I arrived in Milan, no one was there to meet us.  Unable to get in touch with our friends via phone or Facebook, we decided to just take the next train home.  Unfortunately, the next available train wasn’t until the following day.  Our first thought was to just hang out in the train station that night, but we quickly realized how stupid that plan was and got a hotel room across the street from the train station.

Milan Cathedral statue overlooking city

Now with a roof over our heads and a quality internet connection, we got in touch with our friends and came to find that they weren’t expecting us for another few days.  Whoops.  Ultimately, we were able to meet up, but Cody and I decided to just exchange our tickets for new ones and head back to Eichstätt a bit early.

While in Milan, we checked out the Milan Cathedral (which was a pretty awesome structure), walk through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and spin around on a bull for good luck.  It did the latter a few times to save up for the last month of the semester.

spinning on a bull for luck

After a brief tour of the city, we headed to Elisa’s house for some awesome Italian food.  It was so good…  I’m so glad I’ve reduced the degree of my pickiness when it comes to food.  After dinner, Elisa's sister went to get a game - and came back with Risk.  What a great family...

You can check out more pictures on Facebook.

Eichstätt (4. Dec)

Finally, there was Eichstätt.  After a ten-hour or so train ride, we were back.  Not much to say, other then the fact that my room was covered in ponies Doro and Dan made for me.  (They apparently bought a coloring book and relived kindergarten for the sake of my room's interior design - and my happiness.)

Switzerland and Italy were great, but it's good to be back in Eichstätt.  I was exhausted after all of the travelling, late nights, and early mornings of the previous 11 days.  I can't wait to get back to Switzerland, though I'm not sure if I that will happen before the summer (though skiing there would be awesome).

We've only got a month left in this semester, the end of which I am not looking particularly looking forward to.  So many of my new friends are only here for a single semester.  While I hope next semester's group will be as good as this one, I highly doubt that will be the case.  Just have to make the most of their company while I've still got them around.

I suppose that's all for now.  Once again, you can see more pictures on Facebook and Google+ (latter coming soon).  Tschüss!

awesome postcard

Wien, Österreich! (and some other stuff)

So for my first trip outside of Germany, Cody and I headed to Vienna, Austria.  The four/five hour train ride was a lot better than the previous trip to Switzerland, since this time we only had to change trains a few times, not seven like my aforementioned Switzerland trip.  I also wasn't crazy tired.  Always a plus.

Eichstätt, Deutschland nach Wien, Österreich

Once in Austria, we checked into our hostel, which was awesome.  It was located very close to the train station, so it was easy to get to once we arrived and it was easy to get around once we bought train tickets.  The room was pretty good, too.  We had minimal interaction with our roommates, which is fine.  It's better than having bad roommates.

For the first night Cody and I mostly just planned for the weekend, but we did head out for a little.  There was actually a protest that had something to do with the Kurds and Syria (I think).  Two people almost got in a fight (quickly broken up by the police).

Vienna is beautiful with tons of awesome cathedrals, churches, and other buildings.  Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral) was particularly impressive.  It caught fire back during World War II, and most of the cathedral's stained glass was destroyed (some had been removed prior to the fire and are persevered in one of Vienna's many museums).

Stephansdom

The roof of the cathedral was a beautiful, intricate design, such as double-headed eagle, a symbol of the Austrian Empire from back in the day.

Stephansdoms Dach

We were even treated to some music outside of the cathedral.

Vienna had tons of statues all over the place.  Tons of them draw on upon Greco-Roman myths and figures. Hercules was a very common sight around the city, as were various gods and goddesses.  Athena and Poseidon were the most easily identifiable.

some cool Austrian sculptures

Food was pretty good in Vienna, as well.  Especially this delicious Apfelstrudel.  It really was quite delicious.

Apfelstrudel

Back in the day, Vienna was home to a Roman fort, built to prevent intrusion from the badass Germans from the north (whom the Romans were never able to conquer, hence the reason why languages south of the Danube River are Latin-based, and languages north of the river are Germanic).  There were some ruins right underneath the streets of the city, which I got to (almost) touch!  It was so cool and interesting; there were no barriers preventing you from touching these 2000+ year old structures.  It's not like the 3€ entrance fee would cover it if people started removing souvenirs.  (Hopefully no one actually does such a thing!)  What's also cool is that, as I mentioned before, I'm actually underneath the street right now.

me with Roman ruins!

There was lots of cool street performers as well, especially this guy.  He was making some awesome art with just spray paint.

A definite highlight of the trip were all the directions that were up for Christkindelsmarkt (or Wiehnachtsmarkt in Germany).  The entire city was directed, and there were multiple Christmas markets all over the city.  All of them had great food, cool stuff to buy, and delicious Punsch, which is a fruity drink (available in both alcoholic and nonalcoholic varieties).  We drank plenty of that stuff.  It's so good.

decorated for the holiday season

decorated for the holiday season

Parliament building with the Rathaus in the background.
The Weihnachtsmarkt was on the grounds in front of the
Rathaus.  It was pretty big area.

entrance to Christkindelsmarkt

delicious Christkindelsmarkt food

Rathaus

Finally, we visited Schloß Schönbrunn, home to the late Franz Joseph I of the Hapsburg Dynastry.  It was a pretty palace, but we were unfortunately not allowed to take pictures of the interior.

Schloß Schönbrunn

Schloß Schönbrunn (with Vienna in background)

Here's another really cool cathedral:

Maria vom Siege

I've got more pictures on Facebook and Google+.  Check them out too:

Tentative Spring Break Schedule

Below is a tentative schedule for spring break.  By no means set in stone, it shows what I think will be a pretty fun two months.  Likely changes are:

• I don't know how many days I'll be in Israel, but likely four or five.
• Mike, Max, and Brian have all expressed interest in coming, but nothing is certain yet.
• The U.K. and Ireland will be a week-long trip, like Greece and Turkey.
• Due to the crazy October snow, my Mom's not sure if she's going to have enough spring break to make the trip.

Also, John Carey and I will be chillaxing in Germany in January.

Just Keeping You Updated...

Nuremburg mit AK International

So, I've obviously been doing a lot, so here's a collage of pictures depicting a lot of my time thus far in Eichstätt:

Teaching country swing to those unfortunate

Europeans who never had a chance to learn it.

Studihaus mit Chiara (Italien), Laura (Italien), und Martin (Frankreich)

Bad Taste Party mit Cody (Illinois) und Chiara (Italien)

making pigs-in-a-blanket

So the pigs-in-a-blanket picture has a fun story to go with it.  It was Ayaka's birthday and everyone was asked to bring something, so Cody and I are wondering what we can bring.  We had snacks and drinks, so we thought about bringing something with more substance.  "We can just make hotdogs," Cody pointed out, "That'll be pretty American."  This led me to the awesome idea of making pigs in a blanket for everyone.  While we're patting ourselves on the back for our great idea, a woman in the store overhears our conversation, and, after mistaking us for incompetent foreign college students with no idea of how to cook food, went and got us hot dog rolls, explaining in broken English that they were what we needed.  After we explained to her in German what it was we were making, she realized our degree of competence was at least slightly higher than she had originally thought, and let us go on our way. Of course, they ended up being awesome.

Chillaxen' in Edith Stein mit Marta (Polen), Chiara (Italien),
Martin (Frankreich), another Chiara (Italy), und  Laurent (Frankreich)

I totally rocked the toilette paper mummy costume.  Also,
Cody's Braveheart costume was my idea.  Just saying.

Chillaxin' in St. Michael

Some stuff I don't have pictures for:

• I've been attending Zumba classes.  For those of you who don't know what that is, check it out here.  Essentially, it's dancing for exercise.  It's a lot of fun.  The fact that it's 30 girls and then me is pretty nice too.  And I'm not going to argue with having a gorgeous instructor.
• Speaking of dancing, the University Ball is tonight, and I made an attempt to learn waltzing and such.  I'm better at swing dancing.
• Classes are going well.  U.S. Foreign Policy is easily my favorite class.  Deutsch Landeskunde nach '45 is good too.  The rest are all less exciting, yet essential, German language classes.
• Haven't done much travelling yet, but plans are in the works.  Potential destinations include England and Ireland (one trip), Rome, Prague, Greece, Turkey, and, of course, all over Germany.  I'm contemplating going to Israel, as well, but that one will be a little bit pricey, so I don't know if it's going to happen.  Russia would be cool too.  If anyone's got recommendations, I'd be happy to hear them.

(A Long Overdue) Switzerland Post!

It's been two weeks since I was in Switzerland, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it.  Sorry.  So on October 21, I headed on over to Switzerland to visit my oma and her nephew's family.  It was a bit of a rough ride; a combination of start-of-the-semester party and a class at 8:00 AM Friday morning (U.S. Foreign Policy (it's awesome)) left me pretty tired.  Fortunately, I was able to navigate the seven or so stops on the seven hour train ride to Switzerland.

Once there, I met up with Oma and Heinz Hersberger at the train station and it was off to the Hersberger household.  Everyone was really great.  And, when they spoke (High) German, I could actually understand them, at least some of the time.  Swiss German, on the other hand, is another language entirely; I can't understand a word of it.  Luckily, they all spoke English and High German, in addition to Swiss.

Also, (and in some ways, most importantly) the food was great.  I had deer, red cabbage, various Swiss cheeses, pork, cold cuts, soup, jelly, chocolate (brought some back with me, too), and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting.  All of it was so good.  So good.

So anyway, the first day we went to visit Uncle Ernst near Lake Luzerne.  Check out the view of the lake from his house here:

I think that's a pretty nice view, but that's just me.  We also went to a restaurant with Uncle Ernst, at which I ate the aforementioned deer.  Also at Uncle Ernst's house were books.  Tons and tons of books.  He had an awesome library of new and old books (all in German, of course).  I was told that I could take what I wanted, but unfortunately I didn't have any way take take them home.  I grabbed Frankreich in Hitlers Europa by Eberhard Jäckel and a 1954 German copy of Die Gute Erde (The Good Earth) by Pearl S. Buck.  (I grabbed the latter because I have the book in English and I thought that was pretty cool.  It's a great book about Chinese villiage life in the early 1900s, just prior to World War II.)  Hopefully, I'll be able to take more next time I go.

Here's a video of the view from <insert mountain name here>, where we had lunch with Uncle Ernst.  Again, pretty nice.  That is Luzern again.

So early (well, not early-early, but at about 7:45 or so) on Monday morning I headed out into Aarau for some pictures.  It was quite dark at first, but it lightened up after a while.  It's a very pretty city.  A video of the town is below, and you can check out more pictures of everything on Google+ (just scroll down in the album a bit).

While making this post, I realized I don't have a picture of me with the Hersberger family.  Oh well...  I guess I'll just have to go back and visit them again, this time getting such a picture.  A big thanks to the Hersberger family and, of course, Oma for a great weekend.  I look forward to the next time.  Until then, I'll just have to somehow satisfy myself with all of this Swiss chocolate.  I don't know how I'll ever get by...

Zungenbrecher (auf Deutsch, Englisch, Italienisch)

The topic of tongue twisters (Zungenbrecher, auf Deutsch) came up in conversation, so here are a list of some things that make language ridiculous:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.  Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?  Peter Piper put the peck of pickled peppers in the pantry.

She sells sea shells by the sea shore.

Toy boat toy boat toy boat. (Say that one quickly.)

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

John, where Jake had had 'had', had had 'had had'; 'had had' had had the teacher's approval.

Longest word: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters)

Trentatre trentini entrarono in trento, tutti e trentatre trotterellando.

Longest word: precipitevolissimevolmente (26 letters)

Fischer

Fritz fischt frische Fische. Frische Fische fischt Fischer Fritz.

Longest word: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetzeshüter (71 letters)

Possibly more to come.

Reflections

The pre-semester language course is over, and classes started Monday.  So how are things looking for this year abroad?

Just a little self congratulations.

First off, the last three weeks.  After three weeks in Germany and the two-week intensive course (5 1/2 hours Monday through Friday and 4 hours on Saturday!), my German is definitely improving.  Am I still missing a bunch of what people say?  Unfortunately, yes.  However, I'd be selling myself short if I said I haven't made any progress.  (At least I would like to think so.)  I got a 2.0 (roughly a B+ in the American system) in the intensive course, which is a good place to start.

The international students hikes up to
Willibaldsburg (castle in Eichstätt).

So far, I'm loving everything about Eichstätt, Germany, and Europe in general.  It's been awesome meeting and getting to know so many people from so many different backgrounds.  My Facebook newsfeed is now flooded with a bunch of other languages which, while meaningless to me, I find pretty cool.  Not that I was necessarily expecting it, I haven't gotten any anti-American sentiment directed towards me.  I did get one lecture on the flaws of America as a whole, but the guy was perfectly fine with me personally.  Also, the 75% female student population continues to be nice.

Our running dinner team and dessert guests.  From left to
right, someone (Germany), Meliha (Bosnia), myself (USA),
Mario (Bosnia), Marta (Poland), Nurshod (Uzbekistan),
Chiara (black top, Italy), Joanna (red top, Poland), and
Javier (Spain).

So much fun was the running dinner put on by AK International (the university group helping international students acclimate).  Divided into to teams, we were instructed to make either a appetizer, a main course, or a dessert.  My group decided that reading and following instructions is for yellow-bellies, and we made a main course instead of our instructed dessert.  We then brought our main course to the first meeting place.  After discovering that not only were we not supposed to do bring our food to the studihaus, but that we were supposed to make a dessert, we carried our pot of spätzle with cheese and tomatoes around Eichstätt for the next three hours.  Meanwhile, we tried to come up with a dessert we could make with our negligible amount of time left available to us.  Ultimately, we had chopped apples covered in cinnamon sugar with tea.  I think it went over pretty well.

On the topic of food, I think I've been pretty good about eating anything put in front of me.  I probably ate more raw tomatoes, something I never ate at home, over the course of the running dinner than I have eaten in my entire life (tomato sauce aside).  Everything here (and from all around Europe), has been really great.

For the next semester, I'll be doing a lot of German language classes with the hope that my German will improve to the level at which I'll be able to take history classes in Germany.  My German language classes are as follows: Deutsch B1, Textarbeit, and Konversation und Hörverstehen.  In addition, I'm taking Deutsche Landeskunde nach '45, which is history class designed for low-level German speakers.  Finally, I'll be taking two classes taught in English: Media Sociology and US Foreign Policy.  All should be pretty interesting.

I don't know if it's just because I'm not tuned into the party aspect of college at Wyoming, but the amount of partying that goes on here is ridiculous.  There are parties all the time.  Last night was the 'official' year beginning party at Guttman's (a bar), that went until 4:00 AM this morning.  On Thursday, there is another 'official' year beginning party at Dasda (a club).  I'm just glad I didn't have class today.  Not because I'm hung over, mind you, but because not going to sleep until 6:00 AM doesn't really allow you to wake up at a reasonable time.

That's all for now.  I'm off to Switzerland this weekend to hang out with my oma, which will be awesome.  Tschüss.