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.