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.
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