Frische Luft!: Winter Break in Ireland, Part I

End of the rainbow...start of the trip.

 I went to Ireland for winter break! It was beautiful and the air was so fresh! (Seriously fresh. I commented on it at least once a day.) I went with my friend/fellow ETA Hannah, who lives in Chemnitz. We met at Schonefeld Airport in Berlin, where our flight was delayed about an hour.
After our delayed start, we finally got to Dublin! The airport there is super nice, and I was delighted to discover that all the signs in Ireland are in both English and the Irish language! We also found the end of a rainbow while walking towards passport control, which seems like a good sign.

Dublin Bus!!

The passport control was another good thing - since Ireland isn't part of the EU's Schengen Area, we had to get our passports stamped and checked. But since we were non-EU citizens, we got to go to the non-EU line, which wasn't a line at all, but a bored person waiting at a booth because our entire flight was EU citizens, who were waiting in a very long line for their green stamps.

We then took a bus to our hostel in central Dublin. They really do drive on the left side of the road there! During the trip I mostly got used to it (I just looked both ways before crossing the street.), but I would still get confused when I'd glance up and a car without anyone in the front left seat was driving down the road!

Childcare for Giraffes? Giraffes take care of your child?

We met our friend David, another Fulbrighter, at our hostel. He was only with us in Dublin because he met his parents there the day we left for Galway. That evening we went out to eat at an Irish place - I had beef & onion stew, which was delicious! The waitress was so nice to us, which was odd after being in Germany where staff will be polite but not chatty. We walked around the city for a bit as well.

When we got back to our hostel, we met our South African roommates. I was washing my face when they came in. (The room had a room with a shower and another room with the sink and toilet.) Apparently one of the South Africans thought I was taking too long so he peed in the shower! There were 4 of them and they were all 18. They mentioned some stuff about how they supported the white party in South Africa and they all believed that the black party was screwing the country up. (We did not ask them about their political views. They were in a sharing mood.) Then they used the n-word a lot. They would prove to be interesting roommates in the day to come...

Dublin: Tag...

...und Nacht

The next morning we got up, ate the hostel breakfast (toast and cereal), then went on a free walking tour of Dublin. We saw a lot of interesting places, including Trinity College, old City Hall, the place Obama stayed when he visited Dublin, and St. Stephen's Green. We also heard some fun myths about Dublin. (Mostly to do with the scholarship students at Trinity...who are apparently allowed to carry a sword at all times.) We also saw the hotel that Bono owns, which reminded me of that episode of Gilmore Girls where Lorelei and Rory are late coming back from Europe because they were staking out that place.

After the tour we were hungry, so naturally we walked around for a very long time before landing at this Brazilian cafe where we saw cakes in the window. We ordered our cakes, then had to wait a really long time before the waiter brought them out to us. The cake was amazing though - it tasted like a magic cookie bar!

EngSoc: very 1984

We also walked down Grafton Street - I saw the place where the first scene of Once was filmed, which made me happy. There were two guys loitering there, so I didn't take a picture of it.

Once we were done with that, we went back to the hostel. The South Africans were in our room drinking a lot of beer, despite the fact that it was only late afternoon and drinking isn't allowed in the rooms. So we left rather quickly. (But one of the South Africans had a major creeper mustache and said something about how he hoped to find some "hot dolls" that evening. I liked his '50s slang.)

That evening we went to Tesco to get dinner food. (Eating out in Dublin is outrageously expensive.) I was delighted to discover that you can buy Pop Tarts in Ireland. They were a bit pricey (because Ireland is a bit pricey), but I still got a box!

Trinity College: Sunday Morning.

We ended up just grabbing some bread, sliced chicken, and cheese for dinner. It was a really good sandwich! We ate in the hostel common area while watching figure skating and booking our bus tickets to Galway the next day.

Some sort of Doctor Who villain in hiding.

At some point, Hannah & I ran upstairs to put something in our rooms. One of our South African roommates was asleep on his bunk, so we just turned on the bathroom light. As we turned to leave, Hannah noticed a foot sticking out of the bathroom door. One of the South Africans was passed out in the bathroom! We went downstairs to the front desk and told them that one of our roommates was passed out in our room. The girls working reception (they couldn't have been much older than me) went upstairs to check on him and clean up the mess. Then one came back down and was on the phone for a while. After a few minutes, an ambulance pulled up and the paramedics ran upstairs! (We were just sitting in the reception area/common room/kitchen area and watching tv in case the hostel girls needed us for some reason.) After a while longer, the paramedics walked out and one of the hostel girls came over to us. They switched us to a private room for the three of us because we had had such a bad experience. This was good because I hadn't taken a shower in the other room because someone had urinated in there.

Guck mal! You can see Hannah & I in the globe if you look
carefully. 

The next morning, Hannah & I got downstairs after David. He was sitting at a table talking to someone. When we walked up to them, we could see that it was one of the South Africans. The conversation that followed was ridiculous and hilarious and sad at the same time. (I can't remember who said what...so the first person is South Africa guy and the second is me & Hannah's comments, together.)
"Can you tell me what happened last night?"
"Well, we saw someone passed out in the room so we told reception?"
"Was it me?"
"Uh..we don't know. We just saw his shoes."
"Did you call the ambulance?"

New Library - Trinity College

"No, that was the hostel."
"Do you know how much an ambulance costs in Ireland?"
"Umm...no."
"Well, I have this stomach condition. I have a very sensitive stomach, so I must've eaten something that disagreed with me."
"Okay."

After this we somehow made our graceful escape from the hostel. It was a really nice hostel, it just happened to be playing host to some...rather interesting South Africans. Hannah & I said our good-byes to David and left our stuff in the hostel luggage room before leaving for the Old Library at Trinity College.

A bit of Grafton Street.

The Long Room/Book of Kells is really cool (supergeil). It's the most beautiful library I've ever seen. The Book of Kells was okay - it was interesting to see such an old book - but for me the main event was definitely the Long Room. It looks like every library should look!

After the Long Room, we went on our merry way to eat Mexican food for lunch!! David had eaten a burrito there before we got there and he recommended the place to us. I had a burrito with carnitas. The man who owned the restaurant was very friendly and told us that he was going to Chicago next month to eat at Fronterra (Rick Bayless's restaurant). He lucked out because he was talking to two of the only 20-something Americans who watch Mexico: One Plate at a Time. The food was so good! We had to sit in the empty downstairs area because the upstairs seats were all taken, but that was for the best because we were so giddy that we kept on dancing to the music that was playing!!

The British built this, so Justice is facing inwards toward
the British, not outwards toward the Irish people.

After lunch we went to this cute shop we'd seen earlier. It was Cath Kidston, and we both ended up leaving the shop with new purses! (They're both cute, but we looked like matchy-matchy twins for the rest of the trip.)

After that we went to the bus station and headed out to Galway!

This tower used to be a prison!

The state apartments where Obama and Queen Elizabeth II
stay when they're in town.

The wall the Irish built to keep Queen Victoria from
seeing the slums of Dublin. Also this area used to hold
the black lake for which Dublin was named.

I liked this park...

A pretty church. I think it's Christ Church cathedral, but I'm unsure.

This is definitely Christ Church - you be the
judge if it's the same church as the other picture. (I'm
98% sure it is.)

Baum Stoker was here!

Long Room at Trinity College.

Books for Dayssss

The special exhibit was about music & Trinity.

Pablo Picante Fiesta!!!!

_____________________________

Links: 

Ryanair: low quality, cheap flights

Abigail's Hostel: clean rooms, friendly staff, drunk South Africans

The Old Library & Book of Kells

Pablo Picante

Cath Kidston - Dublin

Bus Eireann

Mid-February: The Olympics, Work, and Zwickau

It's 2014, which means the
Catholic houses all say
"20*C+M+B*14"

It's been a calm couple of weeks here in Erfurt. Everyone's mostly just been looking forward to Winter Break, which starts technically tomorrow, but I don't work on Fridays so it's happening right now for me!!

The day after the Super Bowl, I went to Jena with some people I met at the class I took at the university to watch a recording of the game and eat a lot of food. It was a good time! Someone made American-style cheesecake, which was nice because German-style cheesecake just tastes like cheese. It isn't very good. German are great at some stuff, but they need to leave the cake to other countries. (They don't like moist, sugary cakes, and I prefer my cakes both moist and sweet.) I made salsa, but through a mix-up, we didn't end up actually eating it! (The host also had salsa, so we ate hers instead!) So I've been eating a lot of salsa over the past two weeks, and I'm going to have to throw the end of it out before I leave for Ireland tomorrow!

Teacher's room. My table used to be totally full, but the
interns left so now it's sad & only has 3 people.

Teacher's room: bulletin board with the substitute teacher
plan (far left) and the Abitur (German school leaving test)
schedule (far right). I haven't read the stuff in the middle.

The Olympics have started - so I'm getting a super German-skewed view of the games. They'll replay the medal ceremonies for Germans 10x (unfortunately, I am being literal), but they'll only show 3 of the pairs figure skating! And everything has to be over by 20:15 because that's when soccer comes on!! I've seen the German pairs figure skating at least three times, but I didn't get to see the Americans at all. (But I really enjoyed the Russian pair that won.) Since we kinda watch the Olympics live here (although things like figure skating are cut down and not shown live), it's all over pretty early in the evening. (Sochi's 3 hours ahead of us.) The other day the Germans had a story on their Olympic coverage accusing NBC of being over-patriotic and paying too much attention to American athletes. I laughed a bit because Germany's coverage does the exact same thing!!

Zwickau train station!

I went to my Hauskreis (Bible study) again this week. I don't talk much there - the main topic of conversation is finals, which I'm not really concerned about. It's still a nice time, and I do speak a bit!

Last weekend I went to Zwickau, where 2 American teaching assistants live, to have dinner and watch a movie with some of my TA friends. (Because Zwickau's in Western Saxony, it only costs 4.40 for me to get there with my semester ticket! It still takes a bit over 2 hours, but I like train rides.) It was really fun - we watched most of Les Mis, but we took a break in the middle to make and eat dinner, and then we talked for a while, then everyone had to leave to catch their trains home! My last train home was really early, so I stayed the night there. Melody was a really good hostess - she made pancakes for breakfast & we went to church together. The church we went to sang one song in English, which was cool! We stayed for coffee time afterwards, which was also nice.

A stormy evening in Erfurt.

It gave way to an ominous morning.

Today is the last day of the first semester at my school. The first semester seems to last forever here - almost six months! The 12th graders were taking exams this week, so the bells were turned off and everyone kept on forgetting that the bells were turned off (including me!). The 9th graders were doing some sort of special bilingual education this week, so they didn't have normal classes & I didn't get to see my 9th grade English class. Yesterday, I was with a teacher who was subbing (Germany doesn't get outside subs - it's all teachers who have a free hour), and we couldn't find our class! We went to the classroom, and they weren't there, then we went to another classroom, then back to double-check the substitute teacher plan, then the kids finally came in at 10:49. (It was weird because they get 10 minutes between all their classes and the class started at 10:50. I think their teacher had forgotten that the bell wasn't ringing and kept them late!)

Tomorrow I'm going to Ireland for a week with Hannah, another ETA! I'm really excited, although Ireland's supposed to be having quite stormy weather right now. Hopefully it'll be nice for my visit!

A power station thing in my neighborhood. It's so cool!

An old building in Windischholzhausen, which is a village
near my apartment.

I finally got a picture of the Landeshauptstadt Erfurt sign!

Home sweet Plattenbau! (Also our trash is locked up.)

This is really cute, but the picture is hard to see.

Snow & Leipzig

Graffiti in Weimar that I saw before going to Buchenwald.

Winter in Germany can be pretty foggy. It's not like back home, where the fog is around for about 35 seconds at dawn then burns off. Here the fog starts off thick and then intensifies throughout the day until you can't see out your window and it's dark early. It makes me realize why all the creepy fairy tales are German.

Morning fog.

Then after a few days of gross coldness without snow, we finally got snow! It wasn't all that much, and I was impressed by how the city cleared off the roads and sidewalks so it was...perfectly okay weather for going to school/work. I told people at work that we'd definitely have the day off back home for this weather and they laughed.

Morning snow.

Last Friday I went back to Leipzig because I was bored and wanted to go to a museum. It's called the "Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig," which means time history forum. It's a sister museum to the House of History in Bonn, which I visited while studying abroad. This museum was really really fantastic. It was all about East Germany, and the exhibits were suitably interactive and mostly also in English, although parts were just in German. (Which wasn't a problem for me...but if you're planning a trip, I guess you'd want to know that, dear reader.)

Flags and memorabilia from various East German organizations,
including the FDJ (youth organization).

 While in the first part of the museum, they were playing this patriotic song about how great the Party was. I spent a lot of time in the first room of the museum, so now I feel like I know it by heart! There were also interesting parts about the cult of personality surrounding Stalin and everyday stuff like shopping in East Germany.

The museum also has a travelling exhibit about food in Germany - if you know me well, you know that I absolutely love grocery stores (which should be abundantly obvious by the end of this post). This exhibit was pretty much perfect to me. (But no pictures because that wasn't allowed.)

I thought I did that in August?

 I also tried to visit the German National Library while in Leipzig. I saw a very interesting exhibit about graphic design and type, but the actual library is like the New York Public Library or Library of Congress in that they're weird about actually letting people inside to look at books. I absolutely hate it when libraries aren't friendly to users. You had to pay for a day pass to even use the library, which I wasn't willing to do.

When I got home, I had a package from Stephanie! She sent me Pop Tarts for Christmas and also sent me a Christmas card from TBS and KKPSi as well as nice notes from TBS. It was wonderful!

It snowed more that weekend, but this week it's been a bit warmer. High 30s and low 40s feels almost warm now!

I'm helping out with the 5th grade musical - they're doing a play of Robin Hood with three songs. I've had the songs stuck in my head almost non-stop since Wednesday. It's a bit annoying.

I took a class at the university this weekend. It was about the United Nations - I felt a bit awkward at first since I didn't know anyone and they all knew one another, but I talked to a few people and had a nice time.

Lidl's having America week. It's funny because they stuff they're selling doesn't seem very typical American to me - I didn't even buy any of it!

Road work in my neighborhood.

The old part of my neighborhood.

"American Sauce - Pimp Your Burger"

Texas-style meatballs. I don't even know what else to say about that.

The tram. It was empty, so I took a picture,