Maggie's Visit, Part II: Eisenach & the Wartburg

Since I don't work on Fridays, Maggie & I ventured to Eisenach. Eisenach is a super cute town that is slightly smaller than Erfurt and well-known for being the home of the Wartburg, which is a castle where Luther hid out after he published the 95 Theses and where he translated the Bible into German.

The day started out cool and misty. After taking the bus to the Wartburg, we still had to climb the hill up to the castle.

Like every other old German building, part of the Wartburg was covered with scaffolding.

I got a picture without the construction in it.

It just got foggier from here...

We heard a group of Americans and got them to take a picture of both of us. (I went off on a confused rant to Maggie about how these people must be confused because they're in Thueringen and I'm pretty sure that less than 100 people in Thueringen are native English speakers.)

The Wartburg up close! 

I felt weird taking pictures during the tour, but this room was a huge mosaic about the life of St. Elisabeth (the Hungarian one).

The sign for the bathroom was cute...

Bill Clinton was in Eisenach!!

A mighty fortress is our God.

We didn't end up eating lunch until 3:30, but that ended up being for the best because we took refuge in a restaurant for the greater part of a thunderstorm.

Here is Bach's house. It was already closed by the time the rain stopped enough for us to resume exploring.

Bach & I. We're friends now. I've been to his house and everything! His cousin used to live in Erfurt! I used to play his chorales every day before band!

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!

Erfurt Tour + Autumn

Since I'm going to take a class or two at the university, I've been assigned a tutor to make sure everything's going well for me in Erfurt. Mine is named Gabija, and she's super helpful! She and her Cypriot roommates went to the Erfurter Oktoberfest on the last day (October 6th) and invited me to go along.

It was pretty chilly and the weather was misty, so we just walked through the carnival and went on the Ferris wheel.

This building looks like Gregson.

After the Ferris wheel, we went back towards Anger. We found some really pretty views of the river along the way.

On Monday (October 7th), I didn't have to go to work, but the real teachers were doing a workday of sorts. I had to go to the school to pick up a quilt for Maggie to use during her stay from my mentor teacher.The door to the foyer was propped open, and this bird came in with me. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that the windows were glass and he flew directly into one and then just hopped around in a daze for a few minutes. I felt a bit responsible because I saw it happen.

The leaves are changing in Thueringen! Here are some trees that I can see from my apartment.

Der Besuch der ehemaligen Austauschstudentin

The former exchange student's visit. (We read den Besuch der alten Dame in class when I studied abroad.)

I went back to Holzkirchen and it was absolutely fantastic. I left on Friday morning, spent that night there and came back the next day. It was a short trip, but it cost less that way!

The first leg of my trip was on the Erfurter Bahn. It's pretty similar to the BOB - not as fast as the ICE, but somehow much more relaxing.

View out of the window of the Erfurter Bahn.

The country was so pretty, but my hand & camera kept on reflecting too much to get a good picture.

One of the first graders' mom used to live in Bamberg, so when the ICE stopped there I took a few pictures.

I don't know why this sign was sitting in the middle of a train station. The train didn't end there, and I was sitting in the middle of the train.

I bought my train ticket on Monday, but on Wednesday I found out that my host family wouldn't be home when I first got to town. So I did what most 22 year olds would do, and headed over to check out Oktoberfest. It was surprisingly easy to get there - the subway wasn't very crowded. (The Hauptbahnhof was crazy though.)

When the train stopped at Theresienwiese, the announcement said "Next stop: Theresienwiese. This train ends here." (pause) "Oktoberfest visitors, please exit here and have fun at Oktoberfest!!"

There was a really big police presence, and although it was pretty crowded, it still felt really safe. The overall vibe reminded me of the state fair. Or maybe that was just the smell of cinnamon roasted almonds.

They also have rules about alcohol sales and consumption. From what I saw (and this is just my inference based on that. I could be totally wrong.), it appears that you aren't supposed to bring in bottles of beer, and you can only buy beer in the giant beer halls. Wine & liquor were being sold at stands, but you had to consume that where you bought it.

There were a few people stumbling around drunk, but not that many since I was there at about 3 pm.

Something from the Augustiner Braeu.

Ah, the Hofbraeu's giant fest tent. I took most of these pictures with lots of people in them on purpose!

Augustiner Braeu

Hacker-Pschorr. I recognize them because I took a coaster from a restaurant last summer that said Hacker-Pschorr on it and used it all last year.

Spatenbraeu. They had my favorite slogan on a tent: "Lass dir raten, trinke Spaten."

This tent says Pschorr. Maybe Hacker-Pschorr had more than one area? (I think most of the breweries had more than one area.)

Paulaner. 

Loewenbraeu, which had a lion at their entrance. (Loewen means lion.)

This is the side of the Paulaner area.

The entrance I came in was the U-Bahn entrance, so I saw the good-bye sign before I saw the welcome sign!

Lebkuchenherzen. They're very real. So cute!! My favorites said "Mia san mia!," which is a team slogan for FC Bayern Muenchen.

After walking around Oktoberfest for 45 minutes, I got bored. (There isn't much to do if you're alone and can't go into a tent because you don't have a reservation/don't want to wait! Also I didn't want to spend any money.) So I went to a mexican restaurant near the train station that Kaylee told me about. 

Above you can see the best guacamole I've ever had in my life. It was so delicious. The salsa was also good, but I acknowledge that I only thought it was excellent because I really miss mexican food.

This is the restaurant! It's really cute and small. Yay Taco Libre!

This hotel was between the taco place and the train station - "living hotel" sounds like it should be an episode of Doctor Who.

The Muenchen Hauptbahnhof is one of my favorite places in the world. It was ridiculously crowded with Oktoberfest visitors - I'd say there was 10 times more people there yesterday than there were last summer.

There were so many English speakers there! I quickly came to the conclusion that Munich-area Fulbrighters have it much easier than I do - you don't even need to know much German because there's so much English around!

Guys wearing matching shirts for bachelor parties is quite a trend in Germany. I think these guys may be Scottish though - they were wearing kilts and their shirts said "so-and-so's stag do."

The Subway (sandwich restaurant) in the train station does not mess around. During Oktoberfest, they only close for an hour on Fridays & Saturdays!

Then I took the Bayerische Oberlandbahn, my favorite train ever, back to my favorite place in the entire world, Holzkirchen.

It was lovely! Everything was just as I remembered it, and it was great to see the Hartls again. We had fajitas for dinner and Antonia made me a friendship bracelet.

When I was falling asleep, I felt the same way I always do at my grandparents' house: I couldn't sleep as easily as I could at home, but it was okay because I felt super safe and I knew there would be an amazing breakfast in the morning. It was nice to be with a family again, even if it was just my host family!

In the morning, Antonia and I went on a short tour of Holzkirchen. I saw all the places I frequented last summer, including the VHS! Then we met Erika and got something to eat at the ice cream place that all the American students went to every day because it was between the school and where most of us lived.

I was a few minutes early for my train back to Erfurt. (Actually, for the ICE to Saalfeld.) So I took a few more pictures of the madness in the train station. Bis spaeter, Muenchen!!

This trip reminded me of how much I love Bayern. It's such a beautiful area; it's true that you can see quite a difference between former-east Thueringen and former-west Bayern.

Notice that although the shopping part of the station is busy, the platform part is eerily empty.

These were the nicest ICE seats I'd ever seen. I think the train was actually older than most of the other ICEs I've been on. (ICE stands for InterCity Express. It's the fastest train you can take in Germany.) Anyhow, the train felt really nice until we started running late and I was worried that I would miss my connections! It turned out that since the main purpose of the Erfurter Bahn routes from Saalfelt-Arnstadt and Arnstadt-Erfurt is to transport ICE passengers, they waited on us.

So servus, Bayern! I can't wait to visit again!!