Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Summerfest Post

So this past week was the Goethe Sommerfest, which was a big party/talent show. Here's some videos of all the action.

An overview of all of the events, and mine and Caroline's entire Piano Duet:



Oussama and Salim's whole rap:


The complete Zivi Ballet and then the time we spent at the Jakobimarkt Fair



ENjoy, okay?

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The last two weeks....





Whoops

Sorry guys but I sort of forgot all about this here blog. Good to see that Caroline has posted a few times.

There's going to be at least 3 new videos in the next day or so, and I'll try and link to my photo albums on facebook because it's a pain in the butt to upload them here as well.

Everything's been going great though! My sister Natalie came and visited for the last week and we took some cool trips.

Only 11 more days here in Germany and then this blog stops getting updated for good.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Fahrradtour

We (Lindsay and I) went on a bike tour around Schwaebisch Hall. It was really pretty and lots of fun. Here's some video from it put to some goofy Germany music.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Berlin pictures

There are too many pictures from Berlin (2 weekends ago) to post here, so go here to look at them on Facebook. If the link doesn't show up, here it is again, but just as text. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=235813&id=541180287

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Berlin! Part 2 of 2 and more!



Updates and Highlights

Hello Everyone!!!!

It's been a long time since we've done a written update, so here's one for you! We started our second session of classes today. Jon and Lindsay are now in B.2.1 with Jochen, my teacher from last session. I'm now in B.2.2 with Ralf - a new teacher this session. He's pretty much like a German Mr. Feeny (from Boy Meets World) and I like him a lot so far. Also, he's retired and teaches in the summers for fun, so he really likes what he's doing. Also also, he spent his career training German teachers, so I'm really excited to learn from him. Jon (or maybe Lindsay if she ever posts again) can tell you about their new class soon.


Here's some highlights from last weekend (Eisenach, Wittenberg, and Berlin). Watch the videos that Jon posted too.

In Eisenach, we went to the Bachhaus - the house where Johann Sebastian Bach was born. It was really cool and the museum there had a lot of interesting things. Jon kept making lame jokes the whole time (see the video).



Some of the items in the museum's collection were amazing. Like this one, an original copy of some of C.P.E. Bach's (J.S. Bach's son and a pretty famous composer himself) editions of J.S. Bach's works

Or this, the only existing copy of the liberetti that was the basis for Bach's St. Mark Passion

Or this, a booklet for Mendelsson's first performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion with an admission ticket handwritten by Mendelssohn.

Also, Bach liked to collect writings from Martin Luther, like this collection of his sermons


After the Bachhaus, we hiked up to the Wartburg Castle, which is where Luther translated the New Testament from Latin to German.

There were some original paintings and etchings of Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder like these:



This is the Wartburg Bible - Luther's translation with his handwriting in it.

This is the room in which Luther translated the New Testament.


After Eisenach, we went to Wittenberg (where we were homeless for the night - watch the video for more details). However, of all the cities we've visited, Wittenberg was the best one to spend the night on the streets. It was really quiet and we only saw like to other people night. Also, we got to hang out in front of the doors of the Castle Church for a few hours, where Luther is said to have nailed the 95 Theses.


Here's the doors in the morning


Ok, it's time to go to the Biergarten. I'll put up some Berlin highlights later.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Berlin! Part 1 of 2

Some new vlogs from the last week or so





2 more on the way as soon as they finish uploading!

Then a long overdue picture and text post before the night is out

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Friday, June 25, 2010

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Hohenlohe Video

Hello errrrbody,

It's been a while - mostly because the internet here has been so uncooperative, but also because of classes, traveling, sleeping, etc. I'm almost out of space to upload photos and video here, so I've discovered that it'd be better if I combine pictures and video all into a video slideshow of sorts. Also, this lets me put music to pictures/video, which makes everything 100 times more magical. So here's the video with my video/pictures I took last Wednesday when we went on our Hohenlohe bus tour:



Also, Lindsay had quite a fun time making the bed the other day.



I'm working on a Munich video...get ready.

Munich Vid

Monday, June 21, 2010

Days 16-20

It's been a while, bloggers, and I really don't have any good reason for it.

Since last we spoke, 5 full days have gone by. What has happened, you ask? Let me tell ya!

On Thursday, nothing really happened. Schwartzkopf said some funny things and probably did something a little perverted, as he's apt to do, and then school got out. But then at 4, the best thing ever happened. It was cake day.

There's this group of people living in Schwaebisch Hall called the "Friends of the Goethe Institut" or something equivalent, and they do various events with the Institut over the course of the year.

Well on Thursday, they all baked some cake and brought it to the cafeteria for all of us students to eat. That's right: free cake. As much as we wanted! All home made!

There were probably like 25+ cakes there. It filled an entire table, and we were in heaven.

My favorite was the apple cake, although the cheese cake was pretty good too.

On Friday, there was a few Fussball games worth mentioning. Germany played and we went down to the pub to watch the game. They lost, 0:1, and it was a big upset. It didn't help that the day was cloudy and rainy anyway. The mood really downshifted from there. The USA game was much better, and this marked the second tie for the US. If the US tie again or win the next game, there's an extremely good chance that they will go on to the final 16, something that they have not been able to do for many many years.

Friday night was Goethe club, and there was plenty of drinking and dancing. A highlight of the night for Lindsay was when Vladimir, a 40 something Russian man of questionable background, came and danced with her. She loves Russians, apparently, and I took a picture of the happy couple.

Saturday was a red letter day for all of us, though, because we ventured out of our happy little Hall of Schaebs, and took a train all the way to Munich, or Muenchen, auf Deutsch.

Lindsay, Caroline, and I were joined by fellow U of M students Chris, Ross, Matt, Davey, Kirsten, and Bryan, and a North Carolinian named Lark.

The train ride to Munich took about 3 hours, and was mostly uneventful, although we passed by Dachau, the town where there was a concentration camp during WWII.



Upon our arrival at the train station in Munich, everyone was so excited they could barely contain themselves.




The first thing I noticed about Munich is just how many fountains there were. You couldn't move from all the fountains. Every turn, a fountain. What's that? Oh, it's a fountain. Here's one now!



We ate lunch at the Augustiner, an old beer cellar turned restaurant in the 1880s. It looked a bit like this:



I ordered the Weisswurst, it looked like this:


Chris realized that there were baskets of giant pretzels at every table, and he looked a bit like this:


We all looked a bit like that, actually, and hungrily gobbled up a crap-ton of pretzels.

After we ate our lunch and got the bill, we learned that the pretzels were not free. Far from it in fact. We all grumbled but the fact of the matter was that we ate the pretzels so we paid for our meal and left.

We then explored the city a little. The old town hall may be the most beautiful building i've ever seen in my entire life.



From there we meandered around a bit longer until we found our final destination: THE HAUFBRAUHAUS.

This may be the most famous place to drink beer in the entire world. It's known for selling beer by the liter and just being a big drunken mess.

Things begin to get a little hazy from here on out, but here are some fun pictures.









At one point some drunk german youths came up and hit on Kirsten for a good long while.



Oh! Also, it was so crowded that we couldn't all sit together, so me and Matt went and sat with this German family. They were really nice, and excited to hear us speaking German at them. They wanted to try out their english on us. They were awful, which made me feel better about my bad German. It was a great multicultural experience.

After like 3 hours at the Haus, we moved on and did some shopping.





The only thing I ended up buying was that Fussball shirt I'm wearing there. Caroline bought some shirts and some glasses I think. Lindsay bought a shirt? I'm really not sure. This is still in the hazy part of the day.

After that we explored the city some more





And made fun of cultures we didn't understand



We took a walk around the Royal Palace and through the Royal gardens where they had about 10 more fountains.



After that we absorbed some art




And then we admired some architecture.




After that we had to leave, so we did.

Sunday was spent, my me at least, sleeping, uploading photos, and watching episodes of Bones on my computer.

Today, day 20, has been pretty fun so far. We got another new teacher in B1.2 today. Her name, I think, is Renette Koehl-Kuhn. As Matt putts it, she's Germany's answer to Katie Couric. She was just pretty fun and bubble. Today in class we listened to music, sang a song, drew pictures, and did other things that were reminiscent of 1st grade.

I think I'm going to go take a nap now, and then get up and go to the pub and watch the Chile v Switzerland game with my Chilean friend Benjamin.

Look for the youtube vid of Munich. I should finish it today some time.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Day 15: Bus Tour

Today after class we took a four hour bus tour. It was long and we all kind of fell asleep once or twice. But there were moments of sheer beauty.

I'm pretty sure Caroline took more pictures than me, so she'll probably be making a post soon. Here's mine though.


SO EXCITED TO LEAVE


On the way out of town we passed this neato lookin hotel.


Once we were out in the country there wasn't much more than grass, crops, and sheeps.


Yet another castle.



Caroline showing off the gorgeous view from our first stop in Waldenburg.


This is the castle from a farther away view


Different Castle



After this we took another long bus ride to a cloister with some churches and stuff. This is where I sort of stopped taking pictures. The video sheds better light on it but that'll be up in a day or two. This was a Jesus on the ceiling in the church.


Some artful tomb covers.

After the cloister tour we ate a little snack at the cafe (in the cloister), and then took a bus ride home.

The rest of the day was spent looking around for some German Weltmeisterschaft apparel so we could show our support. Not much luck though. the only things we found were 70 Euro. Better luck tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Laundry day.

Also there should be 1 or 2 videos up very soon!