Days Six and Seven - Freier Tag!

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, but I didn’t do too much and went to bed late so I figured I would just put two days together today. We had a really tough class yesterday. We have two professors, and today was our first day with the second one. He speaks a lot faster than the first one, and the subject matter was more difficult to understand quickly. We listened to songs in German and watched a couple short tourist films; one on Heidelberg and one on Leipzig. After class, we went to eat and then ended up at a bar. So I had my first German beer, and while it was good enough, the experience just wasn't that special. Ah well. I went home after that and just relaxed, helped to make dinner and then read.

Today, we didn’t have school because of the Ascension and also Vater Tag. I had a great day! Johannes took me and Andrew to a town called Speyer not too far from Heidelberg (it’s about a 45 minutes ride on the S-bahn. The S-Bahn is different than the Straßenbahn, it’s for distances between cities more than just around one city).

In Speyer, we first visited a Jewish museum. A Jewish community lived in Speyer for about 400 years during the middle ages. They were wiped out in the 14^th century or so though, and never quite made a recovery. They did leave many interesting artifacts and buildings behind, though.  The museum itself is very small, only three or so rooms to walk through, but then you go outside to take a look at the old synagogue and the ritual bath building. This was very interesting to me, and exciting because I could actually read about 75% of the explanations on the walls. :D

What's left of the old synagogue

The ritual bath building, very cool. Inside is even cooler though.

After this museum, we went to see the gigantic old Catholic church. On our way there, we passed these two guys, and I completely thought they were statues so I snapped a picture. Then,as I walked by one of them moved and made a clicking sound! Turns out they were mimes? actors? anyway the one in blue beckoned me over, kissed my hand and then had me pose for a picture. :P 

The "statues"

This kind of made my day, though I felt pretty silly for thinking they were statues. They stood really still, though, okay... Anywho, the church itself is huge, but what I found most interesting was the crypt and tomb. There are a few German kings buried there with members of their immediate family along with five bishops.

    

               

The church in Speyer

We then grabbed some lunch at a really cute Italian restaurant named “Pasta Pasta” and had some quite delicious food. Finally, we went to visit a Technology Museum. This too was extremely cool! The museum is privately owned but has an amazing collection of technological artifacts, from all sorts of old cars, motor bikes, fire trucks, tractors and trains, to several planes, a U Boat and finally, a Soviet Union space shuttle. I thought the coolest part was the space shuttle.

The Soviet space shuttle. Whoever owns this museum has ALOT of money.

The inside of the space shuttle

More of the museum, but not all. There are two more buildings and a ton of stuff outside too

After all that, we headed back home to Heidelberg. We met up with the rest of my host family and two other families from the neighborhood to head up the mountain to have dinner at a restaurant built next to the ruin of a lookout tower they have here in Schriesheim. What a beautiful restaurant, and what delicious food! We talked in German and English and played some card games and then headed home. I am truly grateful that my host family is so generous and welcoming, they're making this experience even better than it already would be. :)

Mine and Andrew's view during dinner tonight :D

The outside section of this restaurant. You can kind of see the ruin behind the trees in the back

 Tomorrow, we are going to have a scavenger hunt around Heidelberg, now that we have gotten to know our way around. We are doing that instead of class, so I am not complaining. :P Good night!

Day Five - Schloss Heidelberg

Hallo, liebe leser. I don't have much to report today. It seems we are settling into a somewhat regular routine. We had class again, and it was actually easier today than yesterday. I was really, really tired today and had to battle to stay awake for the first half of class. I woke up a little more during our break though, and the second half was enjoyable.

After class, we had to run across town to make the meeting for the castle visit on time. We had just enough time to grab some lunch. Andrew and I both had tuna fish sandwiches like we'd never seen before. Think corn and eggs with tuna, on a crunchy bun with lettuce. It was good, for all that it was a bit weird.

Then we met up with another professor and he took us through the two huge churches, explained the history of those and a few other historical buildings in Heidelberg along with a short version of Heidelberg's history, before taking us up to the castle. All of this in German! The castle was really cool, but unfortunately I was feeling pretty tired and crabby while we were up there. It was also raining. Me and Andrew plan to go back again on a nicer day, on our own time. Ah, I did get to see the largest wine cask in the world; that thing is like two stories wide. It apparently can hold almost 200,000 liters.

I forgot to take the camera with today, so unfortunately no pictures... :( After visiting the castle, we just went home. I had supper and did my homework, now I'm going to read for a bit to relax and head to bed early. Night night. :)

Day Four - First Day of Classes

Today was the first day of classes. I was a bit nervous about class because I wasn't sure what to expect, but it turned out pretty well. The class was challenging, and I definitely have to work to keep up, but since I can keep up, I think it's just at the perfect level. The first professor is great, friendly, a little funny, very clear, and also very informative (as one would hope). I think I learned as much this one day in class as I might have in about a week of class at SDSU. That might be because I was in class for three hours, where at SDSU I'm in class for one hour a day, three times a week. This is indeed intensive language training.

After class, we went off to buy books and to attend a "Kultur Pur" class, or cultural sampler. This class is just for our own enjoyment and consists of going to movies, concerts, etc.There is homework, but no grade and no credit. The first event we have scheduled is a movie titled "Almanya: Wilkommen in Deutschland;" Almanya is Germany in Turkish. (I used three different words for Germany in that sentence! :P) The film is about a Turkish man who comes to work in Germany as a "Gastarbeiter" or guest worker or temporary laborer, and about how he brought his family here and then etc. There are a lot of Turkish people in Germany, and the situation is similar to Mexicans in America (but not the same). It should be an interesting film. Also, it's a comedy, and intelligent comedy. My kind of comedy.

Once we were free for the day, some of our classmates, Andrew, and I all grabbed some beers (and wine) from the Penny Markt (a store with cheap stuff) and found a spot to sit on the grass under a bridge in a park by the Neckar River. (That's a lot of prepositions...) It was nice to relax and hang out (and speak English).

A view of the park by the river.

Chillen.

Andrew and I both went home for dinner (I had a salad a bit similar to cole slaw, but with kohl rabi and apple, and also new potatoes with something inbetween cottage cheese and sour cream (it was smooth, no chunks) with chives and fresh parsley in it which was absolutely delicious with the potatoes. That might be my favorite food here so far) and then met up later to ride our bikes around Heidelberg. We rode from Burgstrasse to the Altstadt to sit by the river and do some homework. Then Andrew rode with me allllll the way back to Schriesheim. He's a wonderful boyfriend. :) He took the Strassenbahn home.

Some graffiti along the river wall spelling out Heidelberg.      

All in all, a pretty good day. I've been riding an emotional rollercoaster all day, going from sad to frustrated to happy to annoyed to I-don't-even-care-anymore. I think I just need more sleep, and maybe also more water. So, gute Nacht!

Day Three

Last night, I had trouble sleeping. My mind was just racing with thoughts, and then translating what of thoughts it could into German. I couldn't stop thinking about how I might say this or that, I think all of the German speaking is making my mind work pretty hard, lol. So, I slept in a little today (my host family was wonderful about it, they're great about everything!) and went to lunch with Andrew after I got up.

The stop I get off to go to Andrew's: Hanz-Thoma-Platz.

This is Andrew's host-family's house. Andrew lives alll the way up in the attic. Beautiful, no?

We went to a place called Kebapzentrum (kebob-center :P) I had a pizza, and Andrew had a sandwich thing and it was all pretty yummy. We had originally planned on grabbing some things from an Aldi and finding a place near the river for a picnic, but ALL German stores are closed on Sunday. Aldi is somewhat similar to a Walmart. It has food, a lot of the food is in bulk, and it has a limited selection of other items such as clothing, etc. The best part: it's really cheap! :)

We met up with our classmates again soon after that and the director of the summer program took us all out for some Italian ice cream. I probably don't even need to tell you how yummy that was. Then, we walked the Philosophenweg (Philosopher's Way). It was a steep, hot and sweaty climb but once I cooled off, I decided it was worth the view. Behold some photos of Heidelberg, taken from the near-top of a hill across the river.

This was the first good, clear view we got. That's the Neckar River. 

Here you can see Schloss Heidelberg, I hear it's the home of the world's largest wine cask. ;)

In this one, you can see the old bridge, the castle, and the gigantic catholic church in the Altstadt.

Me and Andrew, enjoying the view from Philosophenweg. :)

Today was another day I went home with sore feet, but with the added bonus of a bad sunburn. (Anyone surprised?) It doesn't matter much, though, I had a good time overall! :) And when I got home, my host-mother made a delicious meal. I tried some pickled cherry red peppers stuffed with some kind of cheese (yumm) and she also made cucumber salad (Gurckensalat). There was also two other dishes, one vegetarian and one with beans, I don't know what they were called but they too were great. I'm going to eat very well here in Germany. :P I'm so glad I got such a wonderful host-family. We sat outside and ate, and afterwards my host-father took out his guitar and played a couple songs, which was fun! He even sang some in English. :) To top off an already lovely evening, our luggage arrived!! :D :D

Tomorrow is the first day of classes, so I'm going to see if I can't get a better night's sleep than yesterday. Gute nacht, liebe leser!