Starting then at the beginning. My first flight was 2 hours to Newark and it was a fun one. I sat next to a young mother with a two year old named Rowen. We watched veggie tales together on her portable DVD player. Apparently whoever invented it didn’t have a two year old or they wouldn’t have made the buttons so easily accessible for flailing hands to press.
Rowen was amusing. He would sit on his mom’s lap facing the window, then all of a sudden he would start tilting his head back and lean so far until he was staring me in the face upside down, and he would just stare awkwardly no matter what his mom did. It wasn’t till the last minute of the flight that he gave in and gave me a high five (actually like 7 high fives in quick succession).
Following a brief layover was my flight to Amsterdam. I sat next to two dutch gentlemen who were friendly. I finally watched Slumdog Millionaire. I also decided that dutch folk are tall thin and blond.
We had a tailwind so we arrived and hour early at 6am (midnight eastern time). Airport was empty so I found myself at the train 2 hours early (the station is in the airport conveniently). I reckon that’s an answer to prayer. I spent an hour of it sitting on a bench with my luggage playing the ukulele for all the poor souls who had to be awake that early. Also all the flight attendants were very impressed to see my ukulele ;)
From the airport on I started taking pictures. You can view them here.
I was on a train 3 hours through the countryside. Also the modern architecture in Amsterdam was fascinating but I didn’t get any pictures, sorry...
I was picked up at the airport along with a handful of other students and driven to my residence. I don’t know what to call it really. It’s basically an apartment with 6 bedrooms that each have keys. They are on a curved hallway. There is also a kitchen and two bathrooms (all three rooms we are responsible for cleaning). So there are some similarities to a dorm and some to a UC apartment (RIT). There is a French girl named Charlène, a Swiss girl named Fanziska, a German named Sebastion, and then two german girls I have yet to meet. Charlène and I are the only new students. Her english is better than my German so between German and English we communicate ok.
I settled in, skated around the city getting pictures, bought some croissants and applesauce to eat and then went to bed by around 9pm and got close to 12 hours of sleep. That makes up for the night before where I got 2 on the plane, 1 on the train, and 1 upon arrival.
This morning we went to get info packages and then I got to try the cafeteria. Allegedly it’s one of the best in Europe. I enjoyed some beef roast, green beans, and tiramisu. It was excellent and only ran me a little more than 3 USD. I met up with 5 french students and a German girl who was showing them around. They all speak English, especially the german. Most of the talking was german and occasionally went to french so my brain was spinning pretty good. It turns out some of the french students had had about 6 or 7 years of German to my 1 year... They are better than me =P Later as we toured the city we switched to English. I bought a German-English dictionary.
The story that stood out was of a cathedral with 2 towers. That is normal. The weird part was that one tower was much bigger than the other. Turns out they were buying a new bell and they wanted a big one. Then they realized that it didn’t fit in the tower, so they tore the tower down and build a bigger one... whatever...
I reckon that’s all for now. I need to study my German and whatnot. More to come later I’m sure.
Actually I take that back, I’ll just comment about a conversation with one of the french students, Pierre. We talked about the differences between churches in the states versus in Europe. I talked about how great a variety there are. There are very traditional churches similar to what they have in Europe, and then there are churches like mine where they have guitars (language barrier made it difficult to dive into the differences and what my church really means to me) and are more modern and interesting to young folks. He agreed that he thinks there would be more church goers in Europe if they had that option but it doesn’t sound like it’s really an option. The conversation got sidetracked but he brought it right back in a few minutes. Hopefully we have more conversation later. In Osnabrück there are 2 catholic churches and 2 protestant churches which is a lot. Usually a given city only has one or the other. I didn’t mention America’s bad habit of having a church or more on every block.
And that’s another thing, they don’t have city blocks. I reckon I’ll find my way around soon but it’s definitely more confusing with all these winding roads and bike paths all over the place.
Tschüss
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