Last weekend I visited my friends Chrissy and Whitney in Mainz, which is in the Rheinland-Pfallz region of Deutschland aka the wine region. On Saturday we attended a wine festival for federweisser and went on a wine tasting tour in the lovely town on the river Bingen. Wunderschön. That weekend also brought some halloween partying in Frankfurt and Mainz, and thus another excuse to rock our dirndls. We even found a Santa Clause to listen to our Christmas wishes!
A note on Halloween in Germany: it's really not so big here. And everyone thinks your costume should be scary. No sexy nurses, no cute lady bugs. And no dirndls. Many people asked us about them. Oh well.
Life in Erfurt is rolling along smoothly. I'm taking one political communication class and four German classes to hopefully verbessern my Deutsch. I really like the classes and the teachers (and also that all my classes are on Monday and Tuesday). Yesterday my fellow PPPer Erick and I gave a presentation about the American media system in the poli comm class. I was born for that! I'm also taking an aerobics and a yoga class in an attempt to compensate for the effects of too much sausage lolz.
My apartment is now basically a war zone. The American guy moved out, and a new girl moved in, and now the kitchen is full of random appliances und so weiter. Should be cleaned up this week, I hope! And apparently the landlord here is a bit like good ol' Mr. Lee back in Los Angeles. We must call him time and time again to fix something simple...apparently the whole system is like that though, say our regional representatives.
Grrr German bureaucracy. I've realized more and more that the country that prides itself on efficiency is really not so much efficient. I like the university, but nowhere is it truer than there. The amount of steps it took to be able to print something at the library was leckerlich (one of my favorite German words meaning ridiculous).
And I've finally encountered some strong anti-American sentiment. On the train back from the airport after my Norway trip I started talking to a police man who, upon learning I was an Amerikaner, told me he hated the US and that President Bush was worse than Hitler? Seeing his gun I kept my mouth shut. The program told us just to nod when things like that happen. It was difficult, though.
This weekend I'll be in Berlin for a media and politics seminar sponsored by InWent. I'm quite excited...we'll get to tour the Bundestag and some German TV stations, and I'll also get to see a friend from Taiwan! I was also asked by InWent to attend a week-long Model United Nations conference at the end of November in Bonn. I'll randomly be representing Lithuania so I'll make good on my promise to learn more about Eastern Europe. And there will be people from all over the world, so should be fun.
Anyone know where I can watch some bootleg CNN? I feel a bit disconnected from American politics right now, but I'm still itching to watch election coverage.
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