Goslar!!!

Goslar is a small town in the southeast of the state (Niedersachsen or Lower Saxony) that I live in. It's about three and a half hours away by train, and the closest large city is Hannover. I went to Goslar early last saturday morning (my train left Oldenburg at 6:35am) because I wanted to go hiking. Goslar lies at the edge of Nationalpark Harz, the Harz being the closest mountain range to where I live. Take the words "mountain range" with a grain of salt. The highest point is 3,743ft above sea level. Nonetheless, I really wanted to go hiking, and Oldenburg and the surrounding cities all being completely flat, I went to Goslar.

I knew nothing about Goslar when I embarked. Map? No.... Idea of where some trailheads would be? Nah... I got off the train, asked the person at the train station where to go hiking, and she sent me to the city center where the tourist information is. So I set off for the city center (I picked a random direction from the train station. The scary part being I was right), and found that Goslar has an adorable Christmas market, as well as an adorable city center!

Booths line the city center for the Christmas market.

My favorite part, mostly because the donkey let me pet it. There were also goats and an alpaca.

One of the large, pretty churches near the city center.

A snowball, a sort of cookie with filling. This a chocolate covered vanilla one, thus it doesn't actually look like a snowball. They're really quite good!

Having found the tourist information, I took a bus to Hahnenklee, which is a little village that exists, in all likelihood, solely as a place for tourists to start their outdoor adventures. I hiked until I got rained and frozen back out of the woods, at which point I returned to Goslar, and then to Oldenburg.

The woods as seen from my trailhead...

Through the deep dark woods. Believe it or not, this picture was taken around 1pm. It looks like dusk, I know.

Me looking COLD and wet and rained on, but happy.

For those of you wondering if I was mad to go hiking alone in November in northern Germany, the answer is probably. But I will say this: Germany has no bears or mountain lions, and I had perfect cell reception the whole time, so I feel the insanity lies more in the weather than the actual hiking alone part.

As for Goslar? I need to go back. I loved it, with its little shops, adorably cute little houses, and... I really can't explain my love. I just love it there. If the temperature hadn't finally dropped this week, I would have gone back yesterday. Hopefully I will be able to return soon, hike some more (weather permitting), and get to know the area better.

German, part two

I've had a few people ask me to write something in English but with German grammar..... this is the best I could do.... sorry if there are any mistakes!

Today had I a very long day. I am early out of bed up gotten, because I an early horn lesson had. Then went I to the office hour of my history teacher, in order her class better to understand. After I with my teacher, who very nice is, spoken have, went I home, and am I shopping gone. I noticed last night, that I absolutely nothing to cook had, because I not enough time shopping to go had have. After shopping, have I my German homework done, and am I to German class gone. Then I dinner cooked and ate, before I to orchestra gone am. After orchestra am I with the bus home driven... and to sleep gone.

I think that's about as well as I can do considering that German uses some cases that we don't have in English. I hope I got a laugh, if nothing else.

When I said it was sunny...

I actually meant it was sunny for about an hour this morning, and now it's pouring. Go figure...

Anyone want some rain? I would happily trade for even just a little sun.....

And now off to get soaked while going to class...

Today I bought an elephant...

I bet you're reading this because of the title. Ha! Gotcha!

But I really did buy an elephant today. Not the kind that eats up to 300kg a day, but the smaller, fuzzier kind. The saddest part of this is that I bought this elephant at ikea after seeing the elephant my moms bought Deborah's granddaughter and wanting one (now I have one, because they keep basically the same stuff at all ikeas, regardless of country). Why is this sad? Deborah's granddaughter is almost two. I'm not. But I love my elephant very much. And the proceeds go to unicef. Any naming ideas?

A really quite pathetic picture of me with my elephant...

In other Oldenburg news, the sun came out today. I said to my horn teacher "The sun is shining! What's wrong?". This was the first sun sighting in probably a week. It's rained pretty much constantly the last few days (or longer... I'm losing track). It's really quite amazing how "cold" it is here when it's still well above freezing. The humidity kills.

School is going pretty well. I'm starting to understand more and more, although I still have days when my teachers might as well be speaking martian. Who knows, maybe lessons would make more sense in martian.

Anyway, the time is ripe to curl up with my elephant and a mug of hot chocolate and possibly lunch. Until next time!

Oh, and for all of you who read the required comment post and didn't comment, FAIL! Unfortunately, I don't know who you are (it doesn't tell me who reads my stuff....). But feel guilty, feel very guilty.

Macbeth

So.... I saw Macbeth last night. The catch? In German. I was really curious to see if they could translate it poetically, which, they can. Could I understand it? Not really. I got some of the monologues, but a lot just went right over my head. I think I'll stick to the original English when doing Shakespeare from now on. Shakespeare really doesn't need to be made any harder.

But that's okay, because I enjoyed it anyway. It was a crazy, cool experience that I'll probably remember for a very long time, even if some of my memories are of utter confusion. And it was a good Halloween activity.... bloody knives, murder, suicide, death, destruction. Good stuff!

My Courses

So, I've dropped some stuff so that maybe, just maybe I'll be able to survive the semester. Here is what I'm taking: Literary Translation (awesome masters class that for some reason I'm taking. We spend hours on just paragraphs, and it totally messes with my brain), Timeframe of the Enlightenment, my focus being on Jewish/Christian relationships (scary hard), Literature focusing on the Sturm und Drang authors (also very hard), German (the easy class for exchange students), The Symphony (music theory), History/Theory of Persian/Arab music, Orchestra, and a private lesson.

Jealous, anyone? Great, you can write my history paper. Every time I think of that class, my heart fills with dread and I want to drop it, but alas, I can't.

And with that happy, happy thought, I end this post.

Homework

Okay, if you read this, you are REQUIRED to comment. Please. As you know, I tutor some boys. Right now I'm mostly working with the 9-year-old, and every week I give him something to do as homework (in English). I'm running out of ideas really fast..... so if you have ANYTHING, please give it to me or tell me about it. He's really too young to do a lot of the typical assignments I associate with learning a language, so anything is helpful.

Also, we're sort of running out of things to do while I'm there. My access to English children's books is really quite limited, so I need something new to do.... Today we mostly played board games, which would have been fine, except that the cards were in German, and it was hard to get him to say anything in English besides "your turn"....

So you've read, now you get to comment!

The small stuff...

I was riding the bus to the University today, and I saw a man walking with a double bass. In one of the bow pockets? An umbrella. It made me smile.... because we really do have two types of weather here: cold rain, and really cold rain... although I guess it also mists, fogs, and clouds here.

I've been thinking... a dangerous pastime, I know (sorry, had to make a Beauty and the Beast reference)... it's the little moments that matter. Considering that my nearest family is thousands of miles away, there are days when I feel really alone... and then a woman will help me at the grocery store, or someone will smile at me on the street, or invite me to their house for a meal... and then I feel better. But then I also feel like I have to pass it on, whether its a smile or food.

I think everyone should spend some time in another country.... learn about another culture, learn another language.... I feel like the only possible thing it can foster is tolerance, a necessity in a shrinking world. Being far from home forces people to rely in the kindness of strangers, and realize that no matter where a person lives, where they're from, or what they believe, they're still people.

Haha, my writing is so disorganized today! But I hadn't posted actual writing on my blog in a while, so I figured I would write a bit today....

Anyway, any questions or topics anyone wants me to write about later?

Die Wattwanderung Part II

Remember about two months ago how I promised more pictures from our hike across the North See? Well, I finally figured out where on Facebook these pictures are, so here they are!

Before we hit the mud there were pretty flowers....

The beginning of the mud, when we still all thought we could avoid it by walking around it.... :)

But then we got here, where there was really no way around it

So evidently if you pick up enough jelly fish it stops hurting. Our guide found this one for us.

Our view from across some mud....

Closer.... the orange and yellow one is me... :)

Our guide found us something.... Or was telling us how many bacteria we were stepping on

A cute little green crab...

A closer look at the crab...

I don't really remember what I wrote about this trip last time.... but in case everyone else has also forgotten, we hiked from an Island back to the mainland during low tide. It 13 Km and about four hours and mud! There were lots of animals, lots of shells, and lots worms. Our guide was amazing, and told us more than we could ever want to know about the mud! Oh, and for those of you who have been holding your breath since August, my tennis shoes did come clean in the wash.

Die Wattwanderung, aka the mud hike

So... one of the popular things to do here is go hiking in the mud. But this isn't just any mud, its special mud. Besides being full of bacteria, worms, and other small living things, it is also on the ocean floor. So I can now officially say I've hiked from an island back to the mainland.

We took a ferry over to the Island. This is the North Sea. This is where we will be hiking in a few hours.

We started off by hiking through some sand dunes. I know, it doesn't look that sandy, but under the little bit of green it was very sandy.

More sand dunes... The darker blue line right on the dunes is the ocean... we were on the dunes for close to an hour before we got to the...

MUD!!! Lots and lots of squishy, goopy mud.

We hiked through the mud for about two and a half hours. We got wet (there was still a little water from the ocean to slog through), and dirty...

My feet. I think we had just gone through some water, so they're not very dirty in this picture...

I'm planning on stealing more pictures off of facebook. I didn't take too many because I didn't want to have my camera in my hand in case I slipped, so I only got it out when I was on really secure footing.

We hiked a total of 13 kilometers from the bus at the dunes to the taxi on the beach at the other side, plus whatever walking we did in the city on the island before (which was a lot). That's just over 8 miles. I got home at around 6:45pm, showered, ate a little, and fell asleep by around 8:15pm... and slept about 14 hours. I was a wee bit sleepy. I'm still not dressed, and its about 1pm.

We saw some cool stuff. Besides the million worms per square meter, we also saw some crabs, some fish, and a jelly fish (that our guide picked up and held for us. When asked if it hurt he said he had built up an immunity). Our guide was very good. He could tell us anything we wanted to know about the mud (the little micro-organisms produce iodine when happy), and knew where the waste deep mud was, and thus only took us through the ankle deep mud. He had a compass with him, but never used it. We were quite safely to the other side of the ocean when the tide started to come up.

It was a fun trip, but now I need to put my tennis shoes in the wash... :)

More Garden Pictures

These are just some pretty pictures I took at the garden. The garden was built by one of the dukes to show off how rich and cool he was.

Bremerhaven

Last weekend I went to Bremerhaven with Julia to visit her family. It was really fun!

Welcome to Italy... this is a shopping mall that's supposed to be completely Italian. It was pretty entertaining.

Welcome to Dubai...

Oh, and welcome to Bremerhaven.

While you're here, have some deep fried cauliflower and garlic sauce.

And some really good cake too!

Food

So.... this is my request for people to leave comments giving me food ideas. I have a pretty standard kitchen with all the usual pots and pans. I've been cooking things like pasta and scrambled eggs. I need things that don't take a lot of ingredients, and things that don't go bad quickly. You know, easy college food. THANKS!!!

My Birthday!!!

So for my birthday, I had class... but only for an hour. I treated myself to breakfast from a bakery on my way to school, and Julia and her friend Britta took me out for pizza in the evening!

My breakfast. Don't ask me what it was. I told the lady at the bakery I wanted "the thing with the strawberries". It was really good though :)

At our "all-you-can-eat" (yes that is the German term....) pizza dinner.... This is me killing a tomato.

Julia and I making somewhat strange faces...

Britta...

Julia...

Me opening my present from Julia, a promise she will show me around the immigration museum in Bremerhaven tomorrow...

Dessert in an ice cream parlor...

My dessert. It's called "spaghetti eis", literally spaghetti ice cream. They put the vanilla ice cream through a pasta machine, and top it with strawberry sauce and white chocolate flakes to make it look like spaghetti.

Cloppendburg

So I know I told some of you this was a pretty dull trip, but I have a few cool pictures I figured I would share...

A nice old windmill, in my opinion showing just how close w are to Holland.

A sample of the capital letters in a very old handwriting. I want to learn to write like this, but no one would be able to read it....

One of the sleep cupboards. Those doors close to either keep in heat or keep out bugs, depending on the season. A bed like this slept five or six people, because they thought they were less likely to die if they slept sitting up. Hmmmm.... uncomfortable???

That was the most interesting part of Cloppenburg. Hope no one was too bored...

Nesting

So today Julia (my buddy.... and best friend, and awesome person while I'm here) took me to IKEA!!! The ikea here is one of the two largest in the world, and was pretty impressive. So this afternoon I finally organized my stuff, can now see my desk, and feel like I'm living in my own space.

Looking at ikea from the bus stop... you can almost see the whole thing...

My TV (not sure how I got that...) and my cupboards and drawers for all the random stuff that won't go anywhere else. And, of course, Ishara... :)

My bed, which is where I comfortably spent the wicked thunder storm at about 2 this morning...

My closet/wardrobe

My desk

So now I feel fairly at home. I'm about a 15 minute bike ride from the University, a little longer by bus because you have to change at the ZOB (main bus station at the train station where every single bus stops). I have both a cell and a land line, so if you want to call me, email me and I'll give you my numbers. Or ask my mom.... she has them.

Talent and beauty...

A one man band. I have no idea how he did it. We actually found a postcard of him after I took this picture, so he must be a regular here.

A nice lake smack in the middle of the city. This park is a really nice place.

Remember the church? That's how close this park is to the city center.