Today I ventured into the city in search of a Mother's Day card (unsuccessful), however upon arrival at Arnulfsplatz I was greeted not by the 6, 11, or ever the 4 Danziger Freiheit, but a team of 6 horses pulling a wagon not only full of men clad in Lederhosen (woohoo!), but loaded to the top with wooden barrels of fresh Bischofshof beer!
So, my internet went out again today, I just hope it is restored at the rumored hour of 5am rather than on Friday. Silly me for being so greedy and exceeding my whopping (read: ridiculously small) 500 mb limit. Meeting with the Hausmeister to get a phone has been a headache, too-- mostly a headache because I dont' wake up so well early in the morning to make his office hours between 8 and 10 am. What's also fun is when the power goes out because someone is doing some intense cooking-- sometimes running two or more burners on the stove, with or without the whopping power-demands of our FM radio will flip the breakers. At the very least, flipping them back is usually a fun social event for all the PJ-clad guys on my hall.
That's also been a recent revelation. Everyone I share that kitchen with is a guy. And it is easily the cleanest kitchen in the whole dorm (excluding, possibly, the private kitchens in the suites I have not personally seen). The newcomer, Stefan, seems to possibly be the messiest, but this is really only because he cooks and has entirely too many utensils to do so. However, he isn't even that messy. He cleans everything up. And it's really cute to see him bake chocolate cakes for his girlfriend. However it just makes me hungry to smell all that chocolate for days.
Still, I like living there. The most annoying part has to be the internet, though. Which was really annoying for two months when I was repeatedly informed that there WAS NO bandwidth limit. LIES!!!
At any rate, it's been an enjoyable four hours here in a coffee shop two Platze away. I think they'll be kicking me out in 30 minutes, in which case I"ll kill an hour or two baking an apple pie, then go to Wunderbar around the corner when it opens at 10 to use their WLAN. Oh, fun times in Germany.
Seeing as how I have more free time on my hands than I'd ever imagine during a semester at Vanderbilt, one sun-bathing, time-killing activity has itched me every time I catch a glimpse of the Donau: Fishing.
Fishing is a really relaxing, mindless activity. I would love to do it. However apparantly you have to go through a series of costly governmental hoops before you can get a license-- which would take longer than the 3 months I'm still here in Germany! Learning this from Regina broke my heart. I did some research, and she and the other Germans present were quite right (no matter how puzzled they were as to why the heck anyone would WANT to go fishing):
So, being in Bavaria, I get to take advantage of a plethora of holidays that the States doesn't offer. Tuesday was a day off from school for May Day. I'm not sure what it was supposed to celebrate, but we watched a live band on Haidplatz, played some cards and went out for Schnitzel. A solid day.
I was just in the yard taking out my trash, and heard someone practicing the organ in the church next to my dormitory, which shares a wall of our enclosed yard. It was really beautiful!
I went to another improv show at the Alte Mälzerei the other day, and while not as good at the Impro Superstar contest, it was still pretty fun. However, it was weird, since there were only two improv players present. The whole show. TongueNCheek never does a show with less than four and they managed to hold an audience for about 2 hours with 2 players! The dynamic got a little redundant, but it was quality stuff. I haven't seen many new games, but the games that I already know end up playing so much differently because of the liguistic difference-- but a new game I did see is quite interesting, and quite wet. Basically they just played a scene but used water as well-- the expression of spitting, dribbling, dripping and spouting was pretty hilarious-- naturally it was the last game of the night, but I think it would blow over well with a Vandy audience (janitors, not so much).
This has by far been my best Spring Break of all time. It has been really fun and relaxing-- an aspect of going somewhere WITHOUT plans I adore. The way I see it, if you go with a list of things to do you're only going to be disappointed when you don't see them all.
Switzerland was absolutely amazing. I met up with an old family friend at the Zurich train station and he took me to Rudolfstetten, when they have a beautiful house on the countryside. Willi is practically a professional chef in the kitchen and cooked something absoultely amazing EVERY single day! I've never eaten so well! It's really going to make our college routing of spaghetti and frozen pizza a lot less apetizing when I get back to the 'burg.
I went and checked out the Rheinfalls and we also walked around the Altstadt of Schaffhausen. The weather was gorgeous the entire time I was in Switzerland, except when we walked around the Alstadte of Zurich. It was still pretty, but I think I liked Schaffhausen a lot better. The weather may make me biased though!
After a few days we went to their ski lodge in St. Moritz. I've always been one to boast about the Smoky Mountains, but this was absolutely breathtaking. The weather was unfathomably clear and sunny, and the weather incredibly warm. I got a suntan in the Alps!
We took a day trip to a small city in northern Italy to go shopping and ate at a really nice restaurant. The best part of this though came after we went back to Rudolfstetten and ate the gnocci Willi bought. It was SO FRESH and SO GOOD. He served it with fresh artichoke sauce. Absolutely heavenly!
One day was spent on top of one of the mountains at the bar/restaurant for the skiiers. Willi and Evelyn decided I would probably break my leg if I tried to ski without instruction, and seeing as how that would probably inhibit my plans in Barcelona I agreed it wouldn't be advisable. The sun was even warmer on top of the mountain and the view even more breathtaking. The waiters were adorable and really nice, especially since Willi is a regular!
The next day was spent with a stroll around the lake. Easter was really fun-- it was nice to have a second family to celebrate with! Willi made an apple cake and invited some neighbors over to eat it and play backgammon. Evelyn even got us all Osterhasen! We also did a tradition I had never seen before-- you bang hardboiled eggs against each other and see who has the "best" egg. I won most of the rounds with my purple one!!
After a glorious 8 days in Switzerland I hopped on a ClickAir flight to Barcelona. I have to say, for a bargain airline, the service and the plane itself was really quite impressive. It was very clean and actually quite spacious. I would definitely recommend them!
Barcelona's weather is a lot less admirable than Switzerland's-- it has been cloudy or rainy and cloudy every day I've been here.
I went with Whintey and one of her classmates to a maritime museum, which was really quite interesting. They had an entire ship inside and you could check out the cannons and stuff. Unfortuately it was all in Spanish so I can't say I learned a whole lot, but I enjoyed looking around. It was a nice break from the repetitive line of Nazi museums we always visit in Germany.
After the museum the weather cleared up significantly so I was able to take some half-decent pictures of the Columbus tower and the surrounding bay. 
Whitney and I went back there a few days later to eat some pallea (sp?), the local Catalan specialty. It was absolutely delicious and worth every cent! It has mussels and shrimps and other shrimpy things on a bed of rice. It was excellent!
The highlight of my time so far has been doing the Fat Tire Bike Tour in Barcelona! I fell in love with this company in Berlin and realized they had one here! It was just as amazing as the one in Berlin-- if you travel to Berlin, Barcelona or Paris I emphatically recommend them. They take you to a ton of sights on the must-see list all in a few hours, so you don't waste as much time being lost or worry about what to see. I love things like this because I feel I've seen a good poriton of the sights, and it frees up the rest of my trip to enjoy shopping or fooling around or just doing nothing.
Whitney and I also did a pub crawl, which I must say was not as grand as the one in Berlin, but still quite fun. We did meet more interesting people on this one-- of course it was half Aussies, as every pub crawl in Europe will ever be-- but we met a crew of Canadians that were really nice and a lot of fun.
The next and likely final highlight of Spring Break will be the Bullfight I'm going to this Sunday! I am extremely excited about this, even though apparantly bullfighting is really unpopular in Barcelona. Technically they banned it 3 years ago but they never quit having bullfights. On the bike tour our guide described the whole process to us and said the season started on Sunday-- I was so jealous I was leaving on Saturday I changed my flight to Monday to be able to make it! Apparantly it is quite gory-- I really wonder what my reaction is going to be when I really see a bull killed in a live arena. I'm still really looking forward to it-- especially since they might finally be outlawed one day in my lifetime!
That's a short run-down of most of spring break so far-- once I get my hands on a camera cable I will upload some pictures. Right now I'm terrified of losing my camera or breaking it, thus losing two weeks worth of irreplacible spring break photos!
Well, last weekend we took a day trip to Nurenberg, which you may know for the Nazi Trials. Nurenberg knows this, too. They tried a lot to be the city of some famous artist or somebody, but they finally quit trying and just built a really awesome museum.
We went to the Reichsparteitag, which is a large area where Nazi rallies were held, and was scheduled to be an enormous building, but contstruction was interrupted by WWII.
What really interested me was the Zeppelinfeld, which is where some of Triump des Willens was filmed (I think.) At any rate, it was cool to see that the land is being used for other stuff, like soccer fields and that kids are allowed to skateboard all over it.
Not much else intersting has happened since then, except that Wunderbar has wireless internet and that Lotte, the bartender, gave me a few free drinks the other day while I was working on my referat. I also learned a German drinking game, which goes something like:
Ein Schaf auf der Wiese!
Mah!
Ein Schaf unter Wasser!
Blub!
Zwei Schafe auf der Wiese!
Mah! Mah!
And so forth. It goes around the circle until someone forgets whether the sheep is underwater or on the field, or how many mahs or blubs they're supposed to say. It's much harder than it seems, belive me.
Today we went to the local castle in Regensburg, Schloss Thurn und Taxis. We were all kind of surprised to hear there was a castle here, since it's a pretty small city and castles are usually kind of noticeable. However, we just hadn't happened to stumble upon it, and it was really impressive.
It incorporated a lot of artistic styles over all the eras it was being built over, and has been really well kept up. It was absolutley gorgeous inside, in particular, where I wasn't allowed to take pictures, of course.
At any rate, I'm finally getting my spring break plans together, and I'm really excited to meet Chocolate Willy again-- and this time, in Switzerland! I can hardly wait to go skiing and see the Alps and stuff!!! I'm also really excited to see Whitney in Barcelona-- Spring break is going to be a BLAST!!! I'm kind of sad I had to drop Jill and Vienna from the program, but it isn't far by train and I'll definitely make a weekend or two out that way!
PS- I just cooked myself the most amazing steak dinner, with sauteed mushrooms and spinach, with a 2001 Chianti. I'm proud.
7 March
Not much terribly interesting has happened since Rosenmontag, mostly because I hurt my knee two weeks ago and haven't done as much romping around as I usually do.
