Packing it all up and moving it out (with some help)

I’m writing this entry from a train currently travailing between Erfurt and Berlin. I would say that I feel a mix of emotions right now if that were true, but it’s not. Mostly I’m just excited to be on my way to Berlin and rid of my über critical Erfurt roommate! (Some Germans fit that stereotype too well, and she most certainly was one of those people).

Yesterday I happily watched as a buff German guy from the gepack service came to take my two embarrassingly large suitcases from my apartment. I felt a pang of remorse for him as even he struggled to lug them down the stairs. Oh how will I get my stuff back to the US? Don’t even want to think about it!

I arrived home in Erfurt on Friday after a fun but exhausting mid-year seminar week in Cologne. The week included probably too many late nights and long days of information and excursions, but it was a blast to see my Bremen family and friends from other places again.  Cologne isn’t really a pretty city but it’s definitely a fun city, so we made the most of that.

A highlight of the week was getting to see my first coal mine! A Unesco-recognized World Heritage coal mine, to be exact (otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have cared). We learned about how the miners faced really rough conditions, including being forced to bathe in black swimming pool water every day that “kept their delicate parts inWisible!” (The tour guide was a hilarious German chap whose English was even more hilarious). The coal mine also featured the escalator voted “World’s Best Escalator of 2007.” Random, much? But other than some orange lights it didn’t really rock my world the way I would expect the world’s best escalator to do so.

Oh, and I am now happily a GIZ tote bag richer! (To be used here and then probably tossed before I return to the US).

I’m really looking forward to what awaits me in Berlin, even the mundane stuff that comes with moving to a new place. The next time I update I will for sure be able to tell where the closest Deutsche Bank is, where the best place is to buy my groceries, and naturally also the best places for some German imbiss (although I’m off the sausage for awhile).

Pictures of my new wohnung to come!