Mary Poppins

Well, the time has finally arrived. I am now packing. After living in Paderborn for over a year, I realized I've accumulated a lot of "stuff" that I didn't know I was accumulating. I really didn't think this would be a problem, since I live in a shoe-box of a room. But low and behold, the suitcases are almost full and there are still heaps of things I can't seem to part with. While some things, like small appliances, can be sold back to the international office for half price, most of it is trying to squeeze into the suitcases. And then there are the things I just don't know what to do with. Dishes, laundry soap, hangars...do I just throw them in the trash? I don't really know anyone who needs them. Ok, not anyone who isnt' also moving to another country in the next few weeks.
Enter Mary Poppins, a spoonful of sugar, and a chimney sweep named Bert.
Or in my case, a brother named Arik with an almost empty suitcase. Since it seems I can't pack like Mary Poppins, with a hat rack and a lamp in my handbag, Arik has offered to take some things that I won't be needing for a while. He'll be taking things like my winter coat and sweaters with him back to Florida. Yes, Florida. No, nobody there needs them, but I'll be visiting him in Sarasota for Christmas, at which time I can have all my sweaters back again. Perhaps this seems less than logical, but he has never been to Germany, and this was his excuse to come visit while I'm here. Besides, the likelihood that Julie Andrews will supercalafragilisticexpialidocious her way to Paderborn to help me pack is rather slim.

"Kebap?"

Filix finishing his last Kebap in Germany

There are some things about my time here in Germany that I know I will never forget. More importantly, there are people I will never forget. Take Filix for example. Of the 20 some Spanish people here, he is the one I have been closest to. Even in when I was in the worst mood, he always could make me laugh. Do you remember the seagulls from the movie Finding Nemo? The ones that always said, “Mine? Mine?” Well Filix remembers them. But instead of saying “Mine?” he would always say “Kebap?” Kebap is actually known here as Dönner Kebap. It’s the traditional Turkish sandwich that we all eat here in Germany. It’s cheap, it’s huge, and the Kebap places are open all night, kind of like Denny’s back in the U.S. But the Kebap places are usually very small and our group can usually fill and overflow a Dönner shop. Well, Filix loves Kebap. Everywhere we went, “Kebap?” Even in Copenhagen, when we were lost and looking for our hostel, he saw a sign that said Steakhouse, but it was not the kind of steakhouse that I was used to, and when Filix saw the menu photos outside the place, he said, “Steakhouse gib’s Kebap?” which means “the Steakhouse has Kebap?” I just laughed. It was typical Filix.

On Monday, Filix left Paderborn and flew back to Madrid. That’s it, he’s gone. I promised that at some point, I would come visit him, but I think it will be a long time before I get that chance. On Saturday, we had a party for him, Pepe and Alberto, who will be leaving in the next few weeks. We all had a great time and signed some posters for them to take home. On Sunday, a few of us met at Carlos’ place to see Filix one more time before he left. It was odd. Most of this year, we have to keep our group quiet enough not to crack the plaster ceiling. They are very loud. On Sunday, with 20 people stuffed in a tiny kitchen, looking at pictures on a computer, I noticed that if there hadn’t been music playing, the room would have been silent. It was as if on this one day, there was nothing left to say. Except for Filix, who looked at me and said only one word, “Kebap?”

Filix is just the first of many people here that I will have to say good-bye to. It seems strange to think that I will never see most of them again. Even if I stayed here, the people I’ve grown to love will still leave. As a group, we had one small place, in one short moment, to laugh and sing and dance together as the world went along without us for an entire year. And I think we all have come to realize that there will never be another chance for us to be all together again. Never. It’s as if the edges are crumbling away and on August second, I will be standing here, the last piece, having seen each one of them come and go. Ready to go home, but not ready leave them behind. So I will sit in silence. I will marvel at their absence, as if it isn’t real yet. I will eat my Kebap and I will think of Filix.

Endlich Sommer in Deutschland!

So after nothing but months and months of rain and snow (I'm talking like 10 months) summer has finally arrived. Nevermind the fact that I was still wearing a wool sweater on the first of June. Now it's really warm and sunny. So I finally have a chance to see the beautiful weather that I'm used to, and low and behold, I get sun poisoning. Fantastic. I was walking on saturday and after only and hour and a half in the sun, I was breaking out in bright red blotches and itching like I had the chicken pox. I guess I just have to be a little more careful in the sun now. Or at least until my package from mom arrives so I can use the sunblock she's sending! Anyway, hooray for sunshine (finally)!

Road Trip!

Waiting to get in the cars for the trip.

So a bunch of us took a little road trip to Copenhagen. Road trips can be entertaining anyway, but with the people I was with were really fun. We had a total of 25 people going on our trip to Copenhagen and I was in a van with Ivan, Felix, Maria, Mehek, Mikko, Marika and Arto. Five minutes down the road, Felix jumps out of the van at a stop light and runs to another car to give them a copy of the directions, then runs back. Normally this would not have been a terribly funny event, but we were already wound up for the trip, and Felix was running as fast as he could. Everyone in their cars was staring at him like he was nuts. We were all laughing and yelling out the window “Hurry Felix!” A few hours later we made it to Lübeck. This was good considering that’s where our hostel was, but at some point we were driving around the city and Ivan turns around and says with certainty, “we are lost.” We did eventually find our hostel. The next day we were lost trying to find our way out of Hamburg. This however, was not the fault of Spanish people, it was the Finns. Mikko was driving and Arto was attempting to read the map. He kept saying… “I don’t see that road on the map.” This is a sure sign of inaccurate map reading. We were lost for about and hour. We did however get a lovely tour of Hamburg. We got lost again in Copenhagen and stopped at a pizza place in the ghetto to ask for directions. The people were very nice and told us right where to go. That was very kind of them. On the way home, we did have a bit of a dilemma…no one printed the directions for the return trip, so Marika was reading them backwards to find out which highways we needed to take. This turned out to be more difficult than it sounded, but we didn’t get lost that time. Marika is a good navigator. All in all, our time in the van was memorable.

Lübeck

Paco, Ivan, Maria, Maria, Mehek and I with a devil statue at a church in Lübeck.

We spent Thursday night in Lübeck. It was cool. It was a nice little town where we could walk around and see some really cool buildings. There are tons of churches in Lübeck but I only took pictures of a few. We spent most of the early evening walking the city and taking pictures. Later at night we went to a little pub and had some drinks before heading off to a dance club. We all had a really good time there because entrance was only 5 euros per person, but women got to drink up to 20 euros for free. This meant that we kept getting beer for the guys. It also meant that I was pretty tipsy before I left. In the morning we all packed up, piled back into cars and headed off to spend the day in Hamburg before going to Copenhagen.

Hamburg

Most of the spaniards and a specialty shop in Hamburg

In Hamburg, we parked the cars and just walked around the city taking pictures for about 3 or 4 hours. It was nice to be by the water. I didn’t realize how much I miss being near water until I was around it again. For future reference, I must live somewhere warm near the water when I’m done with school. Spain sounds nice…;) After sightseeing (and getting lost for an hour), we got back in the cars and headed to Copenhagen.

Copenhagen

Here is most of our group with the Mermaid Statue of Copenhagen.

So once we found the hostel, the first night was spent drinking in the parking lot. They wouldn’t let us bring alcohol into the hostel, so we drank outside. The next day we all exchanged our money (they use Cronas, not Euros) and did some sight seeing. We spent most of the day walking around and by mid afternoon it was pouring rain and we were tired. Some of us went back to the hostel and took a nap and others went to the nearby hippie village of Christiania. The rest of us went there later. By evening we were tired again and went back to the hostel and got some food at a nearby pizza place. I was one of the few who didn’t go out because I was just too worn out. But in the morning Ivan and Maria and Eduardo were at the hospital because some time in the middle of the night Maria’s foot (she was drunk) and a bicycle (not one she was riding) had an incident and they wanted to make sure her foot was not broken. In short, she got run over by a bike. Luckily it was just sprained, but we cut our trip short because she couldn’t walk anymore. So we skipped any adventure on Sunday to drive home. It’s ok, the whole group was exhausted by then. We all had a great time. Where we went and what we did was not important, just that we were all together and having fun. There’s not much more time for that, so it was nice to get one last big trip in with these guys.

Feuerwehr in der Küche

On Wednesday night at about 10:30, while I was working on my translation homework, the fire alarm went off. This is not an uncommon occurrence. About once a month, someone burns their dinner and sets off the alarm. The key to not causing an uproar, is to actually call the fire department and tell them that there is no fire, rather some burned schnitzel. No one knows who burned, their dinner, but it was someone on my floor (but not my kitchen). My kitchen mate Daniella and I waited around for a while, knowing there was no fire, and talked to the firemen as they came up. After assessing that the fire would have to have been burning for a half hour and there was no sign of smoke, they determined that the best thing to do was open the window. Once again I point out that this was not my doing. I know how to cook. Anyway, it was fun to watch the firemen look very confused and shining flashlights at a smokeless beeping alarm. Daniella and I just laughed, then we went downstairs until they turned off the alarm. As we came down with the firemen, Danielle yelled to the people she know “Nicht uns!” (not us!). They laughed a little and life went back to normal as the alarm went off, but it was a fun little adventure.

The Discovery of...Bologna?!

The discovery of…Bologna?

There are a few things that most people take for granted until living in a foreign country.  One of them is going to the bank.  I have learned over the past few months that the word “einzahlen” means to deposit money.  This is very useful if you don’t know how to say things like “I want to put this in my account”.  I still don’t know what the word for bank account is in German, but when I say I want to deposit money and give them my card, they get the idea.  To withdraw, I find it easiest to use the atm (geldautomat-literally money machine).  
Another challenge for the language impaired is grocery shopping.  Now most days at home I forget what it was I went to the grocery store to get.  That is no problem here (I make lists)…here, the problem is that I know what I want and even where it should be, but I have no idea what it’s called.  Milk was my first challenge.  There is in one tiny grocery store, a huge wall of dairy products that I couldn’t identify.  “Milch” is an easy enough word to translate, but what does “fettarme” mean?  I know now that it means low fat.  Ok, that only took me a week to get used to.  So a wall of milk, some low fat, some not, no explaination of what animal it comes from, and oh yes, why is it not refrigerated? Uh…ok, we’ll just go with that one ‘cause the milk is good for the next three months.
Ok, now that we’ve got milk, we move on to meats.  This should be fairly easy.  You can identify most meat.  Well, that is until you are really broke and can only afford lunch meat for sandwiches for the next week.  So on one of my really broke days I was shopping for lunch meat.  I chose the cheapest ones.  One was salami looking and the other was some pinky looking stuff.  “Ham sausage” according to the package.  Turns out, ham sausage is actually bologna.  (Huh…so that’s what’s in bologna.)  Really I should have figured on it being bologna, since it was the cheapest meat in the place.  A little side note, I haven’t particularly cared for bologna (except the pickled kind) since I was about twelve, but I’ve learned to like it again. Meat also comes in a jar.  Having read “The Jungle” recently, I keep my distance from jar meats.  It really does look like cat food in a mustard jar.  Thanks, sometimes my cats won’t even eat that crap.  
An easy buy?  Pizza.  You can always look at the box to know what’s on it.  This was a staple food here for a long time, but I’ve given it up for lent.  Since deciding to give up pizza for lent, I’ve received at least 5 pizza take-out menus in my mail box every week.  They’re torturing me.  Really they are.  One more week…one more week…

Five Days in Barcelona

Mehek and I at Gaudi's Park Guell in Barcelona

Mehek, Dan, Jürgen, Janine and I all went to Barcelona recently. We had a wonderful time enjoying the warm weather and sunshine. We got some nice souvenirs, saw the Mediterranean Sea, and even ate a little seafood.

Day 1, Tuesday:

We took the train from Paderborn to the Dortmund airport, and then we flew to Barcelona. We took a bus from the airport to one of the main town squares and wandered around with our luggage looking for the office to pick up our apartment keys. That was a fun little adventure. After getting the keys, we hiked to our apartment. Yeah, it was really in the ghetto. It was on a dead end street next to a park. With the number of needles and people lying down on the sidewalk in the park at night, we figured that heroin was the recreation of choice in that neighborhood. A great place for tourists. It was, however, only two blocks of the major tourist strip. So that was pretty nice. We abandoned the apartment after a while to get some dinner. There was an Indian restaurant around the corner from our place, so we went there. Since none of us had much Spanish speaking under our belt, Mehek tried something else. She spoke Urdu (Hindi something). She ordered our dinner for us and later when we went shopping most of the souvenir shops were owned by people who also spoke Urdu. Mostly we spoke to them in English, but when ever they would talk amongst themselves, Mehek could understand them. Then she would heckle with them over prices saying that she was Pakistani and that their prices were just too expensive. We got pretty good deals on everything we bought.

Day 2, Wednesday:

We started our “photo tour” with La Cathedral then went to the Arc of Triumph, Sagrada Familia (a new cathedral by Gaudi still not quite finished) and a few other houses, and points of interest. This took most of our day, so afterwards we went back to out apartment for a bit. Janine and I stayed there and Jürgen, Dan and Mehek went out on the strip to see a bit of nightlife. Dan and Mehek ordered sangria at a little café on the strip and when it came it was in a fish bowl sized glass. One for each of them. The also paid 10 euros for them. They were surprised about both the size and the price, so they brought half of it home and Janine tried to drink some, but it wasn’t great sangria, just the cheap stuff they sell to the tourists.

Day 3, Thursday:

We toured the winding road through the Olympic quarter and saw arenas and the old torch and all kinds of Olympic related stuff. It was pretty interesting. Dan and Jürgen decided they wanted to go up one of the mountains (by train) to see an old fortress and we girls decided to go shopping on the pier. After we met up with the guys again we all had dinner at a Tapas bar. We’d done a lot of walking that day, so we decided to stay in for the night. Mehek didn’t feel well anyway.

Day 4, Friday:

This was the day we went to Park Guell. It’s a really cool park all designed by Gaudi. I’ve got some great pictures of it. We spent most of the morning hiking up part of a mountain to get there and then spend a couple of hours enjoying the park. After that we got lunch and climbed the rest of the way (or as far as we could go on foot) to a train which was supposed to take us to the top to see a great view of the city, but the train was closed. At this point, Mehek felt quit sick and she and I went back to the apartment while Dan Jürgen and Janine went to the beach. Mehek laid down then we took a pair of pants (which she’d bought on the pier) back because she grabbed the wrong size. After returning her pants, we asked some guy at a smoothie bar to tell us where to get a good Spanish meal. He pointed us in the right direction and we had a great seafood/paella dinner. We paid quite a bit for it, but most of the places we’d eaten at all week didn’t really give us enough food for a the walking we’d done, so it was nice to be really full with something that actually had substance.

Day 5, Saturday:

Mehek was feeling worse, so all we did was pack up and go to the airport. Nothing much exciting about that, but it was part of the journey.

One week later:

Mehek is still a little sick, but I took her to a doctor yesterday and they gave her some medication and told her to come back on Monday if she’s not well by then. She feels better, but she’s still not healthy. I guess sometimes that’s the price you pay for having a vacation.