Secret Move, Secret Move

Hey all! I'm writing from my apartment today. No, we don't have REAL internet yet (that doesn't come until the 14th) but I do have dial-up. My roommate and I make the connecting noises for fun whenever the thing boots up: "Wheeeeeeee-whaaaaaaaa-whooooooo-beeDOObeeDOOba-brqztztztrsschqrtr!!!" I hope the dial-up knows we're making fun of it. Stoopid dial-up.

Anyway, back to:

Hannover

I just wanted to mention here that, after hitting Hannover's version of Oktoberfest, my friend and I went looking for this club called Cafe Glocksee on the word of her friend that it was a cool place with good music. Well, we show up in front of this big building at 11:00 p.m., but there's nobody there and the place is dead quiet. We're like, "kay, what's going on here?"... We walk around the dark, scary, graffiti'ed up building and finally find an entrance. We pay our entry fees (ladies have to PAY to get into clubs here?!), check our coats, and go inside.

The place is totally empty. I mean, there's music playing but the red-lit, techno-filled, goth-type club is practically empty. There's nobody on the dance floor. There's nobody at the bar. There's nobody in the big leather couches at the back. Heading for the couches, my friend and I half-joke that we're in some sort of horror movie where the monsters come out at midnight and eat unsuspecting party-going tourists.

This was not the case. It turns out that, in Hannover at least, the party doesn't really start until 1 a.m. or later. Chalk it up to Things The Germans Do Differently. My friend and I had nursed a drink apiece, tried to talk over the loud music, and considered dancing for a while -- but just as we're like, "nothing's doing here" and get up to leave - the club gets busy. We ended up going home with the idea that, next time, we were just going to sleep until midnight and then get up and go to the club. We felt like old ladies, going home tired just as the party was just getting started.

Anyway, the next day was all about awesome waffles for breakfast and sight-seeing. We saw the new Rathaus and this cool bombed-out church. The Rathaus had a tower almost 300 feet tall and you could go up in it and take pictures of the town. Which we did. It also had a glass-bottomed elevator on the way up, so you could take pictures of how high up you were going. Which we did. The bombed-out church had been, well, bombed out in World War II and the people of Hannover left it that way as kind of a tribute to the lives lost and the general nastiness of violence. More talk of this, however, requires a digression to ...

Churches

So, I've been giving people their own special churches. Whenever I find a church around here that reminds me of someone, I light a candle there for them and think of that specific church as that person's church. So, for example, now whenever I drive by Aegidien Church in Braunschweig I think of my dad, because that's his church.

I have two new churches to add for people today: one for Rachael, my stepmom, and one for Marcy, my musketeer. Marcy, you're got the Aegidienkirche in Hannover. It's a beautiful old medieval church that was bombed out in WWII and now stands as a memorial of sorts. It's a really cool mixture of man and nature; there's red and green ivy growing all over one wall and you can look up where the roof used to be and see big, blue sky. It's really beautiful, and it reminded me of you. Pics to follow.

Rach, you've got the Katharinenkirche in Braunschweig. It's not only one of the oldest churches in Braunschweig, but it's also where the first performance of Goethe's Faust was shown (in the old opera house that used to stand in front of the church). Goethe is, like, the most famous writer in German history. Period. And Faust is his big work, the one that the most little German kids have to learn in school. I spent a whole semester just studying Faust. It's a big deal. This cool little old German curator at the church told me all of this after I had already decided that it was your church, so the whole historical importance is a nice bonus. Pics will also follow.

Right, back to ...

Hannover

Actually, I was done there. So, on to ...

Berlin

I went to Berlin! I got to go on a field trip yesterday with some Polish and German exchange students at my school. We saw all the sights - the Bundestag, the Brandenburger Tor, Unter den Linden (a famous street), KaDeWe (famous dept. store), the Siegesaule, the Staatsoper, museums, museums, museums, oh GOD! I spent my last semester at OU studying 20th century Berlin, so to actually go there and see everything was like a tourist/Germa-nerd overload. I took so many pictures that I wore out two rounds of batteries. I want so badly to write back to my German professors. As a matter of fact, if any of them are reading this right now:

Prof. Schutjer: I saw the place where Faust is supposed to have been first performed! I had an intelligent conversation in a cafe about the book and what the symbols and everything in it mean!!!

Prof. Baer: I saw Berlin! I saw graffiti in Berlin! I did not see the East Side Gallery, but I did lead another foreigner on a tour of some of the most important parts of the city! Oh, and I bonded with a German over Das kunstseidene Mädchen!!!

Prof. Sullivan: I saw the Dom in Köln! I explained to someone the difference between Romanesque and Gothic architecture and used German words to do so! "Look! Kreuzrippengewölbe!!"

Aaahh! I'm using what I've learned -- I'm living the dream -- I'm in Germany!!!

BOOMSPLAT *head explodes*