Spinning IN Deutschland

a snippit of Bremen

Wrapping Up (Part II)

I'm calling this part II because I already have a part I. I'll be wrapping up till I get home I suppose. Let's go back in time now to Monday morning on the 14th of February, the day I left Osnabrück, bound for England. I packed up my things and abandonned my room. The caretaker came and inspected and the only problem he found was some dust... oh well.

I left my bags with my roommate and set out with my backpack to run some errands and set off. At 11:30am I caught the 2 hour train to Bremen (free with student ID). My flight was not until 6:30 so I had time to kill. Instead of taking the tram to the airport, I decided to follow it by foot and see what there was to see. Here is one of the random monuments I found. Someone said it references an old law that is still in the books that allows farmers to bring their pigs through the streets of Bremen. Who knows.

So after walking for over an hour, with some video documenting to be posted soon, I arrived at the airport. After walking through a city full of beautiful buildings it seemed as if RyanAir was kind of a disgrace to the city with it's cheapness. There were terminals 1,2,3 and E. E was for RyanAir and you had to walk through a passageway from the main airport to get there. Most of the building is just aluminum like a warehouse or something. RyanAir only had 3 flights that evening so they didn't even send the employees into the terminal for security check etc. until 3:30pm. When I first arrived there were just a few old folks with bags waiting...
While I waited I explored and decided to document this German phenomenon. I've noticed it most commonly in Restaurants. WC (Restroom) is almost always down. Usually down two flights of steps and down a long passageway, very away from everything. You know, like not close to anything at all. Maybe that would be gross? Everyone knows those rooms are gross but we all deal with it differently. In America we just call it a restroom and pretend it's a nice place. In Germany they call it "the toilets" and just keep it far away. Both work I suppose.
All the money I owned, I had on my person. Heading to England I had to change some over to pounds. Here is some of my money. I have all the commonly used bills including £, €, and $. Notice that the European money goes down to 5 (~$7-$8). Once smaller than that you have to use coins... I accumulated £10 of change in one day in London... very obnoxious.
Traveling went well. I landed in Stansted airport and then took a 2 hour trainride to Haywards Heath where a friend, John Dixon, picked me up and brought be to my room. More on that later.

to be continued.

Parisian Pigeons

So I'm not doing any real updates yet but I wanted show off this video of a pigeon climbing the steps up to Le Sacré Cœur in Paris. All is going well. More updates in a week I reckon!

Wrapping Up (Part I)

Well here we can see all my bags. The 3 stacked are what I brought initialy for the 5 month stay. The black book bag is what I‘m taking to travel Europe for 2 weeks.

Note Bene: Everything in the black back will fit somewhere within the other 3 when I fly across the ocean.

Anyways, point being that I‘m getting better at packing light. The thing that made the biggest difference in that direction is that I'm only bringing the shoes on my feet and not any others. I may live to regret that once the rain starts falling...

This other picture here is with 3 of my flatmates. From left to right that is Valerie, Sebastian, and Franziska. The first 2 are German and the latter is Swiss. I have a little memory book some friends gave me for Christmas. I told everyone that I would forget about them upon going home if they didn‘t write in the book. My flatmates panicked and made a whole collage to make sure I didn‘t forget them. They cut out pictures from the newspaper to represent each of them. You can see the man in the middle with the burret is supposed to represent Charlène. She was absent (flying to Sweden) so she didn‘t get to pick. She‘s french so the picture is a good fit though =)

I move out of my apartment in 1 hour!

I‘m not sure if I‘ll blog while I‘m traveling but I‘ll be sure to fill you all in eventually.

Vorhersage (forecast)

So not talking about weather but more the up coming plans as my time here winds to a close. Today is Wednesday so I've finished 1.5 of my finals. Tomorrow is the oral part of my German final, and Friday is German culture. That's the one I'm worried about. I have a billion documents in German to read and 98% of the class speaks better German than I do. 10% fail every year... Without that credit, I'm not a full time student and I owe everyone lots of money, but no pressure. Anyways,

So I closed my bank account, de-registered from the University, closed my insurance, and told the state I'm going home. I had set all those things up in English a few months ago, but I ended them in German. That felt good. Saturday is cleaning and packing and scrubbing my room. Saturday night is my birthday party. I plan to introduce everyone to apple crisp and coke floats. I think the floats will freak people out, but nobody can say no to a good apple crisp so everyone should be fine =)

Sunday is church, and then lunch with my pastor. We'll probably cry together or something. When I get home I have to make sure everything is in top shape for handing the keys back over to the caretaker. 10:30 monday morning he'll be there to lock me out of my house. Then I need to run and get back my deposit on the department and run to the train station.

Train goes an hour to Bremen. From Bremen I fly with Ryanair to London. Hopefully they don't scam me out of all my money (click). From the airport I take a train into London and then another one south to Haywards Heath where I'll be staying at the YWAM base "Holmsted Manor" (click). It's beautiful, take a look. I'll be staying there with some friends that used to be involved with YWAM Pittsburgh. Hopefully, I make a trip up to London, but also get to catch up with folks and meet new people. It'll be weird being in a country where everyone speaks English, and should be a lot of fun.

Thursday I take the Eurostar to Paris. That's the train that goes under the English Channel. I'll stay with my cousin who is studying fashion design there in Paris. That's where I'll spend my actual birthday. Hopefully I remember some French because from all I've heard (even from my French friends here) they would rather not speak English with me =P

The next Monday (the 21st) I'll take a train through the Alps to Milan, Italy. Here is where I insert the forecast in Milan for the next week (I promise I was planning on talking about weather when I started writing this) . This isn't the week that I'll be there but I can expect something similar! I'll be staying with my friend Francesca who I met here. I'll probably stop in and visit one of her English classes at the University and enjoy all of the strong Italian accents. My Italian is non-existent except for a few words I learned last year, but hopefully with my "Learn Italian in 7 Days" book, I should learn something. Fortunately there is lot's of English, and Francesca's whole family speaks German because her Mom is German.

In the end I come back to Osnabrück for the weekend and say goodbye to all my church friends. My Swiss flatmate said she's taking at trip home and may have some good Swiss cheeses to do a cheese fondue when I get back. Kind of scares me, and kind of sounds fun.

I fly home Monday the 28th of February, and back at RIT the end of the week. I have way to much to do but it should all be delightful so I'll try not to complain.

See you all soon!

[- R N W -]

Die Sonne Scheint

Today the sun was shining.

I took pictures for the occasion.

Also, Sunday, if the weather is nice, I plan to photograph my walk to church.

I just went back in time

What you just saw is the "Trabant." It's not a BMW but it's still German. It was The car of the DDR (Communist Germany). The Berlin wall fell the year I was born, so at least 99% of these cars were made before I was born and are thus at least 22 years old now. Well today one drove past me. It looked identical to the one pictured below. As it came to a stop I notice the older driver smoking a pipe. As it past me I noticed a bumbersticker. You know those ones all over the states that are white ovals with black letters that say "OBX" or "TI" or some other place abbreviation? Well surprise, surprise, this car had one of those stickers with "DDR" on the back! Everything about those 6 seconds were marvelous (including the breezy 55º weather!).

I'll add in a fun fact for you and mention that even though these cars were produced in the DDR, if you wanted to buy one as a resident then you would get on a 12 year waiting list!!! You would have to buy a car for your 4 year old if they wanted to have a car when they were 16! I suppose though that for a car that awesome it's worth the wait.

The Day Erik Came to Town

A Bishop decides to donate an expensive property to a parish far far away to help them invest in young people and be able to have event there. A student travels from America and get's to use the property and it's great and he's thankful. The Bishop dies and is buried in the cathedral where he had been his whole life. Another American student decides to go study in the town of the bishop for a semester. The first student visits the second student, goes to the cathedral and finds that there in that small city Osnabrück are the remains of the generous donor who so affected the first students life. What are the chances that American 2 would end up in Osnabrück and American 1 would get to visit and simultaneously visit the grave of a man he was quite grateful for.

True Story.

American 1: Erik P.

American 2: R N W