Little Differences

So, a lot of the differences that I've noticed between Germany and America are little things. The things that I miss are little things; the things that I will miss when I leave here are little things. So, along that train of thought, I figured I'd share with you guys some household differences between the two lands, between my house here and my house there.

Things My German House Has That My USA House Doesn't:

• Two-way opening windows. If you've been in Europe, you know what I'm talking about; the windows that open from the side like a door but also from the top like a ... like a ...thing that opens from the top.
• Doors to every room in the house, even the living room and kitchen.
• Really high ceilings.
• Hardwood floors all over.
• 25 stairs leading up to it.
  
• Roommates who don't speak my language.
• Inside house keys. The doors all lock, but the locking mechanism isn't completely attached to the door; you actually have to stick a key in and lock them.
  

Things My USA House Has That My German House Doesn't:

• A dryer. I've got a washer here but not a dryer.
• A microwave. I've gotten very creative about heating things up here. That or I just eat them cold.
• A private yard, front or back.
• Pets.
• Central heat and air. My German equivalent of that is a radiator and some windows.
• Front doorknobs that turn. My front door here has a fixed knob and the door locks automatically. So, when you're leaving you just lock the door and when you're coming in you hold the key turned in the lock and push.

I'll post some pics of my room up later so's you can see what it's like.

Gauss Hausfrau

So, my roommate and her fiance have started up this cultural center called the Gauss Haus. It's the sort of place that does free English/Spanish/Klingon lessons, historical city center tours, and book clubs for people who only read books by 18th century French authors. Being a native English speaker, I was one of the first people they asked to help out there. I thought, I've got a lot of time on my hands. Surely I can teach English to some people one hour a week or something ....

Or something is right! I'm up to my neck in culture here, people! I teach two hours of English conversation a week to a group of about eleven people; I go to the Cafe Litteraire on Fridays and listen to poetry in languages I don't always understand; I even do English translation during the occasional Sunday tour of Braunschweig as it relates to the life of Carl Friedrich Gauss. This last one is something I'm particularly proud of, as I've never done verbal translation on the fly like that before. It's not just telling a waiter what my friend wants in German. It's explaining whole detail-rich lectures as word-for-word as possible without a dictionary and without prior knowledge of what's going to be said. Do you know what that makes me? That makes me awesome. Well, that and much more confident in my German than I was when I got here. But it also makes me awesome.

German Country Music?!

A while back I got the opportunity to go see a country band play live in Hannover. Not just any country band, Lovely Readers, but a German-based country band playing country-fied covers of popular pop songs. I could just squeal with delight! I really could.

Most Germans I know are either ignorant of or actively hate country music; my roommate, for example, will without fail shut her door or complain if I play so much as one Garth Brooks song. But this group -- called the Twang -- likes the country sound and does it well. It's really fun to listen to them take a song like "Seven Nation Army" and twist it just a little bit to make it a totally different song. If you can find their music online, check it out.

Anyway, a colleague of mine knew some of the band members really well and offered to get me in free to one of their shows. Not one to pass up a free show, I went along. Turns out these guys play all over Germany and even in the States (I think they were actually at the last SXSW in Austin). The songs were all well-done, not just exact copies of the original song versions but almost new songs in and of themselves. I'll spare you the fangirl rant and just say -- it was good. I got autographs and it was good. I can't wait for them to come back to America so I can see them there too.

Family Visit, Part Two

Ugh. So many things to post!

I haven't been very good about keeping up my blog, but I have been pretty good about jotting down random thoughts and current goings-on on napkins and in my PDA. So I'll take up a couple of posts here and transcribe those things so that you, Lovely Reader, will be able to fill in the gaps in my life.

First, the rest of my trip with the family. I'll lay out some of the highlights of the trip here:

• Took the fam to Braunschweig, my hometown. I wanted to show them the Schloss, the beautiful squares and old churches; they wanted to shop. So we shopped.
  
• We went through Cologne. As I've mentioned before, as soon as you leave the main train station you're hit with the sight of this massive, impressive cathedral. So, many pictures were taken and a tour was made through the cathedrals innards. We ate kebabs and rejoiced.
• On to Paris: my friend Thomas, who lives in Paris, met us at the station and helped us find our hotel - which, as it turned out, was right in the middle of the red light district. The Moulin Rouge was right down the street. It was amazing, albeit a little nerve-wrecking (making sure eight people, most of whom don't speak French, get around Paris at night is an adventure to say the least).
  
• Sight-seeing in Paris: yes, we was the Eiffel Tower. Yes, we saw the Louvre. Whatever you ask for, we probably have pictures of. I can only sum up the experience of trekking around Paris in a terrible haiku:

cheap trinkets, good food
so much culture to digest!
must we walk so far?

• Paris again: on the Metro to the Louvre, my stepsister's wallet got stolen. It contained 900 euros, all her credit cards, all of her identification (including passport), and a memory card full of pictures. Wow. We spent the rest of the day in Paris at the police station (where I got to use all five of the French words I know trying to explain what had happened) and at the American embassy. Joy.
  
• Paris, once more: the day of The Wallet Incident was the day we were supposed to leave Paris on a night train for Munich. We gather our bags, all eight of us, and head to the train station at eight o'clock at night. I go to the information desk to ask which platform our train was on. The man looked at my ticket and said, with (I imagine) a little Schadenfreude, "That train doesn't leave until tomorrow night." ... Let me reiterate. My entire family was at the train station, bags in hand, waiting for a train that wasn't to come until tomorrow. When I came back to the group, tickets in hand, it was obvious on my face that something was wrong. "What is it, Raychel?" I dropped the bomb. My father cursed, something I rarely ever hear him do. My sisters' jaws dropped. My stepmom looked like she was about to die. We all just sat there, on the benches in that Paris train station, tired and sick of France and without a hotel. Low point of the trip, for sure. [Many frantic phone calls to booking agencies later, we found a last-minute hotel and all was almost well. However, the bad luck we had in Paris had already soured us on the city and we were ready to go to Munich.]
  
• Munich was beautiful, what I saw of it. We spent most of the day taking trains, buses, and the Ten Toe Express to Neuschwannstein, a magnificent fairytale castle in southern Germany. The castle was magnificent, that I will admit, but no one told me it was a magnificent castle at the top of a mountain that you have to go up on foot. By "on foot", I mean "a forty minute walk up a steep hill at a high altitude in the snow." I really felt like an out-of-shape American stereotype. But, hey, the castle was magnificent!
• We spent our last day of the trip in Frankfurt. It was a Sunday and we couldn't find much to do, so we stayed in the hotel. I took a bath and watched soccer in German. Not a bad end to such a fast-paced vacation.

Family Visit, Part One

So, most of my family came to visit me in Germany in the middle of March. I say most because I have four parents and eight siblings (step- and blood-relations). There's no way all of them could leave their jobs, schools, pets, babies, and medical conditions behind for a week to come and see me. Not to mention the cost of shlepping 12 people around would be enormous. So, it was my dad, stepmom, two sisters, two stepsisters, and a stepbrother who made the nearly 24-hour series of plane connections over to get here.

They flew in to Frankfurt, which is several hours away from Braunschweig, and I met them there at the airport. We'd booked all our train tickets in advance, so it was going to be a tight squeeze between the plane's touch-down time and the booked train's departure time. I arrived at the airport more than an hour early just to be sure I could find them and that we could all make our train. And I found them pretty easily, actually. Their flight came in almost an hour early, so I was glad I'd gotten there early too. But waiting for my family, who I hadn't seen in over six months, to come through a set of sliding glass doors that was just starting to release a trickle of passengers was like slowing time down to a grinding halt. Every second dragged its heels. The clock's hands refused to budge. I remember thinking, "How long does it take for people to get off a plane?! Move, Grandma! Move, young couple with a stroller! I want to see my family coming through those doors!" Every head looked like my dad's head; every hair color was the exact shade of my stepmom's.

And then FINALLY I saw my dad coming through the doors, followed by the rest of the Brady Bunch. I jumped up and squealed "Familyyyy! Hello, lovely family!" or something to that effect. There was hugging and moist eyes all around, and much blocking of traffic.

Okay, that's nice. But now it's time to catch a train!

Thus began the whirlwind adventure of bringing eight people through five cities in two countries (not to mention a whole mess of countryside and a drive-by view of Belgium) in about seven days. We had a wallet stolen, slept on precarious bunk beds in a moving train, ordered food in four languages, and very nearly killed each other. Ah, family!

Wowza -- Long Time! Photos, Anyone?

Okay, so it's been a looong time since I wrote last. I'm going to try to update with all the crazy stuff that's gone on, so there'll be quite a few posts in a short number of days here.

First up - photos!

For those of you who didn't know, most of my family came to visit me in Germany a few weeks back. We went on a week-long whirlwind tour of Germany and France: Frankfurt, Braunschweig, Cologne, Paris, and Munich. There's a ton to say about all of this, but I'm saving the grand story for another couple of posts. In the meantime, enjoy pictures!

Here's Volume I, Volume II, and Volume III of my pics from the trip.