Oh goodness I love to plan...tonight I've been planning my Christmas break with my friend Chrissy. She, her friend from Texas, and I will be doing a tour of Bavaria (giddily I will return to the Hofbrauhaus in Munich!), Austria (Salzburg and Vienna), and Switzerland (Interlaken for my first skiing experience i'm scurred!). Following which I will be spending Christmas in Zurich with the Swiss Moser fam. Already I'm very excited. I'm sure the Swiss do Christmas well.
Coming up this week is a trip I planned a while back. First it's on to Berlin on Wednesday for some Harry Potter viewin'. The theater in Erfurt only shows dubbed movies, and there was no way I was gonna let that get in the way of my admitted obsession. I will be seeing it at the IMAX with a group of PPPers, which means there will be more of the magical world of Hogwarts (and Daniel Radcliffe) to see. Then Thursday it's off to Prague to see Sarah, a friend from USC. I have heard great things about Prague and its resemblance to a fairy tale and I'm pumped to czech it out. buhahaha thought it was time for a horrible pun.
Exciting things lay ahead...but for now I'm happy to spend some time just chillin' (Germans have adopted chillin as well!) in Erfurt. This past weekend I made a ton of macaroni and cheese for some local friends, went out a bunch and on Sunday made good use of my student ID to visit one of Thuringen's own Unesco World Heritage sites. I took the train (fo free with my ID) to a town called Eisenach that is home to the Wartburg Castle. The castle itself is absolutely beautiful with great views over the town and the surrounding forest, but what makes it Unesco-worthy is that Martin Luther hid out there for ten months to translate the Bible.
People are pretty crazy about that kid Martin Luther here. Maybe because I went to Catholic school for 13 years he was always a bit downplayed, but here he is all the rage. Every town is very excited to indicate any connection with Luther, and Erfurt even celebrates his birthday with a huge festival, the previously described Martinstag in November.
Martinstag, btw, was really charming. Tons of children and their families gather in the Domplatz in Erfurt with lanterns for an ecumenical mass followed by lots of eating and festing. It's actually a bit like our Halloween (or came before our Halloween, as my roommate pointed out) because the kids go around collecting candy. The only catch is that instead of saying something like "trick or treat" they have to sing first...yes the Germans work hard for their candy unlike those lazy Americans! I was quite tickled to see two youngins sing in a bakery that afternoon.
I love all the little festivals here. Plus all the food specialities they bring (Martin's cake!). It's great to be in such a homey place for this period of time.
On another note, now is the point in the program that it seems alot of people are getting really homesick (following exactly the predicted culture shock timeline). Am I homesick? I don't know. I think some little things are starting to get to me...cravings for a diversity of food, missing the complete mobility of driving (Deutsche Bahn continues to go further and further down on my "things I dislike about Germany" list), having to translate websites, and dreams of California...the weather, my friends, In-n-Out. I don't know if those things will pass, or if they will become more acute as time passes, but regardless I know that all the new things I am experiencing truly compensate. Sometimes it's just a bit hard to see it that way.
One thing conquered: I managed to get my hair cut completely auf Deutsch today. No horror stories to speak of!
No comments:
Post a Comment