The Penultimate Peril

My time in Germany is winding down - I've only got one day of work left, so I've already said good-bye to 7 of the classes that I've been helping with. But, do not despair! I have still managed to have a few outrageous things happen to me in the past week.

Tuesday was the Lehrerwandertag (teacher hiking day - gotta love those German compound words). Almost all of the teachers went and the kids got a half-day off of school. We all got on a chartered bus at the school, where the second foreign language department (who were in charge of organizing the hiking this year) gave us all some sort of fried meat pie, a bottle of water, and offered us all a mini bottle of champagne, which I declined since that did not seem like the best pre-hiking idea. As we got on the bus, I felt rather dumb because I didn't recognize a lot of the people there. Had I really been so unobservant? Then one of the other teachers mentioned that she had been talking to a retired colleague that she hadn't seen in a while, and everything made sense. German retired teachers come out of the woodwork to participate in hiking day.

After we drove for a bit, we arrived in a village near Weimar. We then hiked under 2 miles along a path to the German Bee Museum which also had a cafe where we all had coffee and cake. (Eating was the real theme of the day. I should've expected this by this point...Germans love to eat.) I was with the last few stragglers of the group, and we were trying to figure out where the entrance to the cafe area was. An older man outside the museum pointed us in the right direction, but said that a huge hiking group had just gone in, so we might not find a seat. He didn't realize that we were with the hiking group! As soon as we walked inside, all four of us started cracking up.

I ended up sitting at a picnic table near the Ilm (a river) with one of the English teachers, three teachers I only knew by sight, one of the interns, and a man that none of us knew. German etiquette says that if someone is sitting by themselves, it's okay to sit with them as long as you ask if the seats are still free, so we did that. Anyhow, the intern for some reason started talking about how he only ate 5 days out of the week because it's healthier and on the other two days he only ate 500 g of food. The man we didn't know said "Oh, so you could eat two of these, eh?" and pulled this weird green capsule out of his pocket, which turned out to be a poppy pod sort of thing that I think you use to make drugs. It was just a very odd experience. At least the coffee was good, but I don't drink it very often so I was very wired for the rest of the afternoon.

After that was over we walked from Weimar through the park where Goethe's Gartenhaus is, where it started to rain. In typical German fashion, everyone else had a rain coat and an umbrella, while I was wearing a sweatshirt and thought I had put my umbrella in my bag but was mistaken, so a few different teachers took turns letting me walk under their umbrella so that I wouldn't catch cold and die. It stopped raining pretty shortly, though, and we walked the rest of the way to the restaurant where we had a buffet dinner. I had grilled chicken, bread, salad, and corn. The dessert was all fruit, which I, as a rule, disapprove of. Dessert should be a reward and I generally consider eating fruit to be a chore. (If I have to choose between fruit and vegetables, I choose vegetables always.) After that everyone went out on the patio and talked - the English teachers gave me a gift card to the bookstore and a nice card thanking me for working there this year. It was very nice, but I was exhausted when I got home.

On Thursday I watched the World Cup match-up of death, Germany vs. America, with my Bible study group at an Italian restaurant right in front of the courthouse. The setting was beautiful, and we had some really good pizza! At the start of the game, I embarrassed most of the group by singing along with the American national anthem, but luckily one of the other girls in the group did a year in the US and sang with me. The other patrons of the restaurant stared at me. Then I was fully prepared to sing along with the German anthem as well, except that the other Germans didn't sing! How strange! After that it just got pretty embarrassing for me, especially since Jermaine Jones ran into a referee and another American in the course of the game. After the game was over, we went to someone's apartment and played Dixit, which I really liked although I suspect that everyone was saying really easy clues so that I could understand them as well.

I also finished my cross-stitch project!

And I saw a dead bird in between the grocery store and my apartment yesterday. Exciting, right?

Ein hoch auf uns, auf dieses Leben

This is my favorite German song of the moment - they play it every time as the filler song before the World Cup goes to commercial. (The title of this post means "So here's to us, here's to this life." It's a fantastic song!)

In the same vein, here are the photos Melody took last week while we were shopping at Kaufland in Plauen and in Bad Elster:

We discovered all the Germany merchandise...

Then we took a German-style photo. Some Germans don't smile with their teeth when they take photos, which we find rather strange. (Not all, though. The photos my Bible study takes are always with proper smiles.)

We were about to walk away when someone pointed out that we hadn't taken full advantage of the German merchandise, so we took another photo. The good people of Kaufland in Plauen thought we were crazy.

From left: Cathy, Hannah, Doria, Melody, Kitty, and I.

WM Fever & Plauen: The Beginning of the End

When the other Fulbrighters came to visit me the other week I snapped a picture of part of the chocolate aisle while they were deciding what flavor to get. It's just so pretty...

I also forgot to include this photo of the inside of the ice cream cafe where we stopped for ice cream at the Kyffhaeuser.

Last Thursday was the first day that The Fault in Our Stars (Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verraeter) was out in Germany, so I went to see it. It was a great movie! I was very glad I saw it, even if it was dubbed over into German. I wish my theater did a matinee price though - it cost 9.50 to see this movie at 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon!

Fate is a lousy traitor.

That day was an exciting one for me - after the movie, I went to my Bible study. Then once that was over, I saw part of the first World Cup game while waiting for my tram in Anger! All the restaurants in Germany pull out multiple big screen TVs so that their patrons can sit outside and watch while they eat. It's fantastic because then I could watch a bit of the game while I waited. I was one of several people lurking near the bushes surrounding the cafe tables trying to see the score.

World Cup fever has once again taken over in Germany. Sometimes I forget that WM is a confusing abbreviation (it stands for Weltmeisterschaft, which is the German name for the tournament) because I like it better than saying World Cup. There are German flags everywhere, which is very different than usual. There is also a ton of German paraphernalia available at almost every store - everything from leis and scarves to popcorn and bed sheets have the German colors on them right now.

Can you see the score??

On Friday I headed out to Plauen where my friend Cathy lives to spend one last weekend with all my fellow American ETAs. I had never been to Plauen before, so that was interesting. The city center is in a valley, so everything else is uphill. I'm very glad we took the tram to Cathy's place!

The first evening we spent a really long time deciding what to eat for dinner. By the time we had gotten groceries and cooked everything, it was almost 11 pm! We were also half-watching the World Cup the whole time.

Cathy's apartment was small, but we had a great sleeping situation. I ended up with this pillow that belongs to her roommate - I felt a bit odd sleeping on it!

I slept on these people's faces.

The next morning we headed out to Bad Elster. German people are really big into healing springs since Germans are big believers in homeopathic treatment. We forgot that only old people come to these places though - we were the only young people in this town!

The town is a few kilometers away from the train station, so we had a nice hike there and back.

Kitty, Melody, Cathy, and Doria try to
remember the words to "Colors of the Wind."

There wasn't really much to do in the town, so everyone else played on a playground for about half an hour before we got lunch at a cute cafe and then headed back to Plauen.

What kind of 6 year olds could play on this thing? It was a bit
too big for these adults to play on.

Cathy has a gorgeous view out of her window!

Saying good-bye to everyone at the end was a bit sad since we probably won't see each other in Germany again, and although Melody and Hannah will be relatively close, who knows when I'll see the others again?

Today was my last lesson with the 11th grade class that I've spent the most time with. They gave me a card and a cute little box of chocolates from the Kraemerbruecke.

Today I marked an item off of my Things to Do While 23 List: Buy something from Pimkie. Now if someone says something about my top, I can say "EYYYY! Das ist Pimkie!" (Chantal says this in Fack ju Goehte.)

I get 21 television channels. How many are showing the German National Team's press conference? (Additionally, channel one is showing a documentary about Germany's past WM wins.)

I watched the Germany-Portugal game while on the phone with Emily on Monday. I'm so glad they won! Mueller is my favorite soccer player, and I'm happy he did so well! I then tried to watch the America-Ghana game, and I did really well until the second half.

The game started at midnight here, and I'm sure my neighbors appreciated me singing along with the national anthem in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, I fell asleep before the last two goals were scored, but perhaps I'll have better luck staying awake during the next game. Go America!

Pfingsten

Hello dear readers! It's been an exciting couple of weeks...

Here's a belated picture of me with my cake! I got to eat THE WHOLE THING. It was awesome.

I made a list of things I want to do while 23. One of the items was "make my own pop." So here is my attempt...I got my recipe from foodnetwork.com. I made peach-strawberry soda.

To start with I made a simple syrup, then cut up the strawberries and peaches and put all of that in the blender with lemon juice & zest.

Then I blended it together and added sparkling water. It was good, but too sweet for me.

Lidl's having America week again, so I got some popcorn for the microwave. (As opposed to microwave popcorn for some other appliance?)

On Saturday Cathy, Doria, and Melody came to visit. I showed them Erfurt a bit and we made fajitas for dinner. It was delicious! (And rather hot outside...) Then on Sunday we went hiking at the Kyffhaeuser. Since the entire train station was closed for Pentecost weekend so that the train station can be improved to accommodate the new high-speed line from Berlin-Munich that should be completed in 3 years, we had to take a bus from the train station to Erfurt Ost, where we caught our first train.

 On the way, we had 30 minutes between trains, so we found a playground!

Once in Berga, we had to take a bus from the train station up to the park. This bus was just a van, and we had to call in advance to make sure it would stop for us! Once we got to the top, the view was great!

This is the Kyffhaueuser memorial. It's a gigantic statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I - it's built there because according to German legend, Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa is sleeping in a cave in this area until Germany needs to be united and some people believed that Wilhelm I was the fulfillment of this legend. We went all the way to the top - it was pretty much a really long & narrow spiral staircase

There was some sort of VW club there as well. Through the middle arch you can kind of make out the statue of Barbarossa.

There was a second tower that we also climbed. It wasn't as pretty to look at though.

After we finished looking at the tower, we found a nice place to eat our picnic lunch. Then we wandered for a few more minutes before deciding that it was too hot & going to an ice cream shop where we all had apple juice and then made the lady there mad because we ordered 1 large bowl of ice cream and 3 spoons. After that we took the van-bus back down to the station where I left Melody, Cathy, and Doria because our towns are in opposite directions. It was a great day!

Yesterday was Pfingstmontag or Pentecost Monday, which is a national holiday in Germany so everything was closed again. I went over to one of my teacher's house in Vieselbach. Her house was huge and had a really cool enclosed porch upstairs along with a huge garden. We ate lunch and went to a French horn concert at the local church.