Hey there Erfurt.

I am in Germany. It actually happened and I don't have any horrific airport/train stories to show for it!
Here are some highlights from my trip/first day in Germany:

Oh, Lufthansa. Your airplanes offer such good service. The stewardess talked to me the whole time in German while talking to the German guy next to me in English. Also, they give out free German newspapers and magazines before departure and offer beverage service literally every hour. 

Pro tip: Don't drink two cups of coffee with your breakfast, even if you know you only slept about 20 minutes. You will have to use the WC as soon as the seatbelt sign comes back on for landing. When you're in a plane this big, that stage takes about 45 minutes.

I then took the train from Frankfurt to Erfurt. It was nice because I didn't have to switch trains...but my suitcase was so heavy that I couldn't get it up on the luggage rack. Luckily, a friendly German man was around when I put it up and took it down so I didn't have to do it alone.

Then I met my host teacher and her family - they were really nice and gave me a lot of food. After that, I went to my apartment. There was a lot of talk about paying for phone overages which I didn't totally pay attention to because I was pretty tired at that point, but my teacher's husband had driven me over there and helped by translating almost everything for me (jet lag = no German skills). So now I'm sitting in an adorable 1-bedroom apartment that is all mine until the end of July.

Today I've had several adventures. This morning I went to Kaufland (it's a lot like Wal-Mart). It's not far from my apartment, so I walked there and back. I didn't get that much because I didn't want to carry it and I didn't have a Euro to rent the cart with. (I tried to explain my problem to a girl who was bringing back a cart and switch her a Euro in smaller change for an actual Euro coins, but she just looked at me and walked away.)

This afternoon I decided to learn about the tram system and visit the Dom. I bought a day ticket and set off from the stop that's not very far from my apartment! I think there's some sort of construction that prevents direct trams from my apartment to the Dom - I'm pretty sure we get really close then have to go a long way around before actually getting there. But this detour took me by my school and the University, which was nice.

Anyhow, I finally got to the Dom.

It's very beautiful. It may be my favorite church that I've visited! There was a stone in the floor commemorating Pope Benedict's visit 2 years ago, which was very cool.

The weirdest thing about the Domplatz is that it isn't just this beautiful church. There's another church right beside it, about 3 feet behind where I stood to take the photo above.

After that I walked up this hill:

There was a sort of citadel there. I don't really know much about it.

But this was the view from the top. The tallest steeple is the Dom and the roof on the right is St. Severi.

My trip back was pretty uneventful. I stopped in the Bahnhof to get some food (I really love German McDonald's. The cashier spoke English to me.) and grab some stuff from the Rossman in the station. While I was there I heard a bunch of rowdy Rot-Weiss Erfurt fans. Evidently they had just come from a game, because they were singing all through the station. I saw one getting mouthy with a policeman, which made me laugh.

Overall, it's been fun so far. My German is a bit rusty, and being so tired yesterday didn't help much. I'm confused by the recycling here and how to get money for my bottles, but I can figure that out later. I keep on smiling at strangers, which Germans think is weird.

I'm still very tired and jet lagged. I tend to get overemotional when tired, so I've been feeling a bit homesick and lonely, but I think that's to be expected since I don't know anyone besides my teacher and her family in this city. I'm ready for work and my University class to begin so I have something to do!

However, tomorrow I'm leaving Erfurt and heading to Koeln to have dinner with Werner before Fulbright Orientation begins on Monday! 

One Week Away!

I'm leaving for Germany in a week! That sentence is very surreal to me. Strangely, I was more worried about that last week than I am now. For now, I'm just taking it easy for my last week at home and trying to indulge in all my favorite American things before leaving. I ate Mexican food on Monday with my best friend and had good American-style pizza on Tuesday. I've also decided to drink caffeine-free Dr. Pepper whenever I want between now and the time I leave, and I have a feeling that I'm going to be making a pit stop at Sonic on the way to the airport. :)

One of the odd side effects of having a Fulbright is that German schools start in September, and my lease ran out at the end of July, so I got to move back in with my parents for a month. For me, this has been really fun. I got to hang out with my sister a lot before she left for college, and the free food/no rent situation is pleasant as well. I'm not sure how this weird extra month situation worked out for other Fulbrighters - I think some of them live in parts of the US where this is a non-issue, but for me it was nice to spend some time with family before moving!

The Fulbrighters for Germany have a Facebook group, and it is equal parts helpful and terrifying. Sometimes when people post it makes me feel better about my German language skills, but other times it threatens to overwhelm me with all the things I know I have to do once I get there (sign my lease, register with the city, open a bank account, register with the foreigner office, buy a BahnCard, figure out what I'm going to do at the Uni, find my school, register my tv). However, I'm going to take this journey one step at a time, and I figure that most people have escaped unscathed from this experience, so I should be fine.


I haven't actually started packing yet, but I do have a pile of stuff in my room that I know I'm taking with me. I've also been researching things like how to get from my gate to the airport train station in Frankfurt and how to get to my apartment in Erfurt, and I've made tentative plans to have dinner with a teacher from my study abroad trip before orientation. As Kenneth Parcell always says, "Everything always works out for the best!"

Finding a Place to Live

Finding a place to live while you're living in a different country is interesting. I applied with the Studentenwerk to get student housing, but I still haven't heard from them. My second plan was to respond to ads on WG-gesucht.de, which is a roommate search website. I found a lot of nice places and responded to a lot of ads. It's kinda scary to e-mail a stranger in your second language and try to sound like a nice, sane individual. Further difficulty comes from the website warning users against communicating with scammers who are pretending to be foreign. The first few responses I got were from people who had already found their roommate. I finally got a request for more information from a girl who was looking to sublet her 1 bedroom apartment for a year. (I also ended up getting 3 or 4 more positive responses, but this was after I had already found a place.)

Okay, so I found a place to live. The next (and most terrifying) step was to wire my deposit to Germany, which required me to have faith that this person was not a scammer and will actually be subletting her apartment to me. The bank teller who helped me wire this money had never sent money abroad before, which increased my nervousness, but I found out yesterday that the wire was successful. Hopefully everything else will work out - I'm pretty sure the worst part will be getting registered once I arrive in Germany.

The only bad thing that I can see about this apartment is that it is a bit of a ride on the tram from both the Uni and my school, but I figure that the price and situation (furnished! near an aldi!) make up for it and I think I'm going to have some down time while I'm living there; a bit of a commute never hurt anyone!

I also got my official acceptance letter from the Universitaet Erfurt last week. It sounds pretty straight-forward; classes don't start until mid-October, so I have time to get acclimated before choosing a course to take.

I'm counting down days until I leave - I can almost taste the RitterSport now!