Lost but not Forgotten

So I haven't had much time to write, I actually had to read my last post to remember when the last time I wrote was. I've been so busy since I came back from the Netherlands and have had a ton of adventures.

Since I last wrote I've started playing Rugby and working out regularly. Which has been a god send for my stress levels. I went from knowing nothing about the sport to running drills and playing some scrimmages in only 3 practices and am now considering sticking with the sport at URI, we'll see though.

I also started working on my institute project for credit at URI and am pretty excited with how it's going. We aren't working on electric car chase design any longer but instead a compilation matrix of engineering properties compared to customer based concerns. We are trying to make a formulaic communication format between the customer and the engineer, cutting out some of the design work. My group includes one of the Americans and two Germans. One of the Germans, Gunnar, invited me to a house party last night which was really fun. I went with a friend and met one of her friends who ended up coming as well. Overall the night was really great, and they especially enjoyed the macaroni salad they found. On the walk there I managed to snap this lovely picture...

I've also managed to pick up a German engineering class at long last. And it is going horribly. Even the German taking the class with us is more then a bit lost and it happens to be smack dab in the middle of Tuesday, which now consists of the following: 10 or 11, arbeitprojekt. Class at 3. Rugby at 6:30, stammtisch right after, followed by party and the joker. Crazieness.

Aside from partying a little too often and smoking too much Hookah I'm actually getting much healthier here. Even with the added calories from alcohol I've dropped around 10 lbs and thanks to Alina I'm on a veggie binge now. I'll never be one of those vegetarian people, but tonight I did make some amazing lazy baked ziti using a sauce based from a jar with added veggies for flavor and some cheese to give it the taste it needs.

Bad taste party was a great success, but literally only because we were there. Our group made up a solid half the party and were the only ones truly poorly dressed. We did have a ton of fun though and I got some incriminating photos of friends. Along with one of myself, my current Facebook default.

Halloween party was also a success, though not many Germans dress up aside from some face paint they smear on themselves to look "scary". Over all it was a fun time though, and as usual we stayed out the entire night.

Upcoming events? Sean's new and soon to be tried burger night, now with milkshake additives. I also booked a flight to London Dec 16th and am currently planning a trip to visit my friend Whit in Prague. If all goes well I'll be going to Ireland shortly as well and possibly meeting some of my friend's uncles. Also planning a potential trip to France and would like to hit Spain. We'll see though.

Amster who?

So let me tell you a story, about a time, when 5 men embarked upon a great quest in a land not so far from here...

This weekend marked our trip to Amsterdam, a city world renowned for it's tourist attractions. Museums, tours, coffee, Heineken beer, and various other sundry things.

The train ride to the Netherlands was rather uneventful and let us use our recently acquired 50% discounts cards. After arriving at the Netherlands, however, we found that we arrived ten minutes late and missed our train. This is when we realized how much English is actually spoken in the Netherlands. Figuring out the correct train and finding our way to the main train station in Amsterdam was incredibly easy. In fact while we were in the city I heard and spoke so much English it felt like a home away from home. That probably sounds weird to those who haven't studied abroad, but there's something comforting in being able to fluently communicate with strangers.

Our hotel room was a bit out of the main city but was really cheap, especially when we snuck in our fifth friend into the 4 person room. The only problem we had with the room was the fact that there were only 3 beds for the supposed 4 of us, one was a two person bed, which helped but we were still short on sleeping space. At the end of our day's adventures we'd draw straws of a sort. Everyone slept on a bed though the 3 person was a bit cramped. Luckily I scored one of the single beds.

After moving our meager travel packs (which each only brought a single backpack with a change of clothes) into the room we were ready to explore the city. We had already stopped for coffee at one of the shops and decided it was best to take an hour or so nap before exploring any further. After awakening from our slumber we set out on a mission, Adventures in Amsterdam, take 1.

If any of you have heard about Amsterdam (I know it's an obscure city lol), you'll know that it is an acclaimed tourism city and said to be a very pretty city. I found that the buildings and architecture were both very interesting and generally ascetically pleasing. I would not however call the city beautiful. Most buildings are in good repair but graffiti tags are extremely common, most of which are just scribblings. There wasn't much in the way of graffiti street art, so this mostly took away from the sites we saw. I also found there was a good deal of trash throughout the streets, thanks largely to the tourist population meandering the streets. The bus and tram system was very effective but some of them looked like they could use some fresh paint and some replacement rails. The bus rides were also the closest things to amusement parks I've visited so far. Our first trip on the bus nearly ended with all of us falling or tripping in some way within the first 5 minutes. I doubt the driver used the break pedal more then absolutely necessary to not drift into poles during turns. It's one thing to be in a rush but I found it almost a sport to stay standing during any of the bus rides we took (Most of which I was relatively sober for, so my inner ear WAS in functioning order I would like to point out).

That aside I have to say I absolutely loved the city. Even with the graffiti the buildings were all still worth seeing. Especially in the center of the city where the alleys and buildings all still appear to be authentic and old. We also happened to come during some kind of minor festival which resulted in a lot of lights, rides, and carnival attractions in the center of the city. We stopped by the Anne Frank museum as well as the Amsterdam letters during the trip, though we didn't have enough time to stay at either very long (we're considering the implications of another trip) but they were both fairly impressive. The city also boat tours, which we've had enough of for one life time, which would probably provide some history and a more macroscopic view of the city then I'm interested in currently.

We stopped at several coffee shops throughout the trip including The Blues Brothers, The Grasshopper, and a few others such as Ben's. I would recommend any of them to anyone interested in the atmosphere and I actually found their coffee to be the best coffee I've ever had. The one shop I stopped for a milkshake at was a bit mediocre so I'd suggest just drinking the coffee, maybe some fresh squeezed juice if you're feeling extra healthy for some reason. We also wanted to make time for a few of the clubs and the ice bar that we found but sadly didn't have the patience for an hour long wait to get into the club and never found the ice bar. After all this was said and done the question everyone must ask themselves in Amsterdam came up from an unlikely place. While walking around the city center some girls (assumedly from the USA) asked us (in English! yay!) where the red light district was. This sparked an adventure to a group of streets which is fairly well known as a tourist attraction. The area is worth visiting to say that you've done it but honestly there isn't much to do there. We did stop at one of the coffee shops here as well though and hung out drinking some Heineken and did some people watching of the tourists walking by outside.The most interesting, and mildly concerning thing we saw led to some conjecture over events we missed. While talking we noticed there was a man, laying on the ground outside speaking to police officers and obviously unable to stand by his own power. After several minutes of discussion an ambulance showed up (curiosity and concern peaked at this point) and they proceeded to put his leg in an adhoc cast. During this we noticed he had a sizable bloody gash on one ankle and there was a damaged bike next to the man. When I say sizable I mean we were able to see and identify this wound from across the street on the second story. After all was said and done the man was put into the back of the Ambulance and is now hopefully all patched up. While getting put into the ambulance the blanket he was wrapped in (it was chilly out) fell over his face and a British girl in the next booth over thought he was dead. That incited some minor hysteria in their booth until they realized that the blanket had simply fallen over his face and wasn't meant to be a shroud at all. The paramedics flipped the flap of the blanket away from his face before pushing him toward the ambulance.

I also discovered that the waffles in Amsterdam are amazing. They're premade but reheated in under a minute in a professional, and I do mean PROFESSIONAL, waffle warmer before they're covered in delicious chocolate sauce, which in some cases is hazelnut flavored, and any other toppings you want. I tried one with the hazelnut sauce and one with milk chocolate and cherries. Both were amazing and I need to say it's a must if you're in the city.

I do wish we had gotten to take a tour of the Heineken factory,  but again time was short this time around and we wanted to see some sites while were in the city.

Post Trip?

We had a few people over my room, made some good old potato noodle and onion soup and smoked some hookah. A few turkish girls, two polish girls, and my newest roommate joined us for a few hours and we all just relaxed, all there really is to do on a Germany on Sunday.

School? (Believe it or not I am still a student!)

So a few developments in school life have come to light recently. I've been toying with the idea of increasing my class work load since classes meet only once a week. I also realized some of the classes offered are in English and I can take them without prior commitment until exam time when I must sign up for the slot I want. I have my eye on a computer simulated numerics course as well as an Aerodynamics course my friend is taking. I'm also of course still taking my hydraulics course and doing my work project for the konstruktionstechnic institute. It looks like I will be doing a project directly related to a competition sponsored by ELVA. I will be working on electric car chasis design with Andrew Moakes and a team of German engineering students, graduate as well as undergraduate, whom I have yet to meet. I'm rather excited for the project which will net me 3 credits and some experience that I will hopefully be able to use in a lot of different design projects. Though material properties isn't my specialty nor is it of direct interest to me it touches in many of the fields I'm truly interested in and affects any mechanical project anyone can think of. If everything goes well I'll be going back to URI with some very interesting scholastic experiences.

Well this turned into a bit of a doozy. I don't think I'm going to post any facebook pictures this time, I'll have to edit this post in the next day or two to include some.

Over and out

Sometimes a post is boring, but it still makes a fence...

Oh boy. It's been a while since I've written much of anything. A lot has been happening though, at a much too rapid pace. I've made some new friends, gotten a new roommate, cleaned my apartment (with help) and will be taking a train trip to the Netherlands this weekend.

This week was exam week in the German summer school and I'm glad to have that all in the past, but I do still have to take my placement test bright and early Friday morning. Tomorrow I will be going to Wolfsburg, and going to a school sponsored party in the evening.

I've found some new restaurants, including the first real Mexican place I've found, Sausalitos. This place has really delicious drinks and food, the chicken burrito was a little sloppy but really good. We were there with two of our new friends, Tiffy and Kayleigh. Both were helping out in the Summer School and are pretty funny.

Other then doing exams I haven't had as much time this week as I'd like but I did manage to find and sign up with the gym which I went to today for the first time. The gym is extraordinarily clean and has ample machines for us to get ripped.

I should have more funny stories in a while, I'm running on E after exams, never was good with having to get up for 8:30... I did discover that movies on my ipod make for much better train rides, though I did nearly miss a stop.

Bought my first steak today and hope to continue my adventures in culinary.

This entry was a little lame. I'll get back into it for the next one promise, Wolfsburg should provide some ammo.

All Day, and All Night, What the Fuck!

You may or not be familiar with the song these lyrics come from, but it kind of described my sleep schedule over the weekend.

So this weekend started off with the christening of my room as the party room. I bought some brand new speakers for 26 euro and also got a nice hookah for 20 euro, which really helped in this happening. We had some beers, kicked it to some 90s music and smoked hookah all night before going out to a bar for the night.

All said and done we got back pretty late, around 4 or 5. Normally this is great on a Friday night except that we needed to be at a bus 7:15 am Saturday morning for the school trip to Berlin. Even this would have been ok if every single one of the American's alarms hadn't gone off, or was slept through for some reason. My alarm had been set to week days only, while several of the others had forgotten they actually had to be up and went back to bed. End result was that 3 of the Americans didn't make it on the trip and 3 more of us made an epic entrance to the bus, sprinting down the last street as it was ready to pull away.

Having gotten to the bus in one piece was the beginning of our crazy adventures this weekend. My biggest regret though, came when I realized I had forgotten my camera on my table in my dorm. This bothered me in large because there are a lot of sites in Berlin I have yet to take pictures of. I do have some hard copy developed photos of the Berlin wall, but this trip we actually went to the top of the glass dome above their parliament. From the top of the dome there is a gorgeous view of the city and you can see most of the site seeing and architectural wonders of the capital of Germany.

We spent a good bit of the day on a tour through the Schloss (palace) which had some really interesting items including some swords, gilded with gold, which have survived the rise and fall of several countries. There were countless rooms in the palace that would have been perfect for pictures and I even got to see some of the royal jewels of Germany.

During the evening we had dinner at one of the local breweries, with a beer of course. The Swiss girl Lara order a meal which turned out to be something like a pig haunch, and it was nearly impenetrable. It took her quite a bit more effort then expected to cut through the meet. I personally had a delicious plate of overpriced schnitzel, which is just a meat cutlet, but it came with potatoes and a delicious tomato sauce.

Having eaten and prepared for the night we stop by the hotel for a half hour nap and a power shower before we went to Matrix for the night with Juliana and Androus (prolly spelled that wrong). On the way back I saw some Germans taking a photo and made the most ridiculously silly and epic pose I could as I photo bombed the heck out of them.

Matrix was fun, but I hated the DJ. He constantly interrupted the music at the wrong times and played some very odd choices of songs occasionally. We eventually left the club around 4 am, having had enough of the slow half hip hop half hard core rap mix. By the time we got back we had enough time for a 3 hour nap and then we were up again for breakfast and my favorite tour so far. We got to see inside the German parliament building. There was a large focus on modern architectural themes after the nazi reign ended and since the parliament building was being set up for the new government many of the features are extremely cool. It also allows one of the highest vantage points in the city if you go to the roof where there is a spiral ramp all the way up a glass dome over the Parliament.

I nearly forgot! While taking our bus tour (before we went to Matrix) our bus driver was hit from behind by another bus, which did not please him in the least. Luckily no one was hurt, but the other bus had severe damage to many of the windows and slight structural damage on the side.

That's all I have for now, I know I'm leaving things out, such as seeing the guy blowing huge bubbles in the park, but frankly I'm exhausted and need to get some sleep before class.

Sean, over and out!

Bevo Bevo Bevo, Bevi! (October Fest!)

Bevo Bevo Bevo
Quando Bevo Bevo
Mi Ubriaco E Son Felice
Anke Se Poi Vomito!!!

 This weekend was absolutely ludicrous. We arrived in Munich with almost no sleep, having train hopped from 4pm Friday until 7am Saturday over 5 or 6 trains, but were ready to drink. I mean how often are you in Germany for Octoberfest?!?
Some of you may have noticed the song at the top of this blog is most definitely not English or German but Italian. I learned the drinking song from our newly made Italian friends behind me.

I sort of jumped into the middle of this story so lets rewind a little. As of the Thursday before leaving my plans for the weekend included a school sponsored "get to know everyone" pot luck party. Some point during Friday myself and Andrew Moakes spoke with some of the Brazilian kids attending the summer school and decided with half an hour we were going to go the way did, hence the train hopping. Some of the saner people reading this may wonder why we would ever hop on an opportunity so horrid as training hopping all night with little to no sleep and my answer is simply money. Our round trip costs, 30 Euro per person. 5 hour train one way straight through to Munich cost, 160+ Euro per person.

So now you know the beginning of our journey lets meet the riff raff!

From this corner, we have the Americans!

(She's technically Swiss but she can be an honary American for this trip)
This girl is extremely quiet but smiles and giggles almost seemingly at random and is much more talkative with people who know Italian.

She was a source of confusion when Neil told me Laura was coming, having not known it was her name I thought we had invited her as well as another Laura and didn't have enough tickets. It didn't help my brain at all when both Laura's walked up the stairs at the train station.

We all made it where we needed to go so obviously it worked out, hey oh!

Mr Andrew Moakes, pronounced as Moh ack ies by those trying to irritate him. He's been hopping around Europe a while before us but has been playing catch up in Germany.

 
It's me! And I'm actually much more excited then I appear, I'm just annoyed cause I'd been trying to get a clear picture from a window reflection on a moving train with poor lighting. Figures the only decent picture I'm chewing on my damn lip.

Look at this fella here! Snoozin away like a lil baby. This is one of my close friends Neil Mccaffery and as many pictures as I seem to have of him sleeping it makes sense since he didn't sleep when we got back from this trip like the rest of us did. Instead he went to a crazy Drum and Bass festival in Bremen. Only live once, right?










So these were the kids we were rolling with, but the heroes, (and heroins) of the day were our Brazillian friends. Without them we would never of thought about using regional trains in such an obnoxiously time consuming way to reduce our costs so drastically.

 Though one of the ladies had ducked out for a snooze during this picture this is the bulk of or Brazilian companions.I'd name each but I'm honestly not sure how to spell all of their names, and am pretty sure I was mispronouncing at least two of their names.





Introductions past, but stories to come!

Please tell me you didn't think I'd end a blog with an introduction, I'm hardly that boring. Well, I hope I'm not at least. I'll try to keep this short though, since this is already turning into quite a monster of a post.

On the way there on our last trains I landed with two of the Brazilians while they were getting ready for breakfast. I found it well balanced. There was wheat, eggs, flour, vitamin B... who am I kidding. We were eating cake, drinking beer, and shooting energy drink. I'm glad it's not just an American thing lol.

And check out that product placement!











Now once we got to Octoberfest I took countless pictures, which will no doubt make it to my facebook in the near future, but the one moment that made me ecstatic but super disappointed it was missed was when I stood on a table, as many had before me, and chugged the one liter beer I had bought. The difference between me and everyone else was that I drank the beer so fast that the Italians next to us started a "USA" chant as I finished and sat down. If nothing else that made the trip worth it, though I only bought two more steins of beer, being at this point very full and on my way to being drunk.

The problems of the trip began when Germans came over to our table with full glasses as we near the end of our third and decided that they would drink with us, but first had to fill our cups to an equal height as theirs. All said and done I may have only bought 3 steins but we each drank at least 5 steins of beer. Mixed with the heat this made for an unpleasant exiting into a shadeless, but absolutely awesome fair ground. The fair ground had a roller coaster nearly as big as the super man coaster at six flags back home, not that I had the initiative or mental dexterity to ride it anymore.

German Friends!   

After a quick pit stop for an upset stomach the day went uphill for a long time until around 9pm, when our bodies started to realized how hard we had duped them and that we had in fact NOT slept. This was when we started lounging around random city spots like touristy American squatters. It is also when I saw some of my favorite sites. First there was  a "street performer" who gave the appearance of being headless, he was by far the least interesting but one of the first I noticed.

After the headless man I noticed real performers, such as a classical ensamble which included instruments such as a Chello and a Piano and a violinist.

There was also a group of rastafari playing a very strange assortment of instruments but putting together some very catchy songs.

And pictured below is a blurry photo of a violin trio who was extremely talented and apparently not playing for money, though I couldn't tell the purpose I found it very nice music and rather relaxing.

 

 I was just getting ready to publish this when I realized I forgot my two favorite street performers! First came the fire eater, who blew fire about like he was Spyro back in the 90's when PlayStation was still where it was at. And then, right after, as if to qualify description of the fire eater as a dragon a man in a black cloak with lantern and Halberd came running through the streets. I unfourtunately could not catch either in a photo. But the memory will last.

And as with many great tales there is the tragedy, for without it the happiness would not be so sweet. On the way back the combination of hangover (I was completely sober by the time we left at 5am Sunday morning), exhaustion, dehydration and hangover induced motion sickness I had a horrid time getting back to Weststadt. I got very sick throughout the trip, and couldn't hold water down for the longest time which made everything else even more miserable.
Despite this, I did get back, finally got liquids back into my system and slept for nearly 24 hours and feel good as new now (I even went to class on time!). Lesson learned though, drink more water before I leave. Especially on nearly 12 hours of train rides which could make me motion sick.

On that note I think I'll leave a picture of our last train station stop on the way back (which I felt great at by the way, turns out train stations don't shake about and such) of the other Americans passed out, asleep for one of our infrequent 30 minute naps.

If you're still reading, I have to say I find the commendable. I hope you enjoyed my trip.

Oh yeah, the italian song. Roughly translated means, drink drink drink, something drink drink. Having fun, even if they puke. Silly Italians singing at German beer festivals...

I've got a Sinking Feeling...

Yeah yeah, I should stop the puns. But seriously this sucks, my sink not only became completely clogged but the clog is past the pvc piping in the wall. Some of you may wonder how I found this out and in that case you don't know me too well. Having found out it would take nearly two weeks to have someone fix it I of course decided to take it apart and fix it myself. Unfortunately I am not cut out to be a plumber as one of the PVC pipe connections shattered when I released it. Perhaps it was cemented? Either way I now have a sink that doesn't drain how it should but is very good at flooding my kitchen.On the bright side I haven't done check in yet and I spoke to the German in charge of check in and it's going to be fixed for free. Until then my sink is held together with packaging tape and dreams.

(It's actually worse then this picture makes it seem...)

ADVENTUIRE TIME!

On the bright side I did have a small adventure last night with Moakes and Nick. Moakes came to my room at 9 ringing my doorbell and informing me of exactly how bored he was, my initial and overly lazy response was that I didn't know what I could do to help. He mentioned he might go for a walk and after a while I decided there was still some area to explore in this city.

While walking we decided to enjoy our right to public drinking while on the streets and each grabbed a beer as we set off with no particular destination. Since Moakes hadn't seen the Red Light district we had to give him the walking tour, which ended with us finding a nearly hidden back alley painted bright green that led to a section none of us had realized existed. To be fair none of us has ever actually spent more then 2 minutes walking through but we were still surprised that we hadn't noticed a bright hallway before.

Having shown Moakes the street we walked around looking for interesting bars for the weekend and we ran into a very strange possible Italian man. The man was beyond belligerently drunk and may have been threatening us though I'm not sure why or what with, so we continued our walk. He followed us for a few minutes before we randomly lost him outside a construction site. Having lost our unwanted follower we walked around and I took the side picture here of flower with a statue in the back, unfortunately it was too dark for me to be able to turn my flash off so this will have to do until I pass the area in daylight.Having explored enough for the day we turned back and once again bumped into our belligerent friend, we couldn't believe that we had managed to run itno him considering the zig-zag filled route we had taken but we simply waited for him to stumble past our street before we headed to the tram.

Random Fact for the Day: I want to get some plants and maybe a fish for my room. I'm tired of looking at white walls and nothing else...

Is my name really that hard to say?

I've come to the conclusion since coming here that Sean must not be very common in Germany, Brazil, Spain, or this general part of Europe. Everyone I meet assumes my name is Seen. And if I correct them they often think it is Shun. In one of my classes yesterday I actually introduced myself as "Sean not Seen". I'm pretty sure my instructor wrote my name down as exactly that, which gave me and the other Americans a kick.

We took a tour today of the city with our class, and though I've seen most of it by now I found that the buildings were still really well built. I find the older German architecture really appealing and want to take more pictures of it, but alas, I left my camera in my room this morning.

Architecture Picture: (They're old but hey, it'll do till I get back out with my camera)

A Real Class Act

So today was the second day of classes and our first Tuesday night not going to the Jolly Joker. It's honestly a nice change to sleep during the night, though my body didn't adjust well Sunday night. I went through the first day of school with only 2 hours sleep but apparently did well enough on the placement exams to place in the middle level class. Now that I've had two full days of class I can honestly say it won't be too bad though the days seem to run a little longer then I'd like.

On a lighter note I decked my room out a little more with a rug. Now I'm considering wether it's worth getting a 99 euro futon or not. I'm leaning towards yes but could use some input. Also thinking about finding some kind of growable plant to sit beside my basil plant... We'll see though.

Overall the last two days have been boring but I'm thinking about doing some traveling this weekend. So hopefully I'll have some more interesting things to write about.

A Little Birdy Told Me a Secret...

So last night was my friend Paul's belated birthday celebration (yes we did go to the wild geese to celebrate but there wasn't any cake so it didn't count!). Lara (Still not sure if I'm spelling that right) Neil and I spent some time earlier in the day making muffins for the party. We made both chocolate and vanilla but filled both with chocolate chips and frosted them with chocolate frosting. I managed to get a nice little burn taking the muffins out, but just hissed and avoided dropping them on the floor thankfully.

The other interesting event during baking was when we realized we had to heat the frosting, lacking a working microwave I made a double boiler pot supports over my electric stove with dual butter knife supports. After making my little mechanism I was informed by Lara how much of an engineer I was lol.

After making the muffins we all had a fairly good time, playing a little bit of kings and just generally talking throughout the night. We had a good crowd, around 12 people came which made my kitchen feel rather small and a bit cramped. We did manage to steal enough chairs from Alex and Brendan's room to seat everybody though.

After the party wrapped up I was doing a quick cleaning when Paul knocked on my door, apparently he had missed the last tram back so was going to hang out until the trams started again at 5. We got some burgers and just generally shot the shit until the trams started again and I walked up to my room ready to catch some sleep before our 3 o'clock orientation coming up that afternoon.

As I dozed fitfully I was rudely awoken around 8 or so in the morning when one of the bottles I was saving for pfand refund fell from my windowsill. Immediately alarmed I awoke wondering what could possibly be in my room that close to my bed. I then noticed a small bird flying around my room occasionally landing on my dresser and shelves tweeting. For a little while I considered trying to have a pet bird but decided it'd A, be unfair to the bird, and B too much work for me. I opened my other window and watched it hang out in my room for a few more minutes before it simply flew away.

Between the bird and the rabbits I feel like Snow White. Maybe I shouldn't eat those apples I bought the other day...

Condensed photo album:

Calm before the Storm

Muffin Party, waiting for Paul

I finally got to hang out with one of my room mates! Guy on the far left! Also, you will notice Matt Hooks trying to look gorgeous in the middle of this picture.

Alex Paul and Lara catching up on some sleep

Publish Post

My only regret is that I was not awake enough to take a picture of my bird visitor this morning, perhaps I'll be able to get a picture of the rabbits outside in the near future...

Oh Hamburg, How I Missed You...

You know how I said we've been having a lot of crazy nights? This one takes the cake. I won't be going into every detail but some parts of this night remind me of the Hangover, you know, the movie where they get really drunk in a random city and have crazy random adventures and some of them completely forget what happened?

The night started at around 5 when we left and got on the train. We played a bunch of High Low Jack and just generally chatted while the time passed by.

Upon arriving we went to an American style BBQ place and we all settled on some gold old fashioned burgers or burritos, nothing like a taste of home while abroad.

Having finished our meals I began to regret not bringing my camera with me. I knew it would prolly get destroyed in the trip but the Reeperbahn is a very interesting street though definitely rated R. We spent the night visiting clubs, bars and other places of ill repute and eventually even landed ourselves in some strip clubs. I won't go into detail here but some very interesting stories happened throughout these and I'll be more then willing to share them with anyone who shoots me a message. Some of the stuff involved a 200 bottle dollar of champagne and loss of clothing of persons not employed by the strip club. But I will maintain that there is no, and will be no, and there was no, sex in the champagne room.

Suffice to say it's a night I'll never forget, and a night 2 or 3 of the others will never remember.

The only nerve racking part of this adventure was trying to find our way home, with two of our friends beyond drunk and tensions running high with no sleep. After several train stops and a tram ride we finally made it back, exhausted and ready for sleep at 10am.

Do germans really do this every night? I don't think I can keep this up when I actually have classes...

No picture for this one guys, sorry

A Trip to Remember, but a City to Forget

So a earlier this week we decided we were going to take a day trip. We did the classic practice of walking to the train station and taking the first train out to anywhere in Niedersachsen. (All the trains are free for us in this region!).

The city of choice turned out to be Lebenstedt, one of the divisions of the larger city Salzgitter.

The train ride there was uneventful but had really nice views of the country side and we got there after probably a 20 minute ride. This part of Salzgitter was very quaint and I took well over 50 pictures and posted them on my Facebook so feel free to check them out!

While we explored we decided to stop for a cup of coffee, which was 2 euro (ridiculous I say!) and sat for a little just enjoying the laid back feel of the area. Half way through our coffee break I got a call from Lara, one of the peer mentors leading us through our stay here. Apparently our friend Neil had just arrived in the country and needed internet to activate his phone. I explained that we were in Lebenstedt drinking coffee and Lara asked "Why would you go all the way there for a cup of coffee?". At a loss for an answer I simply said I didn't know and laughed a little.

After our coffee break we took a walk around the park, I climbed some random rusty scaffolding and we decided we should catch the next train since there was a two hour gap between trains and we had already spent 2 hours wandering the area.

Overall I'd have to say this was a good start to our day trips, and I'm hoping to take another this Sunday.

Random Picture: Brendan Alex and Steve, posing for the cover of their Boyband, the Amerikids. Check out their hit single Döner für Immer

Oh What a Wicked Gang We Are

 It's sure been one hell of a trip. Last night was the first night we were at a club when it closed and oh boy did we have a night.

Throughout the night I ran into a bunch of the people we live with and haven't gotten to hang out much with and made friends with a few of them. Paul and I also managed to meet and befriend a few Germans who bought us several drinks throughout the night. By far the craziest part of the night was how we met these guys though, we met them because they were trying to speak to the police who had just arrested our American friend. In the country less then two full weeks and one of us has already had a run in with the police lol. Shoulda expected it I guess.

On a non partying note I made my first turkey burgers today, seasoned with lemon zest, fresh basil, chopping onions, garlic and some salt and pepper. They were delicious and we topped them with a buttery hot sauce, some swiss cheese avacado and tomatoes. By the end of this trip I will be a proficient cook lol.

So I think I missed posting about Paul's bday celebration. We went to our normal Wild Geese hang out during the night but switched it up during the day  by going to an American style all you can eat rib buffet. While eating we met Andrew's roommate Sep, who is a really funny and chill German. After eating our weight in bbq ribs we had an unfourtunate bout of confusion involving the check but finally got it straightened out and walked around the city. If you've read my older posts you'll remember the older gentlemen who we met, and this is when he came around.

Been having a ton of fun here, but I'm glad I finally have my passport back. Kind of want to do some trips, going out every night is fun but I want to explore!

Random Fact: When your sink is clogged and filled with water a saucer like plate will double effectively as a plunger!

Picture: The American Locust Swarm

Playing Catch Up

So I don't think I'm going to be posting for everyday since we got here but I'll see if I can do a quick run through.

So how do American college students in a foreign country spend their time without school?

We've spent a bit of time getting paperwork together but I won't bore anyone with the interesting game known as German Bureaucracy. I will say that both my temporary and permanent student ID are made of paper and aren't even laminated. Probably going to have to use some packaging tape to fix that in the near future...

Aside from paperwork we've been wandering the city finding the supermarkts we like and trying various Döner shops. I'm pretty sure that more of our German conversations start with random Turkish men who after making us our kebaps want to speak to the interesting Americans. They're all generally friendly and we'll practice our German for a bit until they eventually ask where we come from in English. Though they've been the main source of conversation we've also had conversations with several strangers throughout Braunschweig (most interested in the fact that we're American).

One of the nights we were out I randomly ran into Brendan and Alex, two of the students traveling with me, and they were talking to a random guy and his two friends. Surprised to have met up with them after losing the group hours ago in the club I started talking to them as well. Alex pointed and laughed at me asking what happened to my shirt and I realized with much less chagrin then I should have that I had taken my tshirt off after the club and was only in a wife beater. Being a little less then sober and having a shirt that was far from comfortable (It's really warm in the clubs here), I decided I'd handle the heckling and stay as I was. It turns out the guy they had met was really cool and super nice, though I still think he was really sketchy. He went back to the club with us for a while and we danced until Brendan started being harassed by one of the people dancing there and we decided to leave. Another surprise waited for us when we found one of the kids who'd come with us half asleep at one of the tram stops! (We stayed out long enough for them to start running again this night). We called to the kid at the tram stop and he looked up and got on, responding to our questions with a few quick blinks. After a second he explained that he wasn't sure where he'd gone, but he woke up somewhere and had to walk a while to find the tram stop. We all started laughing immediately, and continue to make jokes about it even now.

Other conversations had less interesting outcomes but perhaps a deeper cultural aspect. We met an older gentleman who claimed that he was French in France, German in Germany and English in England. Though his introduction was rough and he had a heavily non-German accent (French perhaps?), he launched into a few different stories and explanations that were pretty interesting. I had a hard time understanding a lot of the English he spoke but caught the German when he slowed down. It was not that his English was bad he just had a heavy accent. He spoke to us of historical events, most of which were well known, though he had stopped to ask us questions such as, Do you know Normandy? and Have you heard of the Boston Tea Party?. Excluding his lack of apparent confidence in our historical knowledge it was great speaking with him and he spoke a bit about how some of the older buildings in Braunschweig came to be. When we finally left him he had bridged a conversation from the Vietnam war to the war in Iraq and was explaining why he was against it. This man likely provided us with our most educated random conversation in Germany to date.

And even still other conversations have little meaning one way or the other. From quick conversations with Germans in the club, yelled over loud music and barely understood by either party to conversations with people who merely want to practice speaking their English or find our German amusing. Brendan is quickly making a relationship with the owner of the Wild Geese Irish Pub. The pub has become our Monday night weekly hang out spot, at first because of the 1 euro tequilla shots but also because of it's atmosphere. I personally love the music, as it's pretty hard to find Irish music playing in Germany and the general setting of the place just feels right. We've gone there with both Elena, our peer mentor I mentioned before, and Lara, our peer mentor I haven't mentioned yet.

Lara is quite and interesting girl and has been a big help in finding adventures throughout Germany. She is another blonde German and could be described as almost mischievous, though not in a bad way. Through her we met Nicholas who is involved in the check in and check out process at Westsstadt and is quite possibly the funniest German I've met. Nick even invited us over to his WG (apartment) one night to hang out and drink a bit before we left and went to Sole (I think that's how it's spelled) which is street style club that plays drum and bass.

I'm getting hungry now so I think I'll let this post settle, but I assure you there is more to come.

Random Fact: We have a family of at least four rabbits living in our yard at Weststadt!
Random Picture: Piraten Partei! Yes, it's the pirate party. They are legitimate, though they are only a single issue party and hence normally not much interest to me but they're just so baller.

Everybody bring it back ya'll, ten days this time

Having arrived 10 days ago I feel this blog is a little late in being posted. I'm also realizing the monstrous number of things we've done since arriving here.

Our first adventure after arriving was a group trip to Ikea where we quickly learned several things. First we learned Americans are generally much louder then Germans. We also learned Ikea doesn't sell comforters but instead they sell blankets requiring a covers apparently known to everyone aside from me as Dubai (spelling?) covers. And just for the record I'm honestly still not completely sold on the idea and generally miss my normal single piece blanket from home. Aside from a few other purchases the rest of the first day was uneventful. But as in every country, once the sun sets, the fun starts. We went out with two of the Germans who were helping us get settled. Elena is a blonde German girl who has helped us do a majority of our paper work and is keeping in this country. Mahmoud is our dark haired extremely nice German friend, who'd take us to later football (soccer) adventures.

Not knowing much about the town we trusted the nights events to our two German friends and were not led astray. We arrived at a bar which had a theme which still escapes me, but it involved a stuffed elk as well as a vicious looking stuffed badger and several interesting German quotes. Having not been in Braunschweig long we asked Elena and Mahmoud about local beer. The local beer here is apparently Wollter's, it's cheap, it's good, and I had several that very night. Another suggested beer was beck's which tasted surprisingly decent and was just as cheap.

As time rolled by we began to notice how empty the bar was staying, and we were rather surprised. This was our first lesson in German night life, they don't even go out until nearly 11 or 12 and nothing gets really busy until nearly 1am in most cases! To be fair I need to follow this with the fact that they legitimately party until 6 maybe 7 in the morning. We have yet to be the last group to leave a bar or club, and we've been out often and long.

Despite the fact that the bar had become extremely busy we began to get tired and made plans to head back to Weststadt (our dorm). Brendan and I were figuring on walking back and said as much when Elena insisted on us taking a cab. After failing to convince her otherwise we agreed, thinking that we'd be able to sneak away when she left without hailing a cab. Little did we know that as we left she would hail the cab for us as well as explain to the cab driver to bring us to weststadt 3 or 4 times. Though at the time Brendan and I though it funny, I now realize the walk is upwards of 20 minutes without getting lost and we were probably better off with the cab fare then with no sleep.

Though this post's late I hope to start catching up on some of the others in the near future!

Culture Shock: So many Germans smoke!

Picture of the Post: Weststadt, my dorm.