Anna und die Holztruhe Teil 1

Hallo, Leute. Achso, hier ist meine erste Geschichte für meinen Spiegelschrift Kurs. Jede Woche werde ich einen Teil von dieser Geschichte oder eine andere Geschichte, die ich für meinen Kurs schreibe, posten. Ich habe gedacht, dass ich den ganzen Beitrag auf Deutsch schreiben würde. Dann kann ich mein schriftliches Deutsch üben. Ebenfalls, bitte entschuldigt meine schlechte Grammatik. :) Und es tut mir leid zu die Englischsprechers.  

Es war einmal eine große Holztruhe, die in den magischen Wäldern versteckt war. Nur ein Zauberer wusste, was in der Holztruhe lag, aber die Städter aus dem Nachbardorf hörten von der Truhe und wollten, was drin war. Der Zauberer wohnte am Rand der Stadt neben den Wäldern, und viele Leute besuchten sein Cottage, um mit ihm zu sprechen. 

„Bitte, erzählen Sie mir wo die Holztruhe liegt,“ bettelte der Dorfprinz. „Ich bin der Prinz. Ich habe das Recht zu wissen, was drin war.“ Aber der Zauberer weigerte sich, den Prinz etwas erzählen. Er wusste, was darin war, war eine große Verantwortung und sehr gefährlich, wenn man es missbrauchte. Kein normaler Mensch konnte diese Art von Verantwortung und Macht leisten. Innerhalb dieser Truhe war ein Geheimnis, das er zu schützen schwor.

Aber eines Tages kam eine schöne Frau. „Herr Zauberer, können Sie mir helfen?“ fragte sie. „Mein kleiner Bruder ist krank, und er wird ohne Hilfe sterben.“

„Wie heißen Sie, schöne Frau?“ fragte der Zauberer.

„Anna.“

Anna wusste das nicht, aber weil sie nur Hilfe für eine edele Ursache brauchte, war sie der Verantwortung und der Macht würdig. „Ich muss dir etwas erzählen“ sagte der Zauberer.

She smells like rotting meat.

Hey gang, so yesterday was the perfect fall day. I'm not quite sure if it could have been more beautiful. At 70F, sunny, fall-a-rific, and perfect, nature was calling, so Lisa, Louise, Lasse, Hannah, and I went for a 5 hour or so hike. We had intended upon walking to Bebenhausen, a tiny town north of Tübingen known for its castle, from Fichtenweg and then finding a trail head for a 5km hike, which probably would have made the entire trip somewhere around 10-ish km. However, upon reaching Bebenhausen, we decided to just travel along a random trail. But Bebenhausen is in the middle of Schönbuch Nature Park, so there were plenty of places for our Wanderung. We set out, and it was quite the lovely time. Plenty of beautiful leaves all over the ground, which were quite fun to jump in. Although we wished we had had a rake so that we could have made piles. All in all, our hike ended up being probably close 20km or so, but that's OK, because the sun was shining, it was warm, and the leaves were perfect.


To continue our perfect fall day, we decided upon returning to Tübingen that we were going to carve pumpkins, eat pumpkin things and candy, and watch scary movies. It was a wonderful Saturday night. We arrived back in Tübingen around 6:30, when I promptly went to Rewe, found a pumpkin, went home and showered, went to Kaufland to buy pumpkin stew ingredients, and quickly made my way over to Lisa's WG. When I got there, everyone was showering, and the candy was in a bucket (which was awesome). So I started cutting up vegetables for pumpkin stew.  Also they don't have canned pumpkin on this continent, so that made things slightly more difficult. But between Louise and myself, we cut up all of the pumpkin and mashed it into a stew kind of thing. Her housemates were particularly nice about letting me take over their kitchen, as well, which is always a good thing. All in all, for my first foray into the world of fall vegetable stew without a recipe, I'd say it turned out pretty well. 

Then came the pumpkin carving, which was lovely as well. We had four pumpkins for the six of us (Anna came over as well). So Lasse and Lisa worked together on one, while Anna and I carved the pumpkin I bought. It was also the first time Anna or Lasse had carved a pumpkin, and Louise said she had carved one only once before when she was really little. So it was great to bring a good part of America to Europe. Seeing them both dig into a pumpkin for the first time was also pretty funny. We ended up carving an owl (Hannah), a fox, as in the Ylvis fox (Anna and I), Jack Skellington (Louise), and Eric Cartman (Lisa and Lasse). And my God, did they all turn out so well! Lisa's German roommates were quite impressed, in addition to being amused by our American antics, and I would say it's definitely the highlight of my pumpkin-carving career. 

After the pumpkin extravaganza and eating LOTS of frozen pizza (yes, in addition to the stew, we ate no fewer than 5 frozen pizzas), we decided to watch a scary movie. Lisa, our scary movie connoisseur decided to have us watch The Conjuring, which is a shitty movie set in the 1970s about a house in Rhode Island haunted by multiple demonic spirits, which a nice family of 7 decided to buy. It was pretty bad, but also ridiculously terrifying. I maybe watched 1/3 of it, and the rest of the time my face was behind my sweatshirt or the duvet cover. The walk home was also mildly terrifying. 

So yup, that's about what I got for you. There are sure to be more Halloween-related shenanigans, as the Tufts Kinder are throwing a Halloween party at Marlena's on Thursday for a combination of Deutsch Kompakt Kinder, START Kurs Kinder, and random German folks that we know. It promises to be a regular old riot. So bis später, Kinder.

Mit dem Struggle Bus fahren

Hallo, Lesungen...und Kaffee, viel Kaffee. 

Otherwise known as Sarah's first week of classes

So it's time for me to regale you all with stories of my misadventures/me making a fool out of myself. Which, as you all know, it nothing out of the ordinary, but with the whole language barrier thing, me looking foolish is somewhat more common. 

To begin, it turns out I missed two classes last week by thinking that they started this week. I blame the internet. (They decided to change the start date of the classes after I printed out my schedule.) So when I waltzed into my Economics of Development class on Tuesday morning at 8AM (which is really damn early, by the way), I was already a week behind. Turns out they already learned about the Cobb-Douglas Model and the Solow Model, which both are big scary equation-oriented number things. The Solow model involves k being a variable for literally everything. It means capital per worker, but then you have k with a dot above it, k with a hat, k with a tilde, k with a dot and a tilde, then there's capital K and the party gets even better. Needless to say, my head exploded. I also had to ask my professor what ILIAS (which is the equivalent of Trunk) was. He then proceeded to look at me like I had a third eye. I explained that I was just a clueless Austauschstudentin, and he looked at me a little less strangely. He gave me a password to register for our class, which I later tried and, naturally, it didn't work. Then I wrote the TA, accidentally addressing him as the professor, to try and fix said problem and looked even more clueless. But at least I got the right password in the end. So that's my story about econ. 

I also had Spiegelschrift II on Tuesday, which went smoothly. It's an ADaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache) Kurs; therefore, they talk very slowly and clearly. Since this is my creative writing course, they assigned us 2 pages worth of writing on anything we want. I'll write up what I wrote and post it later. (Sorry, non-German speakers, it's going to be entirely in German.) 

Wednesday, my day began at 10AM with Geschichte der Internationalen Politik. This was the class that I had shown up for last week, even though it started this week. Unfortunately, however, similar to last week, there were still jackhammers going off in the building. So hearing the professor--more or less understanding him--was a struggle. Luckily, this was only in the beginning, and afterwards, he became relatively understandable. It's funny, because you kind of just have to accept that you won't understand every word he says and really just focus on getting a general meaning of what he's (as all of my professors for my Universität Kurse, with the exception of art and my ADaF Kurs, are male) talking about. It's kind of a weird thing to get used, but once you do that, life becomes far less stressful. 


Later, after spending sometime running around the Altstadt trying to get my life in Economics of Development together, I had Deutschland/die EU in der Internationalen Politik, which is a super awesome class for a few reasons. The first: it's a big Deutsch Kompakt party. There are 5 of us and one of our Tutorins in the class. Also one of my German friends that I met at the Unterwegs gathering (the one that I mentioned in the last post) is also in the class, and she's super great and funny. The second reason is that the professor is super excited about what he's doing, and, from what I hear, really cares about his students. The third is that it's poli sci, and I am a huge nerd for this stuff. A small sidenote: I felt like a rockstar when Professor Diez was throwing out all of these political scientists, and I knew a few of them (Robert Keohane and Alexander Wendt, for example) from Intro to IR. Thanks, Professor Eichenberg! :)

Even later on Wednesday, I had art class, which is a ceramics class. I thought that it was at 5, but it actually started at 6. Luckily the building is a five minute walk from my apartment (which is the first time that's happened and is possibly the greatest thing ever), so I went home and took a nap before going back. The professor for this super cool. I believe she's a local artist, and she kind of looks like Diane Keaton, specifically Diane Keaton in Because I Said So. She didn't really have anything for us to do yet, so she explained the semester (we're making drums!) and showed us around. I could have stuck around, but I really needed a nap prior to Deutsch Kompakt Stammtisch. (Which was super crazy, and a group of us ended up in a bar with on of the Deutsch Kompakt Lehrerins, who was rather drunk....God, do I love this country.)

Anyways, today, I woke up at the godforsaken hour of 7AM for my 8AM class in the Hegelbau. It's the only class (besides ADaF and art) that isn't a Vorlesung. To back up: there a few types of classes here. Vorlesungen are the easiest. It's usually just a big lecture, minimal to no required reading, 15 minute speaking final at the end. Then there's Seminars, Repetitoriums, and Übungen, which require more work, depending upon the class. This one, Zeitgeschichte, has a fair amount of reading. (I'm not going to say a lot, because I have taken a class with David Art.) The most challenging part, naturally, is that all of the reading is in German. Which means a lot of time looking up fun words. Some examples of fun new German words I learned this week are: 

• Schwächung: deterioration
• Niederlage: defeat
• Zahlungsbilanzüberschussen: balance of payment surpluses
• Abwertung: devaluation
• Welthegemonialmacht: world hegemonic power 

The funniest thing about writing out all of these words is that their definitions make such sense based upon the words that they combine that it seems silly I required a Wörterbuch to figure them out. Deutsch ist so eine wunderschöne Sprache. 

So, in summary, this week has been rather challenging, as both German  and getting back into school-mode is super hard. The German specifically because I actually have to hear and speak German. Not just the series of memorized lines that I have rolling around in my head ("Ich hätte gern ein Kaffee, bitte." or "Ich studiere Politikwissenschaft.") It's been great, thus far, though. Struggles, moments where I look like a fool, and all. 

Finally, here's another Swedish song that I have been listening to lately. You may ask, "Sarah, this is your study abroad blog. Your German study abroad blog. Why are you posting this Swedish music?" And to that, I say: my blog, I do what I want. 

With that said, bis später, Kinder. 

Hast du ein Bett verloren?

Hey, gang. So this week hasn't been terribly eventful. Even though it's technically the first week of classes, I haven't had any class, because all the professors are like, ehhhhh, I'll start  next week. So I have my first class on Tuesday...at 8AM. Woooooo, party on, Wayne. But yeah, this week. Thus far, it's been a lot of chilling with people, chilling in my room, learning Swedish with Babbel. But there have been other things, so I'll do a little week round-up. 

First off, I believe that I have decided on my classes. And they are: Geschichte der Internationalen Beziehungen 1945-1990, Zeitgeschichte (1945-1990), Spiegelschrift II (which is creative writing in German), Deutschland/EU in der Internationalen Beziehungen, Economics of Development (hurray for econ in English!), and Form und Gefäß (which is pottery-making, gonna make all the pretty bowls). No Swedish, unfortunately for reasons I shall explain later.

Early in the week, we had Kaffeestunde with Ute, which, as always, was lovely and full of coffee and chocolate. :) The next day, Marlena and I went with Ute to the high school, where we will be leading the English conversation groups. I'm quite excited for that to start. We are going to be leading a little hour-long once-a-week conversation group with kids that are anywhere from 15 to 18 years old. And the sign-up lists had so many names on it. I felt quite popular. :) 

Wednesday was a day of a little productivity. I thought that one of my classes started this week. So I woke up super early and showed up just to find only 2 other people in the lecture hall. Hooray for being clueless. Afterwards, I met up with Hannah, Kyle, and Lisa and we went to talk to the Swedish professor, thinking everything would be all hunky-dory. Well, apparently he thinks that it would be really hard for us. Lisa met with him, and he was rather upfront. Yeah, I guess upfront would be the nicest word to describe him. So yeah, no Swedish through the university. But I have been doing Swedish lessons online, which is always fun. And listening to a lot of Swedish music. Dear God. Here's one of the gems which I cannot get out of my head. It's so good. On Wednesday night, a bunch of Deutsch Kompakt Kinder and I went to a student bar under the Wilhelmstraße Mensa, called the Bierkeller to partake in their Bierdiplom challenge, which means drinking 3L of bier over the course of 6 hours. So that was a fun time. 

A little chocolate-dispensing factory and truck.

Thursday was also a chill and fun day. After hanging out at home for most of the day, I went with Hannah and Yasmine to the university activities fair thing in the Neue Aula. There were tons of student groups there, and we received a rain forest's worth of paper. There were two things that I was surprised about. While there were groups for just about everything, the amount of music/singing/orchestra-related groups and the amount of Christian groups are shocking. We ended up meeting kids from a group called Unterwegs, and they invited us to their first meeting, get to know you thing that evening at a bar just around the corner from Hannah's apartment. We ended up going to that, eating a lot of food, meeting some Germans, and listening to some live music that those guys were playing. It was really fun, and yeah, hooray for first real German, non-Deutsch Kompakt event! :D

All of the chocolate.

And now yesterday, the Tufts Kinder, Hannah, Johanna, Graham, and myself went with Ute to the Alltagskultur Museum and the Ritter Sport Factory in Waldenbuch. The Alltagskultur museum was fine, but it wasn't a chocolate factory. :) We went and bought so much chocolate it was the greatest and I regret nothing. Then we sat and drank chocolate-y coffee, which was also awesome. However, I am not sure if I can eat chocolate for a few days. We got back, and a little later went up to Fichtenweg for a wonderful Spanisches Abendessen before heading to Kuckuck for their Semesteranfangs Party. Which was super crazy and fun. 

Which brings me to today. Today I have been just hanging out at home and being a bum. It's been pretty great. So yup, that's about it on my end. Bis später, Kinder. 

The Spaniards are the greatest. :)

Ich kam in wie eine Abrissbirne.

Hey, gang. As I mentioned before, this week has been the last week of Sommer before the Semesteranfang, which is, in deed, tomorrow. Therefore (as I also previously mentioned) a group of friends (Harvey, Graham, Johanna, Kyle, Hannah) and I went on a 3 day hiking adventure to a tiny mountain hamlet called Spielmannsau. Although I am not sure if the word hamlet accurately describes how tiny this place is.

To begin: our journey started just before 9AM on Thursday when we met at the Hauptbahnhof. Our first train left at 9:15. Since we wanted to save money, we bought a Schönes Wochenende ticket, which means that a group of 5 can travel on any Bahn (except IC Bahns) for the day. This, however, meant that we had to travel on four different trains. Naturally, our first train to Wenzingen am Neckar got in late. Which meant that we had to wait in the rain for 25 minutes for a train to Plochingen, and then from Plochingen we caught a train to Ulm. We said hello to the Ulmer Münster for a second time and sat in a very nice cafe to get out of the cold and rain. Luckily from Ulm, we got a direct train to Oberstdorf, which meant sitting in a super cozy train for 2 hours, sleeping, and reading On the Road. All of those things were quite wonderful. 

We got to Oberstdorf just as the rain began turning to slush and then snow. Before I talk about the weather, however, I shall talk about Oberstdorf. Oberstdorf is a lovely town in the middle of Bavaria. The train station strongly resembles an REI, and all of the buildings in the town are cute-sy and matching and lovely. It also happens to be a tourist trap, but it seems, largely only for old Germans. It's also 813m above sea level, which is roughly 2667ft high. 

Es schneit!!

However, we were not staying in Oberstdorf. Upon arriving at the train station, we waited 20 minutes for a bus to take us out to Spielmannsau. Spielmannsau is 983m (3225ft) high and is lucky if it can be big enough to be considered a hamlet. It consists of a hostel, a restaurant/biergarten, what appear to be a house, and a barn. There was a chicken just roaming around and it's in the middle of the mountains. And it's perfect. Since Spielmannsau is more than 100m higher than Oberstdorf, this meant that the sleet/slush in Oberstdorf quickly turned into full on snow in Spielmannsau. And it was beautiful. We kept reminding each other that it was, in fact, October 10th. 


Anyways, we arrived at Spielmannsau around 4. Since it was so tiny, it was incredibly easy to find our hostel, the Mountain Hostel. We went in, and a guy, who was the quintessential stereotypical hiker, and who I presume to be his girlfriend quickly escorted us to a room with 9 beds on the top floor. It was super chill. They didn't demand that we pay immediately or anything. The hostel itself was also the nicest hostel I have ever stayed in. It was super lodge-y feeling. Not a substitute for the Loj, but seeing as I was Loj-sick this weekend with Peak Weekend going on, it was a lovely place to be. We dropped our bags, and immediately went outside and played in the snow. That was super fun, and luckily not terribly cold (at least for me). 

After playing in the snow, we started making dinner. Otherwise known as installment three of pasta night. We still had pasta and pesto from our dinner a week ago that we brought. Boiling the water went more smoothly this time. After dinner, we hung out until around 11, when we decided it was just about time to go to bed. Because Loj time exists even whilst not at the Loj. 

We woke up around 8 for our hike. But we probably didn't get going until 9 or so what with rallying the troops, making sandwiches and packing backpacks. Unfortunately, what with the foot+ of snow, the original hike that we had planned wasn't particularly feasible. Everyone had tennis shoes, instead of hiking boots (except me, seeing as Simon keeps on saying we're going to hike the Matterhorn when he comes to visit, wanted to be prepared). So instead of hiking to the Austrian border, we did a little ~4km loop and ended up back at the hostel around noon or so. The hike was lovely. It was the most wonderful winterwonderland. Unfortunately it was quite foggy, so we couldn't see the mountains in all of their glory. 

Mmmm, I love me some nature.

Upon getting back to the hostel, we napped, and around 2, Hannah and I went into town to pick up food for our fourth installment of pasta night. We had pasta and sauce, but we also were hoping to get some meat and vegetables. We found an Edeka very near to the Busbahnhof and bought a bunch of feast for both dinner and breakfast the next morning. We got back around 4 or so, and after people futzed around with their technology (the place had wifi, which was rather sad, as the lack of wifi one wonderful thing about the Loj), we started making our glorious feast of pasta with tomato sauce, bratwurst, zucchini, onions, and peppers. We also made or attempted to make apple cider. Which for what we had (two packets of mix and a bunch of apples and some sugar) turned out quite well. After dinner, we hung out in our room again and there were various different types of shenanigans (the creation of der Dangerschrank, zum Beispiel) and then went to bed relatively early again. 

In the morning, we feasted again, but this time on 16 eggs. Harvey set off the fire alarm trying to make toast, and we left the hostel around 11, in order to catch the 12:30 train back to Ulm. We wandered around Oberstdorf, seeing as we had some time to kill. But that was a slight challenge seeing as all the old people in Bayern seemed to have descended upon Oberstdorf for the street fair. (Seriously someone in Germany must have yelled "Straßenmarkt in Oberstdorf!" and all the old people came in packs.) T'was utter insanity. 

The very packed Drunk Train

We made our train easily, and even managed to get prime seats (two of the coveted four-person tables). So we were quite comfortable for the first two hours of our journey. Then there was Ulm. Our train to Plochingen had straight up been cancelled. Luckily, we thought, there was train to Stuttgart. This train, however, was both 20 minutes late, and full of drunk people (most of which were wearing lederhosen and dirndls) going to Cannstatt for the last day of the Wasen. Seeing as the train was late and packed, we stood with all of our stuff for an hour and a half. But luckily we were standing by some drunk Spaniards, who kept us entertained. About an hour in, they started singing. There was the Macarena (something which I don't think I have ever heard someone sing the lyrics to), I Knew You Were Trouble (better than the goat version in my opinion, the screaming was perfect), and Stand By Me, amongst other songs. It was quite comical. 

After transferring in Plochingen, we got on a slightly (but only slightly) less packed train to Tübingen, wherein a dirndl-ed girl vomited, and we spoke with a man, who wore glorious Bono glasses. It was particularly funny when a guy standing next to us, stated in surprise "you're speaking German?" Yup, bro, wir können Deutsch sprechen. 

We got back around 6, and I went home, did laundry, managed to cut my finger pretty badly on the vent/cheese grater on the very short ceiling of my laundry room/dungeon. That wasn't pleasant, and the laundry room kind of looked like a crime scene. So yeah, that wasn't great. 

But yeah, other than that the only other big bit of news is that: Ich habe mein Flugticket nach SCHWEDEN gebucht. Woooo!! Super stoked. Even if it is in the dead of winter (December). We are gonna have a blast and a half. 

And now, classes officially start tomorrow. But only one of my classes starts this week. All the rest start next week. When I am more sure of what I am taking, I'll lay it all out, but for now, it looks like I am gonna do a poli sci class, an econ class, a history class, Swedish, creative writing in German, and an art class. Should be an interesting semester. And I guess this means that the study part of studying abroad is officially starting. And that's about it for now. Bis später, Kinder.

Heute war so ein schöner Tag.

Hey-o, Kinder. So it's been a relatively busy week, even though Deutsch Kompakt has ended (*sad face*). I've had more time to chill, but most of that has been filled with running around trying to figure out my classes, deal with German university bureaucracy, sign up for sports, furnishing my room, general start of university stuff. However, as per usual, there has still been a fair amount of craziness. With that said, I have two adventures to share.

On Monday, after attempting to sign up for sports and only getting one out of the three that I wanted (it was climbing, though, so I'm stoked; also signing up for anything at this university is like dealing with piranhas or something), Hannah, Lisa, Johanna, Julius, and I met at the train station to trek to IKEA. Now IKEA is in Sindelfingen, which is a 20 minute car ride from Tübingen. We, however, didn't have a car, so we took public transit. This meant one Regional Bahn and two S-Bahns. All in all, it's an hour long journey if you catch the trains right. We managed to not have to wait for any trains on the way there, which was lovely, and we got there around 4. 

Now, I had never been to IKEA before. So to me, it was the biggest wonderland/sensory overload I had seen in a long time. When we first got there, we walked straight into the Swedish food section and found the fisk, naturally. :P Then we walked through and just proceeded to grab things like children in a candy store. I ended up with two pillows, pillow cases, a rug, a lamp, candles, and two blankets, and I am quite happy with my purchases. Once we finished shopping, we stopped in the IKEA Restaurant for some Swedish meatballs (and my god, were they delicious). So yeah, that was awesome. You go, Sweden.

The way back was less smooth-sailing. Since it was almost 8, the trains were coming less frequently. We waited 20 minutes for the first one, 30 for the second, and we managed to just miss the Herrenberg to Tübingen train, so that was another 30 minutes, which we spent in a dive bar by the train station. Once we got back, Julius and I met up with the Spaniards and hung out, drinking wine, but called it an early night, because we had to be at the train station at 10:25 for Cannstatter Volksfest round 2. :)

We all arrived at the train station on time, even the Spaniards, with the exception of one. There were 15 of us in all. We got to the fest at 11:30ish, which meant that it looked like a ghost town. I am also fairly confident that we were the only people there under 30 at that point. So many old people. But it was still super fun. We started at the Stuttgarter Hofbräu tent, where we had a few Maßes, and I got spätzle again (and it was awesome). The band playing was hilarious and covered some David Hasselhoff songs. Things got a little crazy once they started playing Sweet Caroline, and our table was one of two in the entire tent that started dancing on the table, but hey, whatever man. After a little while, we decided to go on rides and change tents. We ended up in a rather chill tent, where we had more Maßes and the boys ate more food. At this point, the groups had splintered a little bit, so I was with Theron, Martin, Graham, Johanna, Harry, and Kyle. We ended up meeting up again, so that the people who were going to Berlin could leave early, and the rest of us ended up staying there until the late night. And it was awesome. Being in the tents at night is a huge crazy party, with lots of beer drinking and dancing. 

So yeah, that's about it for my past week. However, this weekend (well, tomorrow) I am going hiking! Harvey, Graham, Hannah, Johanna, Kyle, and I are traveling to Oberstdorf in Bayern and staying in a small hostel in the middle of the mountains. It's gonna be great. I'm especially happy about it because this weekend is Peak Weekend for TMC. If I can't be hiking in the White Mountains, then at least I'll be doing some hiking. I'm also really happy because I just splurged and bought a cozy pair of fleece-lined hiking pants from Jack Wolfskin. Yup, so that's about it. Bis später, Kinder.

I rub a Mexican monkey.

To start: I have gotten 17 hours of sleep in the last four days. But it's been super awesome, and the Swedes left this afternoon, so obviously none of us were allowed to sleep. With that said, I move on to my next bit. I'm going to say it. Oktoberfest is wicked overrated. Don't get me wrong it was super fun and crazy and wonderful. However, it was also wicked expensive. And I have just been to an infinitely superior Bierfest. :) Yesterday, a group of us went to the Stuttgart Bierfest, called Cannstatter Volksfest, and it was awesome. 

Deutschland is a land of happiness.

My day began with a really early walk back to Prinz Karl. The previous night, almost all of Deutsch Kompakt went up to Fichtenweg for a dinner, prepared by the Asian kids in our class. My God was it awesome. They made everything you could have asked for it, and it tasted so, so good. Afterwards, a bunch of us went to Harvey's room, had apple crisp and ice cream, and watched Mean Girls, as it was October 3rd. Then we all went to Kuckuck, wherein we danced and hung out and I managed to break one of Dani's pens trying to open a bottle of wine... :P Hannah, David, Lisa, and I went back into town around 3 or so, and stopped at Kalender for some Döner, after scaring a ton of pigeons. All of this nonsense left me getting home at roughly 4:30AM, and David, Hannah, Lisa, and I had made plans to meet at Prinz Karl at 8:30 for breakfast and an early morning grocery run for pasta and wine for pasta night later that evening. I planned on making Nana's spaghetti recipe, and finding all the ingredients in the grocery store was particularly challenging. For one, Velveeta cheese doesn't exist in Europe (for good reason). I had forgotten the conversion of lb to kg, so I guess at what a half pound of ground beef was, and I couldn't reason find beef bouillion. So moral of the story, cooking in Europe is a little challenging.

Around 10:30, 7 of us (Hannah, David, Lisa, Lasse, Louise, Luiza, and myself) met at the Hauptbahnhof to catch a train to Stuttgart. We caught one in very short order and proceeded to sit in the same car as a bunch of drunk, lederhosened and dirndled 14 year-olds, which was rather obnoxious. I sat next to David, and he threatened to throw wasabi peanuts at them. He didn't, and we sat and listened to Swedish music and things. It was wonderful. We got to Cannstatt, on the southside of Stuttgart around 11:30 and walked the grounds briefly before deciding to go into a Fürstenberg tent. And guess what. It was completely and totally empty. At Oktoberfest, if we got there at that time on a Friday, there wouldn't be a goddamned seat in the house. But this tent was empty. It was awesome. The 7 of us grabbed a booth and ordered a Volksfest Maß (which is what the mugs are called) and some schwäbisches Essen (more spätzle!). We sat there, drank our litres, and took a ton of pictures. Then Graham, Harvey, Harry, Kyle, and Emelie showed up, and we drank even more beer and took more pictures. (Harvey jacked my camera and went a little crazy with it.) For many of them, you kids can check out Facebook. In any case, we listened to music played by a live band, some German, some not. There was quite the rendition of Country Roads, and it was really fun when they played So ein schöner Tag. Yeah, so we drank and danced and it was lovely. 

Eventually we left the tent to change some scenery. We took up residence in another tent. There, there was more live music, and for us, this meant more bench dancing, which was jolly good fun. There we ordered another maß, finished it, and then went outside to the rides. A bunch of us rode a pendulum type ride and then a big spinning swing ride. By that time, it was just about time for us to catch the train back so that Hannah and I could start on pasta night. We caught a train around 5:30, and it was a super low-key ride back. 

Hannah and I attempted to start making pasta at 6:30, but we didn't really get going until 7 or so. I attempted to recreate Nana's spaghetti sauce recipe. Given the limited time, the fact that I had 3 litres of beer and some wine, and that I didn't have all of the ingredients, I think it turned out pretty well. While we did have some troubles boiling water, we managed to eventually feed everyone and had more wine than anyone needed. We stayed in Prinz Karl until the wee hours of the morning, when David and I left so that Hannah could get some sleep. Since it was his last night, we went with Lisa, the Spaniards, and Julius to die Kirchentreppen. We sat there chilling and drinking wine until something around 4 in the morning. 

:(

Which meant that I got 4 hours of sleep, because I went back to Hannah's at 9AM to meet up with her, David and Lisa for his last morning in Deutschland. We didn't end up meeting the Swedes until around 11, when we went to a pizza joint on the Neckar. We hung out until 1:15 when there bus came. And now there is a Sweden-shaped hole in my heart. I am so sad that they are gone. But I am so very excited to visit them in Uppsala. 

So yeah, that's about it on my end for things that are going on. Here are some of the (more than 500 pictures) from yesterday.