Wenn Jetzt Sommer Wär

Here is the link to a song that we listened to the other day in Tutorium. Basically, he is singing about all the different things he would be doing if it were summer. It makes me kind of miss the summer and miss kamp. It also gives me a bug to go adventuring. Good thing class is almost finished.

Pohlman "Wenn Jetzt Sommer Wär"

Oh, you are supposed to take classes at school

The time has come for me to pick classes for this semester as well as next fall. Kind of terrifying that I am looking at classes fo my last year in college. That is something for anothe time though. I have finally deided on the classes that I want to take while I am here.

Gender and Biography- this class fulfills my social sciences requirement, becuase living in another country doesn't count as a social science...

Goethe's Elective Affinities- I have to take a german culture or literature class, good thing we are going to be studying one of the books I have already read.

Translation- this class is through the International Language Program. It is for native English speakers and will look at translating texts from English to German and vice versa taking notice of the nuances of both languages along the way

Toxicology- not really sure where this is coming from, it is a lecture which means that there won't be a test though, and if I play my cards right I should be able to get some chemistry credit for it.

That is what my work load for the semester looks like. I know it doesn't look like much, but remember everything will be in German. I am pretty stoked about it.

In other news, I reserved my place on a train to Vienna. Baller.

What time is it?

Today I woke up, got dressed for church, caught the bus, went to the bakery to get some breakfast, and got to church five minutes before Mass was supposed to start. I walked in as people were walking out. Germany had Daylight Savings Time last night. I got to church as it was ending, not as it was beginning. Typical.

Official Spring Break Itenerary

So, it probably can't be considered official because I still don't have the train tickets, but I did make all the hostel reservations today. Here is where I am going to be and the dates that I will be there

April 4th: Ballet in Stuttgart
April 5th: Overnight train to Vienna
April 6th: Hostel Ruthensteiner
April 7th: Overnight train to Zurich
April 8th: City Backpacker
April 9th: Overnight train to Rome
April 10th: Stephanie Bedinghaus's couch
April 11th: " " "
April 12th: " " "
April 13th: Overnight train to Paris
April 14th: BVJ Louvre
April 15th: BVJ Louvre
April 16th: train to Amsterdam Flying Pig hostel
April 17th: Overnight train to Copenhagen
April 18th: Danhostel
April 19th: Return to Germany

Sounds like I am up for an adventure. I can't wait

Ludwigsburg and Esslingen

On Wednesday the Deutsch Kompakt course took a day excursion to Ludwigsburg and Esslingen, two town each about an hour away from Tuebingen. The bus left at 8:30 in the morning. Kind of early, but they had pretzels and juice for breakfast so that helped to make up for the early start time.

The first stop of the day was the castle in Ludwigsburg. It was ridiculous. I wouldn't have called it a castle, more of a mansion or palace. There were 250 rooms, and we didn't even get through fifty of them in the hour and a half that we were there. We did see some pretty spectacular paintings of old kings and queens of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The first King weighed 200 kilos, approximately 440 pounds.

After we finished our tour in the castle we went to the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg. There are three other film academies in Germany besides the one that we saw. We were given tours by a couple of students, and then we got to watch a couple of the films that had been made by students there. They were really good.

After the we finished watching movies we loaded back into the bus to head to Esslingen. In Esslingen we were supposed to have a tour of the city, but the weather was absolutely terrible. So most people hunkered down in cafes to wait for dinner. I found a juggling store to amuse myself in.

At seven o'clock we all met in a wine cellar for dinner and wine tasting. It was a typical german dinner, bread, ham, salami, cheese, mustard, hardboiled eggs, pickles, cucumber, and tomatoes. It was very tasty and a really enjoyable evening. After dinner everyone got back on the bus and headed back to Tuebingen.

Blaubeuren

Last week I, along with the other students in my language class, travelled to the small mountain town of Blaubeuren to spend a week at the Heinrich-Fabri Institute owned by the University of Tuebingen. It was truely a phenomenal week. The days were full of hanging out with new friends, practicing German, and exploring the new area. While we were there I literally climbed a mountain a day. Granted, they weren't exceptionally high, but one of the other students and I had the conversation about whether they were small mountains or very large hills. Mountain was the unanimous decision. The entire time we were there the weather was beautiful. A little bit cloudy in the mornings but all the afternoons were bright and sunny, something that has been quite rare so far.

One day we tood an excursion to Ulm. We did a small tour of the city with our class and then we had the rest of the night to ourselves. The church in Ulm has the world's tallest church tower. There are 768 steps that you can climb to get to the top. On a good day, you can see all the way to the Alps. It was a good day. The city of Ulm is situated on the Donau and the Donau is the border between Baden Wurttemberg and Bayern. Naturally, I went over to Bayern for no other reason than to say that I did.

The time in Blaubeuren was truely a lot of fun, it was nice to have the opportunity to get to know the people in my class a little more. For instance, I learned that my tutorin, Pia, can juggle and we did little bits of juggling together all week. Then she turned juggling into a grammar game and I lost intrest.

Hope you enjoy the pictures from Blaubeuren.

Heissgeliebt (Popular)

Last night Fiona and I ventured to the city of Stuttgart where the musical "Wicked" is playing. Yes, we saw the play in Germany; yes, they spoke german during the play; and yes, the songs were in german. It was awesome. When we arrived we picked up our tickets, and found out that our seats were in the third row. During the first half of the play we saw that there happened to be two empty seats in the first row. When intermission came around we immediately got up and comandeered those seats and watched the second half of the show from the front row. It was amazing. The conductor was alomst as fun to watch as the play because he was singing along the entire time, and he just looked like he was enjoying life. We told him thank you afterwards and that we had a lot of fun. (Yes, we spoke in german). Also, approximately half of the cast were the original people that were cast in Germany, pretty cool. It was a great night.