Onions and Sausages

In Louisiana we have many random festivals...the oyster festival, the strawberry festival, etc. So naturally here I'd be all about an onion festival. The other PPPers and I ventured on Friday night to Zwiebelmarkt in nearby Weimar. As expected, there were many things having to do with onions. I had a strange onion and meat dish served in a bread bowl as well as Zweibelkuche (onion cake). Both schmeckt mir sehr gut!

But that's not all, folks. The onion market was actually pretty fun. In addition to onion mania, it also offered many different stages with German bands and lots of awesome German fair food and beverages.

On Saturday InWent (the organization that takes care of us here in Germany) offered a day trip to Jena, an important university town about 30 minutes away from Erfurt. It is the center for Goethe and Schiller, German authors who we don't learn too much about in the US but who the Germans are crazy about. In my German class at USC, we once had a birthday party for Schiller, birthday cake with his face on it included.

Our tour guide Peter showed us around his home town and also offered insight to how the former DDR town functioned back in the day. He told me about how he and his son waited overnight in line to have the opportunity to purchase a car but nevertheless were beat to the chase. They would go weeks without products like Ketchup in the stores. I want to learn as much about former East Germany as I can while I am here, so I really appreciated his stories. It is so interesting for me to think every day that the ground I walk on was just 20 years ago part of the DDR.

The day included a city tour, a trip up to the top of Jena's highest building, and a viewing at the world's oldest planetarium. We watched the story of men in space, one of my favorite topics! It was so lovely also to see that many stars, even if they were not real. I really need to figure out how to see some stars around here.

Also, readers, I've been amiss in not explaining one of Thuringen's specialities, Thuringer Bratwurst. Yes, I ended up in the Bundesland that created this deliciosity, and I'm pretty excited about it. Thuringer Bratwurst is bratwurst with some type of spice that makes it even more tasty than the regular ones. And good news is that they're everywhere! I hope to start some type of count on this blog with how many sausages I've eaten. Look for that soon, if I am able to muster the technological agility to figure it out.