Maggie's Visit, Part I: ega

As I stated in my last post, Maggie, a fellow Fulbrighter, came to spend a few days of her fall break with me! She's teaching in Schleswig-Holstein, so her break was two weeks before mine. Luckily, I only had to work for 2 days of her visit. She was a fantastic house guest, and I hope to be able to visit her city later this year!

It was nice to be able to be the tour guide in Erfurt! We went to the Dom and Petersburg on the first day Maggie was here. We also followed the signs to the place in town where you can read your Stasi files.

Will the Dom ever cease to be stunningly beautiful? I think not.

On Wednesdays, I only work 2nd and 3rd hours, so we went to egapark in the afternoon. In my classes on that day, I did conversation with the 8th graders, who made me happy by singing this song when Harry Potter was mentioned. Then I was in an 11th grade class that was talking about hipsters. My job is delightful. I am getting paid to tell students that hipsters like being ironic. (The teacher and I had creative differences over whether Macklemore was hipster or not. I said no, he's too mainstream. The teacher said that parodying hipster culture is inherently hipster.)

ega stands for Erfurter Garten- und Aussstellungs GmbH, which means it's a garden and exhibition center. It used to be called iga, which stood for internationale Gartenbauaustellung, but the name was changed after Germany reunified.

There were some beautiful flowers, but most the part was filled with dead things. I'm going to go back in the spring to experience ega in bloom.

There was a flowerbed filled with types of roses developed in the German Democratic Republic (DDR/East Germany, for those of you keeping track at home)

This variety was called "Geschwister Scholl." The Scholl siblings lived in Munich and were executed by the Nazi party for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. The Geschwister Scholl are some of my heroes.

Third sentence: It has been known that people and dolphins work well together and these animals are very docile since the 60s series "Flipper."

FLIPPER!

Oh, yeah. It's the pumpkin time in ega, which means that there were tons of statues made out of pumpkins in the park.

There's a tower in the park that give a nice view of the city and surrounding areas. It was a bit foggy on that day.

Exhibit A: topless mermaid.

Exhibit B: My new best friend, Fritz the fisher, and me.

Exhibit C: I realize that Fritz is too busy checking out the topless mermaid to ever be my friend.

The Japanese Garden in ega.

Weird hay bale girl. They had mini horses in ega, but I didn't get a picture. I'm pretty sure I saw Li'l Sebastian.

On Thursday we just bummed around town and watched TV because I work for most of the day on Thursdays. Doc meets Dorf was the best thing we found. (The trailer contains foul language in both English and German. German-speaking people really love their English swear words.) We also had tacos for dinner since Maggie brought taco seasoning with her!

Finally, I got my visa on Thursday!! I got a letter in the mail on Wednesday afternoon telling me I was expected at the Auslaendergehoerde at noon the next day to pick up my visa. The pick-up process took about 3 minutes, and I'm officially an alien in Germany now. Because Herr Altrock is the best, I can stay in this country legally until July 30, 2014. (Other Fulbrighters' visas only last until June 30 because that's when our contracts run out. But I asked for July 14 and was given two weeks more than that!) I'm really happy to not have to carry my passport around as an ID any more. I need an ID to travel with my semester ticket from the university since that doesn't have my picture on it.

Oh yeah, I got my semester ticket from the university on Monday. With it I can travel throughout Thueringen using regional trains for free!