fulbright blog.: 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!