Vor Weihnachten Round-Up

Hey gang. So it's been a long time and for that, I apologize. Things have been rather crazy with classes ending before the Weihnachtsferien, friends visiting, and going places. So I'll do a bit of a round-up of the things that I have been doing since Sweden. 

After Sweden, I only had a few days in Tübingen before I left again for France. Which meant that I lived off canned chicken noodle soup and frozen paella, which isn't as bad as it sounds. I left for France on Thursday the 12th and returned late on Sunday the 15th. The way there was smooth, despite taking 5 different trains and Deutsche Bahn's penchant for being late. I got into Metz, the capital of Lorraine. My friend, Owen, met me at the train station and we went back to the Georgia Tech part, which is on the outskirts of the city. The weekend was spent just hanging out with Owen and his friends, which was very nice. They are all engineers and remind of my engineers at Tufts, whom I miss terribly. So we'll just suffice it to leave it there.

After I returned, I had a week in Tübingen before I left for London for Christmas. The first few days of this was filled with panic. I have started to realize how many things that I need to do before exams...and I'm scared. So the crunch time is starting. Woooo. I actually bought a coffeemaker (more specifically, a French press). Let exam time begin. Also I bought all seven of the Harry Potter books in German. Which is wicked awesome. Also on that Monday, I baked chocolate chip cookies, which was a bit of an adventure. Germany doesn't sell chocolate chips from what I can gather. At least not in the baking section of your local grocery store. So I bought 2 large Milka bars and cut them apart. Then there's the whole, what's the German equivalent of baking soda question and things of that nature. So it was all jolly good fun. The cookies ended up turning out alright at least. Not as sweet as normal. But the little German high schoolers in my English conversation group ended up really liking them. Small victories.


Then on Thursday, Dorie came to visit. She has been studying in India for the past four months and made a stop over in Berlin, because her brother's girlfriend lives there. And since she was in Germany and she's the best, she decided to make the long trek to come and visit me. It was absolutely great. She was experiencing some reverse culture shock (wait there aren't cows in the street?), and it was fun to show her German things. We ate döner on Thursday, she met Max, and I took her to Deutsch Kompakt Stammtisch and Anna's Russian themed birthday extravaganza, where we went home early because both of us were tired. Then on Friday, we went to the Stuttgarter Weihnachtsmarkt, which was awesome. It's the biggest one in Germany, and there's literally Christmas everywhere. We ate tons of German food (Thüriger Bratwurst, Kartoffelpoofer, Glühwein, gebrannte Mandeln, chocolate-covered fruits) and bought things. (Ich habe Hausschuhe gekauft!) Afterwards, we went back to Tübingen and met up with the other Tufts kids for a dinner at the Neckarmüller for schwäbisches Essen. Because Yasmine had two Tufts friends and her sister in town, there were 10 of us, which basically means a Tufts invasion. The food was delicious...Dorie and I split Schwäbisches Sauerbraten (effectively slabs of beef and knödeln, which are pretty much matzah balls), Maultaschen (the Schwäbisch ravioli-type thing), and spätzle. Needless to say, we feasted and it was great. 

Then on Saturday, I had to leave early (really, really early) for London. The flight was a little late because they had to de-ice the plane. But it was fine. And then I sat with Elizabeth in the bus station for an hour, waiting for her bus to go to western England to stay with her family. After she left, I hopped on the Tube to go to Hampstead, and I navigated it all by myself. I'm pretty proud. I met up with Paul in the Starbucks in Hampstead. Which I guess brings me to today. The past few days have been a lot of chilling, TV watching, and a little bit of wandering around London--and naturally getting used to a bit of reverse culture shock. Nothing drastic; I'm just not used to such anarchy whilst walking down a sidewalk. But in any case, it's been nice. :) I'll do some sort of London round-up once I get back to Tübingen on Saturday. 

In the mean time, ich wünsche euch allen eine schöne Weihnachten!