The Last Holiday

Wednesday of the last week of the Princeton in Munich program, we had our final grammar test.  This being the third test and Professor Foldeak being rather predictable, we knew exactly what to expect - for the most part.  I had semi-studied all of the vocabulary from the workbook, concentrating mostly on the most recent vocabulary over which we had not yet been tested.  However, Herr Foldeak threw us a curveball by repeating a vocabulary section that we had had on a previous test, and unfortunately I did quite poorly on that part (although in theory it should have been old material).  The grammar wasn't bad, though, and all in all I scraped by with a respectable grade.  After grammar class we had the last precept of the program, and I can't say that I was exactly sad to be done with Kafka (although we weren't completely done, still having a test on Friday afternoon).  Though the weather this day was nearly as hot and sunny as the previous day, the grad students decided that it would be a good day to visit Dachau, the concentration camp memorial that lies just outside the city (the original plan had been to go Tuesday when we had more time and the reason for postponing it was that it would be too much of a juxtaposition to visit Dachau on a beautifully sunny day and read about the horrors perpetrated there, but that plan didn't work out too well...).  Even suspecting this, I had chosen to wear my high heels to go with my outfit that day, figuring that they had been comfortable enough to wear while walking around St. Petersburg, so they would be fine here :P  What I failed to remember is that they were only comfortable for me in Russia after I had worn them several times and built up callouses on my heels - I didn't quite bleed this day, but I got some nice blisters for my foolishness of wearing high heels walking around the graveled site of the old concentration camp.

**Warning: if you don't want to read details about the concentration camp, skip to the next paragraph**
The memorial itself of the only camp to be in operation during the entirety of Hitler's regime (1933-1945) was exceptionally well-done, but the fact that we couldn't leave until 2:30 meant that we did, indeed, run out of time.  I explored the camp grounds quite thoroughly, but ran out of time in the museum and didn't really get to see much of it at all (partly because I didn't realize the museum was there until the end).  The first thing one sees of the camp grounds is the famous cast-iron gate with the ironic inscription "Arbeit macht frei" (Work brings freedom).  One of the barracks is still standing, as well as the foundations for the 35 others, neatly laid out in two rows on either side of a tree-lined gravel road.  Between the barracks and the main administrative building is a large space in which the prisoners would be forced to stand at attention for hours every morning in all kinds of weather for roll call.  The camp fence setup is rather impressive: a five-foot stretch of grassy area before the fence was "no-mans land" - if a prisoner trespassed into this area he could be shot without warning.  There was a deep ditch that divided this area, which was filled with water in the time of the camp's operation.  On the other side of this ditch laid piles of barbed wire, and the fence itself was a ten-foot construction of electrified and barbed wire, with guard towers every few hundred feet.  Escape seemed to be effectively cut off.  A small path led out of one end of the camp to the crematorium and execution site, which were even more chilling to behold, especially the gas chambers which were cleverly disguised as showers (although the particular gas chambers at Dachau were never used for mass murder as they were at so many other concentration camps, they served as a model for these other establishments and occasionally groups or individuals did meet their death here).  The most sobering part of the crematorium was probably the ovens themselves, designed solely for the purpose of disposing of human remains.  The original crematorium was a small brick building and the oven could hold two corpses at a time, but near the end of the camp's operation, when it was hopelessly overcrowded and the death rate from disease and overwork had skyrocketed, the bigger building was built with an oven that could take care of closer to ten bodies at once.  As could be expected, there were several memorial sites erected near the crematorium, the final resting place for countless thousands.  These memorials and markers of mass graves were chilling and somber reminders of the many who had lost their lives here who were nothing more than a number, and the thousands among their families who will never know for sure their fate.  There are also three church-memorials erected on the grounds of the camp: one Protestant (the Church of Reconciliation), one Catholic, and one Jewish.  The architecture and layout of these buildings is thoughtful and poignant.  Last to be seen is the memorial in front of the still-standing administrative building, which now houses the museum of the camp; a sculpture of emaciated figures tangled in barbed wire and in obvious agony looms over a stone which reads, in German, Russian, English, French, and Hebrew, "Never Again".

I finally entered the museum about twenty minutes before it was to close and rushed through as much as I could, being shooed out by the curators at the last minute (and this isn't the first time that that has happened to me).  Our group met up by the entrance to the camp, and many stayed for a discussion of what we had seen while some of us chose to return to the Wohnheim.  Thinking about the kind of discussion that went on in our precepts, looking around at the members of the group, and taking into consideration my suffering feet and empty stomach, I chose to return.  What we had seen was certainly a good thing to discuss, but I did not want to have the kind of cold intellectual or overly impassioned discussion that I suspected would ensue among this particular group, blandly discussing the logical fallacies of the camp's philosophy or else making rash, emotional, reactionary statements to the horrors we had been reminded of.  I never asked the people who stayed what they actually talked about, so I could very well have missed something valuable.  But I don't regret my decision to go back.  My own thoughts were enough for me.

On a much happier note, the final holiday in June fell on the following day, so we once again did not have class.  After getting up particularly early to talk to a friend, I allowed myself the luxury of snoozing for another hour or so before finally getting out of bed and ready for the day.  I "bummed around" my room for the entire morning, until it was late enough to justify making  chicken cordon bleu as breakfast/lunch (by this time I was busily trying to use up any foodstuffs I wouldn't easily be able to take with me to Clausthal).  Finally, I set out to do what I do best - museum-hopping.  This day the Jewish Museum and the Munich City Museum were on my list, and while they were both quite interesting and worthwhile, they don't make it to my list of favorites.  The Munich City Museum's exhibit on the formation and rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) party was particularly informative and intriguing - apparently Munich was a huge headquarters for Hitler, being the first place where he began amassing power and support.  Around 6 I returned to the Wohnheim, had some leftover tortellini for supper, and shortly thereafter went to bed for lack of anything else to do.  I wanted to be well-rested for the Kafka test the following day, but even I will admit that 7:30 is a ridiculous time to go to bed, and my body agreed - it took quite a while to fall asleep.  I probably could have spent the time better studying or blogging, but I didn't feel like it so I knew that if I got on my computer I would just waste hours on the internet looking at pictures of cute kittens or YouTube videos of people falling down stairs or something equally useless, and hoped that I would have renewed inspiration to study in the morning.  (That's my usual response when I get into an "I don't want to do anything" mood - go to bed and hope I feel more productive in the morning.  Only slightly problematic when such a mood strikes at 3 in the afternoon :P)  Also, in my defense, I had very little idea what to study for the test - the grad students had emphasized that vocab would mostly NOT be tested, but hadn't specified what would... I emailed one of them and tried to find them personally for some advice, but they weren't in their rooms.  I read the novel, and they had hinted that the test wasn't supposed to be too difficult...

Friday.  The last day of the Princeton in Munich program.  I was especially excited for this day, because a group of five of the female participants in the program had acquired dirndls by sundry methods, and we had agreed all to wear them on the occasion of the final day.  So I eagerly awoke early, showered, and set to work on my getup.  I wore my hair in two braids, of course, which hairstyle I happen to be a master of (I've grown quite fond of it again over the summer - for about a five-year span I wore my hair in plaited pigtails EVERY OTHER DAY, with the remaining days finding me with a ponytail in my thus-crimped hair (I always braid it when it's wet), but I had fallen out of the habit after cutting 14.5" of my hair off in the middle of my junior year of high school, when I began swimming.  Particularly now in my internship, I find the easiest way to keep my hair out of my face in the lab is to braid it - and so I do. :]).  I very carefully tied up the orange ribbon on my bodice - only to find out later that I had done it backwards, necessitating a swift re-tying on the train to class.  I put my makeup on and looked myself over in the mirror - very Bavarian (and Princeton, since my dirndl is bright orange).  8:15 couldn't come soon enough - we all met down in the lobby and proceeded to class, with many stops for pictures along the way.  While our outlandish (or can I make up the word "inlandish" and use it here?), and very attention-drawing garb embarrassed some of our classmates to no end (i.e. Dan H.), others smiled or were impressed with our boldness and self-confidence (or as Dan would put it, lack of dignity ^.^).  Friday was also a very special day in our grammar class.  Since we had already taken the test on Wednesday, Herr Foldeak took us all on a tour of the Alte Pinakothek to get what must be the fastest overview of German renaissance painters in the world.  However, before we could set out on our adventure, there were some administrative things to take care of.  We must have received at least 50 sheets of paper each, between the rest of the history book Herr Foldeak had been illegally copying for us (because it was "out of print" - don't they have copyright laws in Germany?), "suggested reading" lists, and other information on continuing our German education.  Now, unlike in the United States, where grades are a very private thing which are protected by all sorts of passwords and confidentiality, the rest of the world believes that everyone should know where they stand in the results, and the rewards of one's academic labor should be a public thing.  Therefore, when Herr Foldeak handed out our grades, it was one sheet with everyone's name and final grade listed.  We were all a little shocked, being so unaccustomed to this, but I suppose it only makes sense - besides, if you pay attention to how your classmates work, none of the results should really be a surprise.  There were only two grades of "1" given out (the European grading scale is from 1-4, 1 being the best), to two people which surprised me - but I think they studied more vocabulary than anyone else (or had more strategic study methods) and therefore came out ahead.  I, as most of the members of the class, got a 2+ (originally I thought this was a B+, but was later informed that it may possibly be an A-...), so I was content, seeing that as a fair assessment of the effort I had put into the course.  After all, I was also in Germany to experience the culture and see whether I wanted to return for a semester of study or a potential job in the future, and not *just* to improve my German.

After the Alte Pinakothek we had another agonizing hour before the Kafka test, and I tried to speed-read the German version to make sure that I could intelligently talk about the plot and important interpretations in German.  As I had suspected, the test itself wasn't all that difficult, just long and involved a lot of writing.  There was an identification section, a couple of short-answer parts, and an essay choice.  I was done long before the allotted time, so I handed in my test and headed off to the city center to see if I could get some of my souvenir shopping done before our afternoon tea which would serve as a sort of closing ceremony to the program.  Fortunately I had the perfect souvenir in mind for my boyfriend, something that I had been thinking about since I bought my dirndl, so I made a beeline for Kleidemarkt and marched right up to the Tragt section.  (Now, I know he reads this and I kind of want his souvenir to be a surprise, so I won't tell you what I bought him.  But if you're curious, you can ask me and I'll tell you - I think he's going to love it, even if it may be a little small for him ;]).  Having obtained my prize, I triumphantly returned to the group for a positively lovely tea in a charming cafe (made even more wonderful by the free cake provided by Papa Princeton ;]).  Many hugs and photos later, we returned to the Wohnheim, where I only had a few minutes to change outfits and get ready for the next activity of the night - swing dancing.  This time it was at a big festival, underneath a colorful tent complete with lights and hanging umbrellas (don't ask me why).  I was nervous about leaving our stuff at one of the picnic tables in the beer garden (again, because of past bad experiences) but eventually we worked out a place to hide it safely while we enjoyed ourselves.  I tried convincing Dan, who had learned to dance the Sunday prior, to come with us, but he excused himself on grounds of being too tired and having other plans.  However, after much begging and pleading, we managed to convince Sam, another easy-going member of the group who had tried dancing once, to accompany us (so we were guaranteed at least a FEW dances), and of course Greta came as well, and Sarah was the driving force behind the outing.  Initially, Sam was very hesitant and not confident about his dancing ability, but after purchasing a beer at the bar he loosened up considerably.  In fact, he became downright friendly, and dancing with him before and after I could notice a distinct difference in his balance, which in my mind shattered all notions that "you can't get drunk off of just one beer."  Now, since then I have had some discussions with people who would know who say that it is mostly a mental thing - if you imbibe alcohol with the idea "this is going to get me really drunk", it will have enormously more effect than if you drink it without thinking about it much, or intend not to get drunk - it's a bit like hypnosis.  I fully believe this concept, and I certainly saw it borne out that night.  But whatever the reason, Sam was much more willing to dance post-beer and I was happy to have a dance partner, regardless of his skill level (having participated in beginner-level swing classes at Princeton, and having a boyfriend of much the same mentality as Sam - I usually have to almost beg him to dance with me - I have danced with some bad dancers, and Sam is far from the worst).  The only other person who danced with me that night was a man in his mid-thirties who described himself as a "total beginner" who may or may not have spoken either German or English (I only spoke German to him, but he definitely tried English with me) and knew about three different moves, most of which involved a lot of spinning and which I quickly tired of.  He kept coming back again and again until I decided that it would be prudent to look a little less eager to dance instead of straining at the edge of the dance floor hoping that someone else would come and ask me - most people were there with their partners, so it wasn't much of a mixer.  There were a few excellent dancers there, but I'm far too shy to go and ask a man for a dance in English, much less German, so I basically danced with Sam and "3-move Marvin", as I dubbed him.  Greta disappeared for a while to go souvenir shopping and returned with a nice scarf, but from her description of the other wares at the folk fair (for that's what it was) it didn't seem that I would find anything really good for Mom and Emily, the two important people left on my souvenir-shopping list, or at least not something that would be "German" (i.e. we couldn't find it at a yard sale/folk fair at home).  Although the dance went until 11:30, I was ready to leave by 10, and despite Sarah's pleadings for us to stay (the people she knew who were running the event had hinted at doing a dance in her honor), Sam and I headed back at 10:40.  We were hoping to catch a "sneak preview" a group was going to (in Germany you can buy special discounted tickets at theaters to watch movies which haven't been officially released yet, usually in the original language, and the movie is not revealed beforehand, so it's a total surprise and grab back) but we misjudged the public transportation and ended up having to walk to the nearest U=bahn stop, which meant that we wouldn't make it in time.  This was okay by us, though, so we just enjoyed the night, walking and talking (Sam was by this time very much sobered up).  I laughed at the way Sam marveled at my ability to switch between languages - I would be chatting with him in English, then call Mareike on the phone and as soon as she picked up, switch into fluent (or at least coherent) German.  I should hope that after a month in the country, I should be at least able to hold a coherent simple phone conversation in German without having to "warm up" first!  Finally we were back at the Wohnheim, and I hit the sack around 12.  It was a good, full last day :)

Home Stretch

As the final week of the Princeton in Munich program dawned, I began to feel the last-minute press to see and do everything that I wanted in the city before I moved on to other (if not necessarily bigger and better) adventures.  One of my biggest dreams was to rent bikes for an afternoon and take a ride around the enormous park in the middle of the city (the largest inner-city park in the world).  However, the weather and other people's plans kept interfering with this and it *almost* didn't happen.  Nevertheless, every day I managed to cross something off my list and generally have a great time, so the week was far from lost.  However, there were an unusual number of disappointments and last-minute plan changes this week that managed to keep us on our toes, and not completely in a good way...

Monday I finally managed to visit the Paleontological Museum when it was open, after precept.  The dinosaur skeletons were very interesting, but it was a rather small museum housed in one of the academic buildings of the university, so nothing terribly exciting or extensive.  The prevalence in Germany of the Darwinistic worldview and old-earth philosophy was evident in every exhibit description, where they talked about the dinosaurs which ruled the earth "millions and millions of years ago".  There was also plenty about the evolution of man and Archaeopteryx, the supposed link between birds and dinosaurs (though to be fair, that isn't what the top scientists are saying anymore).  All in all, it was an interesting museum to visit, just to try and imagine what it would be like to meet the critters exhibited back when they were still covered in skin and muscle, but it didn't take too long to get through so I still had plenty of time for shopping and supper before our next activity of the evening.

On Monday night there was supposed to be a huge roller-skating event where the police closed off the streets for the evening and everyone skated around the city.  It sounded like great fun and there were even rental skates available, so a big group of us met plenty early and headed down to the meeting point.  Imagine our disappointment when we arrived only to find that the event had been cancelled for fear of rain, which didn't even end up falling.  Reluctant to give up on all evening activities, we wandered to the nearest cinema, but we arrived too late for all of the movies that we wanted to see (movies in Germany generally begin at 8:15, and cinemas aren't usually as large as in America, only having a couple of theaters).  We wandered around for a while looking for a good place to eat (and the grad students offered to treat us as a consolation prize), and finally we found a good ice-cream parlor.  Most of the group hadn't eaten supper yet, since we had met at 6:30, so I was the only one who bought an ice cream (I'm ALWAYS hungry for ice cream ;]).  I took advantage of not paying for my own food to try "spaghetti ice", figuring that even if it was gross at least I didn't pay for it ;)  It was quite disappointing, and not because it wasn't tasty.  It was simply vanilla ice cream squeezed through a garlic press into the shape of noodles, with cherry sauce and white chocolate shavings on the top.  A fun treat, and quite delicious, but not special enough to pay twice as much as anything else on the menu... :P  Afterwards the group settled on a likely-looking pizza place, but by this time it was already 10pm and my stomach had been acting up all day (which still didn't stop me from eating ice cream, but at least it didn't make it worse, thankfully), so I opted to find my way home alone.  The grad students were a little concerned about me going back by myself, and I wasn't completely happy with the situation either, but I managed to find the correct tram and bus without too much trouble and got home without incident.  (Besides, I had a cell phone with their numbers, and Germany isn't NEARLY as dangerous as St. Petersburg, where I was wont to wander often by myself at night.  It wasn't really a problem.)

The next day the weather was beautiful again, and I was excited to go biking - but the grad students had other plans.  They wanted to take us swimming at yet another local lake, and since no one wanted to skip that to go with me, I opted to join the group instead of doing my own thing (reasoning that I would have 8 weeks to do my own thing in Clausthal, so I should take advantage of the company while I had it).  However, this was also destined for disaster, as a couple of stops out our train (a regional train, since the lake was a bit of a distance away and couldn't be reached by normal S-Bahn) was stopped by an "emergency on the tracks" (Professor Rankin told us that last time this happened, someone had committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, but we don't know if that was the reason this time or not) and though they were supposedly sending buses to continue our journey, we looked at the huge crowd of people milling around and thought about the time it would take to get to Tagensee by bus, and decided that we were better off picking another activity for the afternoon. The weather was just too nice to give up on the idea of swimming, so we decided to take Herr Foldeak (our eccentric professor)'s advice and swim in the Isar.  Well, not exactly in the river, but in a "Freibad" (free swimming pool) next to it.  I've never heard of a "Freibad" in America, so I don't know if we have them, but it's like an outdoor swimming pool.  And not an outdoor swimming pool like you might find at a cheap motel or in your backyard, but more like a redirected river that feeds into an Olympic swimming pool.  It looked like a normal swimming pool, except that the water was exceptionally green and the bottom was slimy (apparently Germans aren't as crazy about nuking their swimming water with chemicals to remove all of the algae and make the water clear).  We thought the water was pretty cold, but that was only until we discovered the canal.  This was actually a channel with cement walls and a rocky bottom, and whereas the water in the actual Isar at this point in the river was very shallow and slow-moving, the water in the canal flowed fast and strong, though it was still only about three feet deep.  I for one quickly grew bored of the "normal" swimming pool and wanted to try my luck in the canal, and I convinced the others to come with me.  We jumped in and realized what truly cold water felt like.  It was pretty fun to float with the current, and you were quickly moved far downstream of where you jumped in, but the real challenge was to try and fight your way back against the current to your starting point.  If you faced the current head-on, you would be pushed backwards.  The only way to do it was to stand sideways or brace yourself with one foot behind the other and take short lunges forward (Dan compared it to fencing moves).  After a ten-minute struggle I reached my goal triumphant and exhausted, laughing all the way.  There was a bridge near the head of the canal and we had fun playing with that too, trying to monkey-bar upstream on the bridge supports and being quickly swept back downstream when we finally fell in.  At one point  I stealthily swam upstream and let the current carry me back, submerged, towards Dan; but he saw my plan and when I grabbed his legs underwater he dove down on top of me and we both surfaced, laughing.  I wore goggles mostly because of my contacts, but it also made it more fun since I could swim underwater with my eyes open (and it made me effectively immune to splashing ;]).  At one point a couple of us (former swimmers) were doing starting dives off of the blocks at one end of the pool, and Mareike asked if I would teach her how to dive.  I've been taking swimming lessons for as long as I can remember (I think I started when I was about three) and I learned to dive probably before I could ride a bike, so thinking back that far to try and teach someone else was an exercise in creativity.  I'm not sure how well I succeeded, but her last attempts looked like they hurt less than the first ones, so I think we made some progress ;) Finally we all emerged, rosy-cheeked and well-spent, back into the warm afternoon sunshine.  Hannes had generously bought us all Kinderbeer (which isn't really beer but an alcohol-free malt drink that comes in a dark brown bottle), but it had gotten warm in the sun and we had to all run down to the canal and hold it under the water for some time to cool it off again.  It had a very sweet caramel taste that was not at all disagreeable (and tasted much better than actual beer, if I may say so), and was all in all a splendid finale to a great day.

The Kinderbeer got us talking about German specialties, and Hannes mentioned another favorite of his - Maultasche.  Literally translated it means "muzzle-bags" (or maybe feed bags, if you think of horses), and it is a Swabish specialty much like ravioli (but if you say that to a Swabian, they'll probably yell at you ;]).  Hannes generously offered to buy some and cook them for us, and (thinking of our final grammar test the next day, no doubt), we all enthusiastically agreed.  Hannes warned us about his mediocre cooking abilities, but I think the meal went off smashingly well.  We each had as many maultasche as we wanted with a nice side of tossed salad (little more than lettuce and dressing, but for several reasons I hadn't had much salad in Munich, so it was delicious).  We ate the maultasche with ketchup on Hannes' recommendation, but I could imagine that they would also be delicious with a nice cheese or alfredo sauce.  Sarah had a bottle of wine and, since I'd never had any alcohol other than a glass of champagne and a sip of beer (even after having been in Germany for nearly a month), she let me have a little.  It was better-tasting than beer, but the alcohol taste was still quite strong and is something that I'm not very used to yet, so it threw me off a little.  I think it was white wine, for those who know/care about these things - it doesn't make much difference to me (yet).  All of us were busy studying both during and after dinner, and we went to bed that night in eager anticipation of the test the next morning, if only because it meant the last grammar class of the program.

In the interest of posting this as soon as possible, I will end here and (hopefully, with a bit of luck) recount the rest of the week soon (although my short week is quickly filling up with activities, so realistically it may not be until next Monday or so).  It's actually kind of nice, being this far behind, because I get to relive the memories over again and remember how much fun I had.  Don't worry, there are still plenty of adventures about Munich to be told before we move on to my current locale, but we will get there eventually.  Until then, happy living!!

Alps!!

My, how time does fly!  I can't believe that I've already been in Germany for nearly 7 weeks!!  That means that I'm more than halfway done with my stay here, which, when I finish, will be my longest time out-of-country ever.  I REALLY like Germany, though, and it's even beginning to feel a little like home.  I could totally see myself coming back here for an extended period sometime later, whether to study or work... I *probably* won't move here permanently, but you never know... ;)

The second part of our third weekend in Munich, we did something that I had been looking forward to the entire time.  I finally got to legitimately use my new hiking boots!!  We met at 10 (which meant that I had plenty of time to do other things beforehand ;]) and hopped on a regional train that would take us to the Alps for a lovely day of hiking.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating with our plans very well, and it was cold with a driving rain when we got on the train in Munich.  The ride to the mountains took an hour, and we had passed through most of the bad weather by the time we reached the foot of the peaks, but some ominous clouds could still be seen on the other side of the mountains.  I'm always just happy to get out in nature, but I was even more excited when I was informed that the majestic, snow-covered (in late June!!) peak I was looking at was actually the highest mountain in Germany.  Its name is Zugspitze (which, literally translated, means "Train Peak") - probably because there is a train that goes almost all the way to the top of it.  However, our group was by far not prepared for a trek in those kinds of conditions, so we had to content ourselves with climbing the mountain NEXT to the highest mountain in Germany (which is, unfortunately, not quite as cool :P)  As it was, we didn't even hike most of the way - we took a train to the very foot of the mountain, then rode a gondola up to the lowest peak.  This was cool, too - it was like an enclosed ski-lift, and gave plenty of opportunity for scenic pictures (and wasn't the scenery beautiful!!) When we stepped out of the gondola building at the top, I suddenly realized why Hannes and Mareike had chased me back into my room to grab a sweatshirt when I appeared in the lobby of the Wohnheim in hiking shorts and a sleeveless hiking shirt - it was cold up here!  And the wind was much stronger than at the bottom, too.  We were already at an elevation of nearly a mile high (which is the highest elevation I have ever climbed to, being the height of Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine).  After a few more pictures from the viewpoint, we set off on the path that would lead us to our destination at the other peak, Alpspitze.  The way was a broad gravel road large enough for a car to travel on, so it wasn't particularly exciting except for the fact that we were walking along the crest of a ridge, so we had a great view of the landscape for miles around on both sides.  I took 100 pictures that day - usually 100-picture days are reserved for zoos, so it was pretty special ;)  The clouds that we had seen from the bottom of the mountain soon overshadowed us, and before long precipitation was falling.  However, since we were so high up, it was more hail or freezing rain than rain, and boy was it cold!  Some of the less hardy members of the group began to complain, to which I wanted to respond that if they couldn't deal with a little weather, they should have stayed in the valley and gone shopping or some other equally prissy and non weather-dependent activity, but I held my tongue.  Soon enough we reached another stopping point, where there was another gondola car which traveled to our destination.  I vehemently opposed such a wussy alternative, especially after eyeing the rest of the trail to the peak which was an actual hiking trail instead of a gravel road.  At my pleading the group decided to split into two, with the majority taking the train car to the top and an adventurous few braving the trail.  Now we got to the actual mountain climbing, and I was happy.  The trail was steep and winding, but absolutely beautiful as it led through high mountain meadows filled with hardy flowers and squat bushes (we were by this time more or less above tree line).  Suddenly, as we approached one particularly steep ridge, I was struck with an idea.  I whipped out my iPod touch, searched my music library until I found what I was searching for, and the six of us crested the ridge to the epic sounds of the Lord of the Rings Fellowship theme (for those who have not recently experienced the epicness, it can be heard here :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovxbXaJs-90 - imagine this with a background of breathtaking scenery.  It was amazing).  It seemed we hiked through every kind of weather on our way to the top - rain, hail, sun, wind, even snow!!  As long as we kept moving it wasn't too cold, and adversity only means a better story when you're all done, right?  Finally we gained the peak, where we were slightly surprised to see a cozy restaurant/gift shop.  Guess the Germans don't miss an opportunity for entrepreneurship...  The food was pricey, as could be expected, but since they had a corner on the market we didn't have much choice.  I split a serving of knödel (think potato balls) and sauerkraut with Greta and was happy.  I also investigated the souvenirs, but most of them were also quite expensive (and I'm trying to avoid the feeling of "I have to buy a souvenir just because I was here".)  I was very tempted to buy a stuffed mountain goat for my best friend Jennifer, but decided that my 4 Euros could be better spent another way, so I contented myself with a couple of postcards and a pen in the shape of a pickaxe (that ended up not even working, but at least it's pretty, right?)  Afterwards we got to the real highlight of the day, which was the observation deck which stretched several meters off the side of the mountain, allowing a nearly 270˚ view of the scenery.  The floor of the observation deck was open metal grating and the sides were Plexiglass, which naturally made some people a little nervous.  I just laughed and tried to find the resonant frequency of the deck by bouncing up and down; when I did, the entire deck swayed with me which caused the nervous ones to clutch wildly at the handrails and scamper back to the safety of bedrock (aren't I awful?).  I am also a little scared of heights, but the rush of adrenaline that the fear produces is also quite exciting, and I even rather enjoy it!  Many many pictures later we were finally ready to return to the mountain's foot and the boring life of a flatlander.  We took a different gondola down, and it seemed that everyone else also thought that it was about time to head home, because the car was standing room only (which again made some people a little nervous, but as an engineer I know that you don't build something like that which isn't strong enough to function correctly when comfortably filled ;]).  The train ride back was a quiet one, as many people who were exhausted from the day's travels (though we really didn't exert ourselves much, in the big picture, by my opinion :P) chose to sleep.  We got a double-decker train this time, which was rather exciting, so I naturally wanted to sit on the top level in order to better observe the countryside as we passed through.  About fifteen minutes out of Munich a family with three small children boarded the train and sat beside me - the two boys were dressed in lederhose and the girl was wearing a tiny dirndl.  When I commented on their clothing and asked them why they were all dressed up, they only stared at the funny girl with the strange German accent.  The mother then chuckled and explained that they had all just come from a baptism - seriously, dirndls/lederhose ARE the formal clothes of Bavaria.  I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT MINE!!!!  

Well, we were soon enough home, and I was more than glad for the leftovers I had which meant that supper required little more than to put them in the microwave for a couple of minutes.  And so ended another grand weekend.  Despite the weather, I thoroughly enjoyed the Alps, though I wish I could have gone and hiked for a solid few hours, instead of our measly trek up to the restaurant.  Oh well, you have to cater to the group, I suppose.  Maybe another time, in some far-off future life when I have the kind of money to vacation in Europe and I come back to Bavaria (possibly with husband in tow, depending on how far out we're talking) for a week or something and can really do what I want... ;)

Sorry that this blog post is shorter than most (although, perhaps you're not ;]), but it was really supposed to be part of the one I posted last week.  I would go further, but it's time for me to go meet the group - we're taking a trip to Hamburg this weekend.  Next weekend I'm in Heidelberg for a conference with my internship - by the time I finally return to the US I will really have seen Germany!!  A little silly, isn't it, that I've already been in Clausthal for nearly three weeks and still haven't told you all how it is?  Well, sorry!  I'm going to try awfully hard to put my nose to the grindstone (or fingers to the keyboard, as it were), and get substantially caught up on this next week, but no promises.  I can only say that it will get (mostly) done eventually, and hopefully before I return.  Until then!!

Museum Marathon

My last full weekend in Munich.  I was determined to take full advantage of it - I'm not quite sure whether I succeeded or not, but at least I had fun!

I had grand visions of a museum marathon on Saturday, since that is my biggest attraction in any city, having grown up in a small town (and for that matter, in a small state) where such collections of knowledge on a specific subject are few and far between.  My background combined with my curious nature means that I love learning more about almost anything.  I put together a list of six museums that I would try to visit; and seeing that I had an entire day (one of the museums opened at 8:00) and giving me even two hours at each (which was quite generous, as these were smaller, more specialized and less well-known museums) would mean that I might even get through all of them before they started closing at 6.  Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan.  I should just start planning for things not to go according to plan, if I could figure out how that would work... :P

First of all, I had been waking up so early every day that I felt like I owed myself a day to sleep in. Now, my idea of "sleeping in" means that I don't get up until 8 or 9, which is still early for most people (especially for a Saturday), but that's beside the point :P  Anyway, that didn't end up happening, although instead of getting up at 5:30 I did wait until 7 or so.  However, since blogging was also on my list of chores, I ended up doing that until about 8:30 so right away I knew the day wasn't going to look like I had planned it to.  I finally arrived in the area of the first museum on my list, the Paleontological Museum, a little past nine, but then spent the next hour wandering the space of a couple of city blocks looking for the museum itself, which was definitely NOT marked. When I finally did locate it, I discovered to my dismay that since it was connected to the university, it was only open Monday through Friday (I had mistakenly written down that it was also open on Saturdays).  However, all was not lost - in my wanderings I came across a second-hand DVD/CD store with nothing other than Lord of the Rings in the window!!  It wasn't open at 9am on a Saturday, of course, but I came back later that week and bought The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in German.  Unfortunately I wasn't thinking too clearly; of course, being in German, it is a European DVD that won't play on my computer or an American DVD player.  I *thought* I could get around this by downloading a media-player program that would also play Zone 2 DVD's, but couldn't get it to go past the title screen... oh well, even if it doesn't work, it was only 2,50€.  Not a great loss, and at least I have the case, which looks pretty cool :)

After the disappointment with the Paleontological Museum, I trekked off to the next stop on my list - the Firefighting Museum.  Fortunately this was both easier to find and open (in fact, it is only open on Saturdays).  It is actually housed in one of the fire stations of the city, and it was quite interesting.  It had lots of firefighting memorabilia all the way from the earliest history of organized firefighting in the 1700s to today.  The coolest part was an exhibit commemorating an event in 1982, when one of Munich's U-Bahn (subway) trains caught fire between stations.  (I couldn't understand all of the German, but I don't think anybody died - just a few people went to the hospital because of smoke inhalation.)  There were pictures of the event, like the smoke pouring from the U-Bahn station entrance, and they actually have the recovered burnt-out shell of the engine car in the museum.  The deadly power of fire is eerily evident in the burnt and melted seat cushions and twisted and mangled metal frame.

It was already nearly 11 by the time I left the Firefighting museum, and it had started to rain (most of the reason I had decided to make Saturday a museum day was because of the predicted rain which would have put a serious damper on any other activity).  Nonetheless, according at my map, it seemed that I would be able to walk to my next destination, the one I was most excited about - the Center for Unusual Museums.  I eagerly set off, only to encounter much the same problem as with the Paleontological Museum - I simply couldn't find it.  I criss-crossed the same three-block stretch three or four times (finding a Beer and Oktoberfest Museum in the process, but unfortunately that one didn't open until 1pm or I might have investigated...) before finally caving and asking a local.  The man behind the counter of the bakery told me that it was "easy... just go along this street, you'll see it."  Though I had already been up and down that street several times, I nonetheless set off hopefully, to no avail.  The next storekeeper I asked simply grunted and pointed me back in the direction that I had come, but at least now I had boundaries to my search.  Finally, exasperated, I walked into a Tracht store situated exactly where the museum should have been and inquired of the proprietor - who informed me cheerfully that I was in exactly the right spot.  She then went on to explain that since the curator of the museum died four years previous, his wife didn't feel like maintaining the museum anymore, and closed it down.  My face at the news looked exactly like this: -_- .  Well, at least I had my answer and didn't have to aimlessly wander the city anymore.

Next on my list was the Toy Museum - at least I knew exactly where that one was, since I had seen it on my first day in Munich and made a mental note to come back and investigate later.  Tired and a little despairing that I was so far 1 for 3, I walked back to Marienplatz - but was stopped just outside the door to the museum by a deafening crash.  A little bewildered, I looked around for the source of the noise, and finally located a detachment of military men on the balcony of the belltower of the nearby Peterskirche who were firing what I supposed to be blanks from rifles at regular intervals.  The reports from the rifles crashed and echoed around the tightly enclosed square with a deafening racket.  In fact, I noticed that there were all sorts of unusual goings-on in Marienplatz... I was later to be informed that this particular weekend was the celebration of the city of Munich's founding.  It was a terrible weekend weather-wise, but I suppose the city fathers couldn't have planned that... There was an entire biergarten, complete with dozens of umbrella'd tables, set up in the middle of the square, and a smallish stage on which a tracht-clad band was playing traditional Bavarian music while personages representing the different faces of Munich paraded across the stage.  There were also some strangely-clad fairy-type people on tall stilts that made me wonder what THEY were about, but I didn't seem to know any more or less than anyone else in the crowd, so I just gawked and wondered like all of the other tourists.  One of the more interesting figures was the pretzel-king? A man with an ample beer-belly dressed like the Burger King king strode across the square and mounted a white horse with a blue-and-white checkered blanket that covered its entire back (which is the pattern of the Bavarian flag) and a giant basket of pretzels hanging from each side of its saddle.  He stopped to pose for pictures before riding off in a stately manner, one hand on the reins and one busy stuffing a pretzel into his mouth.  Germans are strange folk, indeed.

Still puzzling about what I had seen, I returned to the Toy Museum - and then discovered what was certainly not my first hang-up of the day.  The only thing I had in my wallet was a 50-euro bill and a bit of spare change, and (perhaps owing to my time in Russia) I was reluctant to use excessively large bills to pay for things (in Russia, small store-owners rarely have lots of cash. If they don't have the proper change for your bill, they just won't give you change - it's your problem, not theirs).  The only other museum I had managed to reach, the Firefighting museum, was free, so this was the first time I ran into this difficulty.  I was barely able to scrape together the 4-Euro entrance price from the spare change I had, but it ran me completely out (at first I offered the woman the 50, but she looked at it with dismay and asked "Don't you have anything smaller?", a reasonable question since the museum had only been open for an hour, so I tried with my change).  The museum was quite interesting, especially the old toys from the beginning of the 20th century.  Most of the exhibit text was in both German and English, so I actually got to read about the history of these toys.  Some of my favorites were the mechanical toys from the turn of the century - it was amazing all the things they were able to do with purely mechanical parts!!  Of course, there were plenty of toy soldiers and baby dolls and wooden figures, as well as some of the first teddy bears and a quite extensive Barbie collection (most of them, from what I could see, were very early Barbies from the 60s).  The museum itself was housed in a series of several rooms off of a turret, so one had to climb a very narrow winding spiral staircase to get from one room to another.  That in itself was pretty fun, and the highest rooms were probably five floors up with a great view of Marienplatz from the small inset windows.  Nonetheless exploring the entire museum only took me about 40 minutes and I soon found myself back in the gift shop.  Nothing there really interested me as a souvenir for myself or someone else, but a couple of the postcards caught my eye.  They were old pictures of children playing with teddy bears and dolls, and I thought that my Great-Aunt Shirley, being fond of most things antique and classy, would just love to receive a postcard from me in general and this postcard in particular.  Here came the problem, however - the postcard cost 0.40€ and I only had a 50 note and about 15 cents in change.  With many apologies to the poor cashier, I handed her the only money I had - fortunately by this time the museum had gotten more visitors and she had enough change.

By this time it was a little past 12:30, I was very tired and wet from wandering in the rain, not to mention more than a little hungry.  Although I still had the Alpine Museum on my list, I decided to call it a day, and headed back to the Wohnheim to do some necessary chores, such as blogging, writing emails, and even a little studying ;)

I was not done for the day as I supposed, however.  I returned to find an email in my inbox - it was an invitation from Professor Rankin to "cake and coffee" (a very German tradition) with some friends of his from Swabia, a region of Germany in the south-west, of which Stuttgart is the capital.  One of the grad students, Hannes, is from this region, as well as the German mother of my best friend that I've known since birth (who was my original motivation for learning German).  I gladly accepted the invitation to interact with some native German speakers (as well as the opportunity to experience some genuine German culture and cuisine not at my own expense ;]).  So at 3 I once again headed into the city center (accompanied by Dan, whom Professor Rankin had also invited) and met Professor Rankin at a cafe near Marienplatz.  His friends were very pleasant people, also Christians, but the entire conversation felt a little awkward and stilted.  I'm not sure if it was because Professor Rankin's friends didn't know how much German we knew, though we are both fairly capable in normal conversation and I'm pretty sure all of them spoke English, or what, but it seemed that both parties tended to speak through Professor Rankin instead of to each other.  It didn't last too long, however, and we soon returned to the Wohnheim for the latter part of the afternoon.  I got to Skype my family, particularly my father and sister, which was very nice as it is something that happens quite rarely (when I'm away from home, which is most of the time, I usually end up talking to my mom).  In fact, this was the last time I spoke to my parents while I was in Munich, and it was an entire week in Clausthal before we could arrange a time to talk again, so it was very nice to check in, get the family news, and such (I'm remarkably independent, as a rule.  Contrary to some people I know who call or Skype their parents every day when they are away, I rarely speak to them more than once a week, and often FAR less - try about five times a semester.  It works just fine for me, and my parents say they're also happy with the arrangement - although I'm sure they wouldn't be miffed if I called home a LITTLE more often ;]).  Then it was back into the city for an ice-cream outing with Professor Rankin, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I am quite thankful for the Monatskarte we were given as part of the program - I don't know what I would do if we had to buy a ticket every time we wanted to use public transportation to move around the city.

So, this Saturday turned out to be one of my less-eventful days in Munich, but it was still good and I got some valuable cultural exposure (as well as doing some much-needed communicating with my family).  Even when things don't go according to plan, there's usually some redeeming and useful experience, and sometimes a little unexpected adventure.  After all, the best parts of life are often spontaneous. :)

Getting into the Swing of things

On account of the many Catholic holidays in June, there was only one week where we had five days of class, that being the second week.  While this reduced the already short time we had to learn new material, it also helped prevent burnout, so necessary in an intensive program such as this.  Besides, half of the program is just LIVING in Germany anyways, so I certainly didn't mind.

Tuesday I was up early (4am) to Skype, and despite my best attempts to get a good amount of sleep I found it extremely difficult to concentrate and keep my eyes open through class and precept.  After precept Mareike generously volunteered to come with me to try and open a German bank account that would be necessary for me to receive my stipend during my internship.  They had sent me a form that stated only that I would have to make a bank account and send them the details, so I assumed that would be better done from Munich so that I could get the money more quickly once in Clausthal.  Thus we set off to Deutsche Bank, only to be told that I would have to live in Germany for minimum one year in order to be eligible to open an account.  Only slightly discouraged, we went around the corner to the Sparkasse, where we were informed that their policy was six months - closer, but still no good as I was only there for three.  Our last hope was the Postbank (the bank associated with the post office), where they informed us that the six-month minimum was actually a European Union law.  Now I was confused - none of the interns would likely be in Germany for more than three months, so how were we supposed to set up a bank account if the minimum stay was six months??  I was later to find out that, at least in my case, the bank account is set up through the University in order to bypass this restriction... wish I had known that then, it could have saved an entire afternoon of frustration.  In any case, the afternoon was not completely lost, as I was able to buy stamps to send postcards back to America (at .75€ each, and postcards being an average of 0.50€ apiece, they make pretty handy and affordable souvenirs... ;]) to keep all of my friends and family (especially those without computer access to read my blog) in the loop.  Since it was already getting on towards 4:00 by the time we gave up on the bank account, it wasn't worth trying to do anything else this afternoon and I returned to the Wohnheim.  However, I had more time than usual for supper, so I decided to make something a little more involved and bake Shepherd's Pie.  Not very German, but delicious and inexpensive nonetheless (contrary to what I had always thought, ground beef is MUCH less expensive than chicken breast, at least here).  The batch I made left plenty of leftovers, which I enjoyed with the help of the microwave for the rest of the week.  I also set to work sending emails about important things like the whole bank account situation and my rent downpayment which was ostensibly due a week before I arrived in Clausthal (I now know that since I'm staying in a dorm associated with the University they want to make things as convenient for me as possible, but at the time I was worried about my contract being voided if I failed to make the 300€ payment by the deadline - the last thing I wanted to do was lose my housing).  It was a little weird, only being a little more than halfway through the Princeton in Munich program and already having to think about the next phase of my adventure.

Wednesday I woke up early without the use of an alarm clock, on account of having gone to bed so early the night before.  I finally felt rested as I hadn't since before Berlin, the weather was gorgeous, and it had all the makings of a great day.  I had been looking forward to good weather for some time so that I could go to the zoo - it was one thing I definitely didn't want to leave Munich without visiting, especially after not having been to the Berlin Zoo.  I had thought about going Tuesday, but the bank account attempt took priority.  Unfortunately (as was to happen many times), the grad students also wanted to take advantage of the weather by taking the group to another of the nearby lakes and going swimming, and that apparently sounded more exciting to everyone than a trip to the zoo.  I was a little disappointed but nonetheless determined to fulfill my heart's desire, even if it meant going alone.  I did not regret my decision in the slightest - the lake they went to was dirtier than the one we had visited the first week, here in Clausthal there are more than 60 lakes in the area that I can visit (if we ever get a nice day...), and the zoo was amazing.  I'm even rather glad I went alone, because it meant that I could tour it in my own special way.  I determined to see every single animal in the zoo, and armed with my trusty large-zoom digital camera, I proceeded to do just that.  Not only did I stop by every exhibit and get some quite amazing pictures, I also (through some clever calculating) managed to be in the right place at the right time more than once.  I saw the zookeepers give the elephants their daily bath (and boy, didn't they LOVE it!!), not to mention the recently-born baby elephant out for a stroll with her mother, watched the sea lions and seals get fed and "sing for their supper", as it were, and even forked over 0.50€ to feed the zoo's herd of pinto Shetland ponies which included several foals (who hadn't quite figured out how to use their tongues to eat the pellets and tended to nip) - capturing it all in living color in both photo and video.  I saw baby animals of all kinds - giraffe, cow, duck, elephant, horse, mountain goat, deer, antelope, chimpanzee, and lemur.  I walked into the open bat cave and had one of the inhabitants come land on my hand, looking for food.  I saw rhinos, tigers, antelope, camels, zebras, ostriches, llamas, penguins, wolves, Prezwalski's wild horses, pelicans, cranes, parrots, peacocks, yaks, tapirs, wild boars, deer, kangaroos, orangutans, gorillas, polar bears, and many more.  I took almost 200 pictures - and few are multiples of the same animal.  To cover the entire zoo took five hours - but I did it, and I can safely say that I saw EVERYTHING that the Munich Zoological Garden has to offer.  It really is more of an Animal Garden than a Zoo - nearly all the animals are housed in mini-reconstructions of their natural habitat rather than cages.  The weather was perfect for walking around and even the animals were all out enjoying the sun.  Overall it was a perfect day and I returned to the Wohnheim at 6 beaming from both sun and contentedness.  Supper was made easy with leftovers and I enjoyed a low-key evening catching up on some much-needed vocabulary study.  There was also a moon eclipse that night, but the cloudy skies meant that there wasn't anything to be seen, unfortunately (although I didn't really begrudge the excuse not to stay up until midnight).

Thursday's weather also turned out to be nice for the majority of the day, but despite getting plenty of sleep Wednesday night I again found myself fighting to stay awake in class.  I had ambitions of visiting the dinosaur skeletons at the Paleontological museum, but because of my tiredness and the lack of interest from classmates I ended up just returning to the Wohnheim directly after precept instead.  This was good, because it meant that I could spend more time studying for the second test on Friday before my evening activity.  I was quite excited, because  one of the other participants in the program was quite active with the Swing Dance Club back in Princeton, and she had done the necessary legwork to find out about events held by the local swing dance group in Munich.  While there had already been several opportunities, this was the first event that I was able to attend, and as an added bonus, one of the instructors of the Princeton Swing Club, a German graduate student at Princeton, would be there!!  Greta, another avid swing dancer, also met us at 8:30 to head in to the city center.  We arrived around 9 and found a quite small bar where not much was happening.  The bartender came over and asked us what we would like to drink: Sarah and Greta ordered beers, but I was still quite nervous about drinking any serious quantity of alcohol (the most I had had was three sips of a beer on our second day here), and besides had no idea what to order (you can't just say "beer" because there are always at least three types if not multiple brands) so I originally said "nothing for me" but accepted her offer of a glass of water, when pressed (though I had thought ahead and brought a water bottle with me).  We sat around and chatted for awhile, because though there was swing-era music playing (all in English, from actual vinyl records) there wasn't anybody dancing, and I certainly wasn't going to go asking anyone.  Our Princeton friend Matthias arrived after a while, soaking wet (the predicted rain had finally arrived) and we gladly struck up a conversation with him.  He remarked at how strange it was for us to be speaking to him now in his language, instead of ours.  Language certainly adds a certain tone to a conversation, and speaking to him in German was actually different than speaking to him in English.  Finally about 10:00 something happened - but it wasn't dancing, unfortunately.  Unbeknownst to us, the real feature of the evening was the showing of some 1920s silent comedy films, which we watched willingly, as they were quite amusing - for awhile. After about 45 minutes of this I began to get restless; after all, we had a test the next day, I hadn't been getting the best rest throughout this week, and I really came to dance, not watch movies.  Fortunately just as I was about to leave at 11 the movies came to an end and the dancing finally began.  I danced with Matthias, and a local friend of his, Erich - both much better dancers than I, but quite enjoyable to dance with for just that reason.  A very good lead (guy) can make even a mediocre follow (girl) look and feel like a quite good dancer.  Swing dancing, however, reminded me of the fact that in Princeton it was one of my favorite activities to enjoy with my boyfriend, and we always looked forward to Wednesday evening Swing Dance as one of the highlights of the week.  He isn't nearly as good as Matthias, having just begun to learn in February, but it always makes me laugh to dance with him and watch him concentrate so hard and mess up and be sour about "not being good enough".  I don't mind - I'm always having fun.  Besides, there are plenty of things that we do together which he is better at than I, and I have to resist the temptation to do the same thing when I make mistakes.  Part of being a perfectionist, I guess ;)  So dancing made me miss him, and my other friends from home, but it was also great fun and I'm so glad I went.  Finally at 12:15 I dragged Greta and Sarah away, reminding them of our need to get good rest before the test tomorrow.  Still, it was worth it - even if 1:15 was the latest I had stayed up yet in Munich.

Unfortunately my biological clock is fairly oblivious to what time I actually get to bed, and I woke up at 5:30 just the same as every other day (the rising sun shining through my thin curtains probably had a lot to do with it).  I curled up under the covers in denial until 7, but snoozing is never a good substitute for solid sleep.  I tried to be ambitious this morning and make myself an omelet, but my lack of experience and being in a rush (as I always am) backfired (as it usually does... you think I'd learn...) and I burned the bacon to a crisp, making a rather crunchy and char-flavored dish.  I choked it down regardless and rushed off to class, where (at least) this test was much easier than the last simply because I knew what to expect.  After class I was determined to take some serious steps towards shrinking the list of museums on my Munich bucket list, and therefore trekked off to the German Hunting and Fishing museum.  I was rather hoping for a more exotic selection, but, true to the name, the exhibits were constrained to trophies baggable within the borders of Germany - lots of mountain goats, wild boar, rabbits, deer (mostly just the antlers), ducks, eagles, even a stray raccoon or fox - as well as some rather impressive fish trophies (how about the six-foot catfish?) and all of the trappings that go with the hunting and fishing industries.  Most interesting was the Worpeltinger - a mystical beast which appears to be the demonic offspring of a rabbit and a chicken.  It has a rabbit's body, feathered wings, a cock's comb, and usually also fangs and antlers - like Germany's version of a jackalope, but much more frightening (just as German fairy tales are much more frightening than their Americanized versions - just read a literally-translated version of Hansel and Gretel or Rumpelstiltzken some time!).  The fossilized Giant Deer and Cave Bear skeletons were also quite interesting, and further piqued my interest in visiting the Paleontological Museum at some point.  Looking at the fishing section where they had a few exhibits on fly fishing and fly tying reminded me of my late grandfather, who really loved fly fishing and tried (unsuccessfully) to get me and my siblings interested in it several times.

After perusing the museum, which really wasn't that large, I still had plenty of daylight left, but didn't really feel like visiting another museum.  On somewhat of a whim, I decided to scout out another important item on my list - buying a dirndl.  A dirndl is the traditional Bavarian dress for females, just as Lederhose are traditional male attire.  Now, unlike traditional clothing in many areas, which is rarely seen except on high holidays and other solemn special occasions, it is not at all unusual to see a man in Lederhose, complete with suspenders, hat, white shirt and wool tube socks, waiting for the 8:15 S-Bahn into the city or walking down the street.  Dirndls are slightly less common, but walk into nearly any church which requires formal clothing and you will be greeted by a sea of the brightly-colored Tracht (German word for garb, usually used only for the traditional kind).  A dirndl basically consists of a short-sleeved cut-off blouse that reaches about the middle of your ribcage and is often quite low-cut (but really doesn't have to be), the main dress which is basically a sleeveless corset on top with a flowing skirt from the waist and can fall to anywhere from mid-thigh to ankle (the more traditional versions being, perhaps obviously, the more modest), and an apron, often made of fabric in a contrasting color or pattern.  When the apron strings are tied over the left hip, it means the woman is single; right hip, married; and behind the back for a widow (just as braided hair traditionally signifies an unmarried woman).  I have always been a fan of vintage-style clothing (and by vintage I mean going back several centuries, not decades) and looking slightly ridiculous/awesome, and one of my boyfriend's more secret interests is Renaissance ballroom dance, complete with (of course) period garb (sorry dear, cat's out of the bag now ;]).  So, I just HAD to buy a dirndl.  The only problem is that real high-quality dirndls can easily run up into the hundreds of euros, and many stores market them for the tourists, which makes them more expensive.  But after a bit of diligent Internet research, I had uncovered several possibilities for inexpensive dirndl purchases in the city, including a couple of second-hand stores.  My original plan was to scout the stores on this day, find out where the best deals were, then come back later to make the purchase.  When I walked into the first store to find that all of the dress-apron sets were in the 70-100€ price range, and the blouses were all an additional 25-35€, my dreams deflated a little.  In the next store, however, I was given hope by the sign attached to a rack outside that read "Sale: Dirndls 19,90€".  There were a couple of promising candidates on this rack, although many of them were only knee-length and with my lack of ladylike finesse (owing to the period of my life between the ages of 8 and 18 where my wardrobe consisted almost entirely of jeans and T-shirts) I try to avoid wearing anything in which I would have to keep my legs permanently crossed in order to be modest (because I simply won't remember to do so).  The next store on my list was Kleidermarkt - a second-hand store.  At first there didn't seem to be anything here, though there was a display in the window that advertised Tracht - the only thing I could find was a rack of dirndl sets for 70-80€ each.  But then I made the fortuitous discovery of the second floor - and hit gold.  Half of the floor consisted of "vintage" clothing - meaning mostly dirndls and lederhose.  It being a second-hand store, most of the selection was quite ugly, though the prices were certainly more reasonable.  I quickly discovered that none of the dirndl dresses that I would consider wearing could beat the 19,90€ price of Weisn Tracht & Mehr, the previous store - and I began scheming.  Who said I had to buy it all at one place?  I looked at the blouses - most of them were only 15€ compared to the 25€ of WT&M.  Why not buy my blouse here and my dress at the other store?  I had by this time decided to forgo the apron temporarily - I really couldn't justify spending 15€ on a simple piece of fabric I could make myself for less than $5 (my boyfriend actually suggested that I make the whole thing myself, but while his mother may be talented with a sewing machine, I am decidedly NOT).  Returning to the racks of dresses I found one which was remarkably similar to those on the sale rack at WT&M (though twice as expensive, and not new) in order to select which blouse would fit/look best underneath it.  It didn't take too long to find one that was a good balance between uncomfortably low-cut and buttoned to the neck.  Beaming, I made my purchase and tripped back across the street to WT&M (the three stores I looked at were all fortuitously placed in the same neighborhood).  To my delight, upon closer examination of the sale rack I found the perfect dress - just my size, mid-calf in length, with hooks for the decorative ribbon up the front (one of the most distinguishing features of the dirndl in my mind), and Bright Orange.  Yes, everyone, I found a Princeton Dirndl.  This will give me SO many more opportunities to wear it (not to mention making it exponentially more ridiculous and probably obnoxious).  I briefly also considered some dirndl sets that were priced at a much more reasonable 50€, but even the pretty blue apron with the black polka-dot dress couldn't distract me from the utter attractive ridiculousness of having a Bright Orange Dirndl.  Having decided to skip on the apron, I decided that an orange ribbon would be better at the moment than a contrasting color such as turquoise or black, but ribbon is easy to come by and I can change that later ;)  Glowing from the pride of my relative frugality and the success of my purchase, I walked on clouds all the way back to the S-Bahn.

Unfortunately my day was not destined to end on such a sweet note.  As part of my internship I am required to attend a three-day meeting in Heidelberg in mid-July, and I wanted to buy the tickets sooner rather than later, in order to get the best deal.  However, I had not fully thought out my course of action and foolishly went to the Central Train Station to make my purchase - at 4:15 on a Friday.  Not, as most of you could probably tell me, the brightest idea.  When my number finally came up after the excruciatingly long wait, I went up to the desk and tried to remember the times and routes I had researched the night before.  (I would have ordered the tickets online, but then you must have them mailed to you, and I wasn't sure whether they would arrive in Munich in time or whether I should send them to Clausthal, and I wasn't entirely positive of my address there yet...)  The woman was understandably harried and spoke quickly, too quickly for me to understand everything she was telling me.  My foolish pride prevented me from repeating queries of "wie bitte?" or "was?" until I understood (I didn't want to exasperate her unnecessarily), and the necessity of thinking on my feet ultimately resulted in my paying 15€ more than the online price had showed, and booking an incoming train that was at the very tail end of the allowed check-in time, though it wouldn't have been any problem for me to get up in time for an earlier bus/train.  In addition, now that I'm in Clausthal, I realize that my beginning point (the central bus station) isn't really the most convenient starting point for me, as it is a drive of several minutes from the University, so I will either have to take an additional bus or walk down to the bus station in the morning with all of my luggage (which will hopefully be not much - I think my backpack will suffice).  But, I will get where I'm going and things aren't QUITE as bad as they could be.  After all, I did it all alone and in German - I think that's called progress. :)

Berlin

Firstly, sorry that it's been so long since my last post, and without any warning.  As you can probably imagine, things got quite busy with the end of the Princeton in Munich program and my subsequent travel and adjustment to a new locale, but I've finally started to settle in here and can resume what is now more of a reminiscence than a chronicle.

After two weeks of class we had a long weekend on account of Pentecost - Monday was a national holiday.  To take advantage of this we had the opportunity to travel to Berlin for three days, and as has happened again and again, Papa Princeton was able to help us out by paying for our hostel stay, meaning that we only had to pay for the cross-country ticket.  We traveled there using the fastest train in Germany, the ICE, and crossed the entire country in only six hours.  The ticket cost 160€ - that's about $225, but not bad for crossing the entire country.  After all, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Friday the tenth was the day of our first test in class.  Despite having gotten to bed rather later than usual the night before, I was up at 5AM so that I would have enough time for everything before heading off to class, as we were leaving for Berlin in the afternoon and there were several chores (most notably laundry) that needed to be done before that.  I had really tried to think ahead by trying to do laundry on Thursday morning, but was foiled by the fact that someone stole the detergent that I had been planning to share with a classmate.  I had been warned that the laundry was quite complicated but didn't find the array of buttons, switches and lights TOO terribly bewildering.  The only confusing thing was that the display would say something like "24" and one assumed that that was the time left in the wash cycle, when really it was the time left in that PART of the wash cycle.  I never figured out how long the entire wash cycle was, I just knew it consisted of many parts and took more than an hour total.  I tried to be as efficient with my time as possible and do other necessary things like make my breakfast while my laundry was running, which turned out to be less efficient than I hoped because of the confusion with cycle time remaining.  I think someone must have opened the door on one of my loads before it was done the spin cycle because when I finally found it finished, my darks were soaking wet.  Not sure how to activate only the spin cycle, I tossed them all in the (equally complicated) dryer regardless and set it for as long as I could figure out, about two hours.  Unfortunately because of the thwarted spin cycle even this wasn't enough (when usually 45-60 minutes will suffice, even for jeans...) and I was forced to leave my laundry in the dryer when I left for class.  This of course didn't help my anxiety level or test preparedness, and I was understandably nervous for the test because I had no idea what to expect.  Sure enough I hadn't studied the right things and had a frightfully difficult time with the vocabulary (which is always the most difficult part for me even with my good memory, just because flashcards, which are my preferred method of vocabulary memorization, are so tedious), but still managed to come out of the test with a A- (barely, I assure you).  This sounds quite good until you realize that the scale only goes down to a B- (50% being a B=).

After class I called Hannes and tracked him and Mareike down in a nearby cafe where they had hidden to work on the Berlin schedule.  We discussed the possibilities of my travel to and from Clausthal (for example, I wanted to avoid having to book a hostel in Munich the last night if at all possible, and wanted to make sure I didn't get into Clausthal too late) and decided on the best options for me, but he was much too busy to come with me to the Hauptbahnhof to help me buy my ticket.  This made me quite nervous as I was sure I would mess something up, but he was confident in my ability and sent me off with a pat on the back and an encouraging smile.  Sure enough I stumbled through the transaction and came away with a ticket to and from Clausthal-Zellerfeld as well as a railway discount card that would get me 25% off any ticket for the summer... but still managed to bungle it.  I told the lady I would only be staying in Germany for two more months, so she made the discount card valid for two months... the 10th of June until the 9th of August.  Unfortunately I'm not leaving Germany until the 21st of August... let's hope this doesn't mess anything up too badly... :P

Returning to the Wohnheim, I packed my carry-on suitcase for Berlin (and even then it wasn't nearly full) and still had plenty of time to catch up on some emails.  This was an especially good day for me in this regard as I had received no less than THREE emails from good friends and was ecstatic to read them all several times over to soak in the news and familiar writing styles from home.  It really made me miss people, and be thankful for the magic of the internet that lets us be so close, even when we are so far away.  The last thing I did before heading off to meet the group was cook my supper of ravioli (pasta has become a common theme in my meals, as it is both easy and cheap).

Getting to the Hauptbahnhof went smoothly and we got there in plenty of time.  The only snag came when we actually boarded the train and found that the block of seats that we had reserved were not marked as such by some technical glitch and many already had occupants which Professor Rankin was so kind as to take the responsibility to gently but firmly evict.  I ended up with a window seat on the west side of the train, which had the mixed benefit of a beautiful view of the countryside with a permanent glare from the setting sun right in my eyes.  I'm still glad I got the window, though.  I spent some of the time reading The Case for Christ which I am reading with a couple of friends this summer, but didn't want to read too much since the other people reading the book are too busy to read it much, and we are trying to discuss it via a shared Google doc as we go.  Fortunately my seatmate was a very nice acquaintance and we could spend most of the time talking and getting to know each other better (in particular, we spoke about long-distance relationships.  He and his girlfriend have been together for over a year now and have attended different schools during the entire duration of the relationship, and I was most curious to hear how they coped with always being so far apart.  Their strategy is frequent communication - every day, in fact - something that I'm frankly not capable of or willing to commit to, so we'll see how things work out for me.  I'm not too worried :P).  Since it was a six-hour train ride (six hours across the entire country!  That's how long it takes to drive across MAINE!) and late, I also slept a bit, and so the time passed until our arrival in Berlin.  The first thing I noticed about this city is the massiveness - even the central train station was three floors!!  Fortunately the hostel was right in the center of town, so a mere one stop with the S-Bahn brought us to our final destination for the night.  We had to walk along a canal to get to the hostel and the lights dancing on the water were quite pretty, though I was by this point very tired.  We split up at the hostel into several groups - my roommates for the weekend were four girls from my spring German 102-5 class, Greta, Kathy, Olivia, and Claudia.  I was quite happy with the arrangement and we traipsed off to bed as soon as possible - even though that meant dragging our luggage up five flights of stairs.

Thanks to my usual sleep schedule, I was up the next morning at 7 whether I liked it or not.  I managed to snooze until 8, but still had a solid 90 minutes to get ready before we met for our first day's activities.  We all bought our breakfast from a bakery in the train station - unfortunately the pastry I selected looked much better than it tasted, so I consoled myself with an ice cream cone from a shop that was for some reason open at 10AM.  We started our day with a tour of the city center. The weather was nice and the buildings were pretty, so it was fairly enjoyable.  Then we split up to go to one of several museum choices - I went with Hannes and a large contingent to visit the Deutsche Historische Museum, and couldn't have been happier.  The museum had exhibit displays in both German and English which provided a fantastic summary of German history since the first centuries AD, and the artifacts themselves were naturally also fascinating.  They had one of the original Gutenberg Bibles, a copy of Martin Luther's theses, several suits of armor for men and horses (one of my favorite aspects) and a wonderful array of artifacts pertaining to daily life in the Germany of the Middle Ages.  This has always been the most fascinating time period to me for many reasons, so I was delighted to read more about it and would gladly have spent the entire day at the museum.  As it was I was one of the last members of the group to emerge into the museum lobby, and then only reluctantly and after hurrying through the 15th-20th centuries.  Perhaps most unfortunately, the exhibits after WWI were in a separate room that I didn't even get to look in, so I missed out completely on this perhaps most interesting period of German history.  But we had far too much to do to stay in one museum all day, so we scurried off to meet the other members of the group.  If I ever come back to Berlin I may return.  Though I am by no means a fan of history in general, I really like the summary that a museum can give, and history museums are some of my favorite museums (behind science museums).

We met the rest of the group in an open-air market, where we ate lunch (I found a cheap pizzeria and was quite content).  Most of the stalls sold handiwork, but there was also an area of people who had all kinds of antiques, mostly WWII-era.  I made a mental note to come back here souvenir hunting, particularly for my WWII-buff father.  After lunch we set off for another part of the city to do yet more exploring: this time we visited the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the former Berlin Wall, and other city-center historical sites.  This part of our exploration ended at the Holocaust Memorial, one of the best-done memorials I have ever visited.  It covers about the area of a small office building and the memorial consists entirely of cold, upright blocks of granite of gradually increasing height placed in an eerily exact grid on undulating cobblestone ground.  It effectively conveyed the sense of being lost, identity-less, cut off and bewildered.  Perhaps appropriately, just as we reached the memorial it began to rain.  After exploring the above-ground part for awhile, those who wanted visited the information center located underneath.  Overall the entire complex is very well done and sobering.  The information center had a timeline of Hitler's genocidal rule, biographies on specific Jewish families from all over Europe and their stories of surviving (or not) the war, copies of postcards and letters sent from concentration camps and ghettos to the outside world, and one room where the death count of Jews from each country in Europe was estimated.  The entire history of the event - that one man would set out to single-handedly wipe out an entire ethnic group from Europe and eventually the world - is so surreal that more than facts and staggering statistics, it is these individual artifacts of everyday life and people's impressions that are needed to bring home the reality of it all. I am even more curious now to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., to see the similarities and differences between the views of the two societies.

Once I finally emerged from the Information Center, I discovered that I was quite alone - the others had all left quite a while before and our instructions were to find supper before our next meeting point.  This was a daunting task for someone of my small-town background and I texted Mareike for advice, but before receiving an answer I found a couple of the members of my group and we managed to scout out a reasonably-priced Chinese restaurant.  I was really craving Asian food for some reason, and while what we found wasn't anything special, it was pretty good.  The sauce was a little spicy for my tastes (yes, but even medium salsa is a little spicy for my tastes, I'm so completely not spice-tolerant) so to get rid of the burning sensation in my mouth I just had to buy some ice cream ;)  We met afterwards at Potsdamer Platz, which used to be the Times Square of Europe in the 20s and 30s, then was destroyed in the war, leveled and deemed "no-mans land" during the time of the Berlin Wall as it divided East and West Germany, and finally revitalized all at once in the 90s in an attempt to bring it back to its former glory.  Everything seems a little artificial since all of the buildings are less than 20 years old, but it's a regular tourist hotspot and there's tons to see and buy.  Next to the Berlin Wall memorial was a man dressed as a member of the DDR State Security (Stasi) advertising the opportunity to get your passport stamped, as you would have had to to cross from West to East Germany.  It was necessary to get 7 different stamps!  One from each of the four sectors (American, British, French, and Soviet), as well as one for East Germany and West Germany in general, and the stamp from the particular crossing point you were using.  I would have done it, but 10 Euros seemed a little steep for a piece of paper with stamps on it...  Once we had all gathered we went over to one of the buildings on Potsdamer Platz and took a remarkably fast elevator up to the 93-meter-high observation deck from which to observe the city (aerial views of major cities seems to be a theme this summer...).  Berlin isn't as pretty or as green as Munich, but that's rather to be expected.  The pictures were cool anyway, but the wind was blowing strong and we soon got cold on the exposed observation deck.  Professor Rankin escorted a couple members of the group back to the hostel, and we saw another group of PiMers on the way (whom I unashamedly stalked ;]).  By the time we got back, I was exhausted from being on my feet all day.  The grad students were boldly (and probably foolishly) organizing an outing to a bar/club later that night, but my being tired gave me an excuse to skip out on what would undoubtedly not have been a very enjoyable evening.  From the stories I heard later, it wasn't very enjoyable for anyone else, either.  Let's just say that American college students have a very difficult time engaging in normal, healthy, mediated drinking behavior.  Case in point: certain members of the group pre-gamed (drank excessive amounts of alcohol beforehand) the bar. *facepalm* Basically, I didn't miss much.

The next morning was Sunday, and Professor Rankin (unsurprisingly) knew of a church in Berlin that he wanted to attend.  Not having been to church in a couple of weeks (the previous Sunday we traveled to Neuschwanstein and the one before that we were flying to/arriving in Germany) I was more than willing to go, since not much else would be happening on a Sunday morning and the last thing I wanted to do was bum around the hostel the entire morning.  What surprised me were the other people who also wanted to attend: nearly all of my roommates as well as several other group members.  I wanted to make sure I had a good breakfast beforehand as I supposed that the service might go well into the noon hours and I didn't want to be distracted by a growling stomach.  Fortunately the hostel offered a breakfast buffet for 5.50 Euros - unfortunately it wasn't very good.  I ordered the buffet and even threw in some eggs for extra protein, reasoning that I could eat 7 Euros worth of food, but none of it was all that notable.  The eggs looked good but had too much pepper for me, and even after filling up on several pieces of toast with jam and bowls of yogurt with musli I didn't really feel like I had gotten what I paid for.  We met at 9 to travel to church and after navigating a combination of S-Bahns and U-Bahns we finally arrived at the church, "Lukas-Gemeinde".  It was a non-denominational evangelical church much like Calvary Chapel or Westerly Road (the churches I normally attend while home and at school, respectively), belonging to the association of churches in Germany called "free churches" (which I am assuming has many the same connotations as non-denominational).  The dress was relatively casual although most people wore button-down shirts or skirts/dresses, so we fit in perfectly.  Professor Rankin even met one of his college roommates at the church, and from what I gathered he knew that his friend attended this church but didn't know whether he would be around this particular Sunday.  The service was also much like what I was accustomed to, and I even recognized a couple of the songs - namely, "Open the Eyes of my Heart, Lord", and "Holy, Holy, Holy".  Singing along in German is SO much easier than in Russian!! Probably the alphabet thing has something to do with that ;) After a few worship songs one of the elders got up and made some announcements, including a baby dedication and prayer for a specialist doctor in the congregation who was being sent to Afghanistan to perform reconstructive surgery on wounded soldiers and civilians.  Then the pastor came up and spoke on I Cor. 3:16-17, where it talks about us being the Temple of the Holy Spirit (due to it being Pentecost weekend).  I understood about 70% of the sermon, which was entirely in German of course, but the combination of travel fatigue and my long day on Saturday worked against me and I had a hard time keeping my eyes open.  Of course, following along while falling asleep is hard enough in one's mother tongue, forget a foreign language!  As a result, I don't remember much about the pastor's point, but it was nice to be back in church anyway.  (And I wasn't the only one who spent the whole time fighting sleep - Dan was on one side of me and Sheng on the other and I caught them both nodding off at one point or another.)

After church Professor Rankin, being the wonderfully generous man that he is, treated us all to lunch back at Potsdamer Platz.  We went to an Italian restaurant called Vapiano's, where I ordered a Cesar salad that proved to be quite enough for me (especially after intentionally having stuffed myself at breakfast).  I shared a slice of cheesecake with Claudia and Dan for dessert, but it was disappointingly bland.  Afterwards I was planning to rejoin the main group who had gone to a street festival, but Professor Rankin's suggestion of visiting Gedänkniskirche (the famous ornate church which was destroyed by Allied bombs during the war and retained in its broken state as a memorial) sounded much more interesting and I decided to do that instead.  It was quite a disappointment when we reached the site only to discover that the church is currently undergoing renovations (renovating a blown-up building... hmmm...) and the iconic jagged outline is obscured by the scaffolding and temporary structure they have erected around it for the purpose.  Nonetheless it was interesting to see the information-memorial inside and the new church that was built beside it, and I bought a postcard with the destroyed church on it so I suppose that will have to suffice.  Since we couldn't see much, the visit didn't take us long and we were soon ready to find the group once more for a last bit of guided-tour and museum-visiting.  We walked to the nearest S-Bahn stop through the Tierpark, which means "animal park" but is really just the name for the largest park in Berlin.  We did pass the zoo and I looked at admission prices, as we had Monday free and I was considering going to the zoo, but the 10-Euro admission price (even for students!) convinced me that my time would be much better spent seeing something else (however, when I later found out that the Berlin Zoo is one of the largest zoological gardens in the WORLD, I had second thoughts about my decision...).  The Tierpark in general was nice, but nothing too special - not any prettier than Nymphenberg Park or English Garden in Munich.

We found the rest of the group near the famous East-to-West Germany crossing point, Checkpoint Charlie.  (Now, it also happened to be right outside of a Starbucks with free Wi-Fi, which I promptly took advantage of with my iPod touch to check email. ;]) We saw the sign that says "You are now leaving the American Sector" in English, French, and Russian (why did it not need to say it in German?  Was it just self-evident to them?) and were going to visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum until we realized that it cost 6 Euros even for students.  Professor Rankin and the grad students were quite upset about such blatant extortionism, since the museum was neither very large nor very good, in their opinion, so we contented ourselves with pictures of the guard booth and sign instead.  Then it was time to split up into groups once again to visit museums based on interest - out of the options (Jewish Museum, some cathedrals, the Stasi Museum, and some other random art museums) the Stasi Museum sounded most interesting, but unfortunately it turned out to be little more than an exhibit while the actual museum was under construction.  Nonetheless it was somewhat instructive, as far as the exhibits had English descriptions, and having watched the movie "Das Leben der Anderen" ("The Lives of Others") about the DDR, I had a little more background to the subject.  The fact that the Stasi (state police) had a file on every single citizen or extended visitor to East Germany was the most mind-boggling thing.  Professor Rankin is even pretty sure that they have a file on him somewhere due to a visit of a couple of weeks in East Berlin back around 1986.  The size of the exhibit meant that it didn't take very long to see everything and I was soon back on the street wondering what to do next.  I returned to the Starbucks to look up possibilities for Monday online and discovered two particular treasures in the DDR museum and the just-opened Computer Game museum, and decided that since it was already getting on towards 6:00 (the time when most museums close) it really wasn't worth it to try and visit another one that day.  Instead I decided to do a little souvenir shopping, though I knew that the stores around Checkpoint Charlie were likely to be quite expensive.  In particular I wanted something with the iconic East-Germany crossing-light silhouette on it: Der Ampelmann.  www.ampelmann.de And they had exactly what I was looking for - bookmarks, pins, earrings, signs, calendars, you name it.  Success was achieved for only a small price and I soon strutted victoriously back to the hostel.  Our next meeting point was at 7:30 at a pizzeria, but because of my two large meals already that day I planned to skip that and only join them when they went to a Biergarten (an outdoor area where you can bring your own food or buy it there and they specialize in selling - what else - beer) a couple of hours later.  This gave me enough time to do my homework reading assignment and take a 1-hour nap before our supposed meeting point, but of course nothing ever goes according to plan.  At 9:15 I texted Hannes and asked whether the group was heading to the Biergarten yet - he replied that they were still at the pizzeria (but my impression was that they would leave soon).  Armed with only my trusty map and good sense of direction, I found my way to the restaurant only to discover that everyone had only JUST gotten their pizza after an excruciating 90-minute wait.  I sat down anyway and was only going to observe, but did partake in a couple of pieces of pizza when it was offered to me.  When it became clear that we weren't leaving right away I was even prevailed upon, against my better judgement, to order a plain cheese pizza for myself, since it turned out that Princeton was paying 5 Euros towards everyone's pizza and a plain cheese 10" cost 5,40€.  Finally at nearly eleven everyone was ready to pay and go, and my pizza ended up coming just as we were all leaving (I asked for a box and devoured it as quickly as possible).  Some brave souls still wanted to brave a Biergarten, but I knew that I wouldn't really enjoy anything this late and I wanted to have as much time as possible in the morning for museum exploration before we had to meet for our train back to Munich.  So, I joined the group heading back to the hostel, which we reached via tram this time, and clambered into bed at midnight.  The evening wasn't a total loss - I got a pizza nearly for free (nothing special, but I love pizza) and to hang out with the group, which is (nearly) always enjoyable.  One of the other members of the group asked me as we were walking back, "Did you come to the pizzeria late?" I answered affirmatively, wondering why he was asking.  He said, "I thought so.  We had been there for a bit when I thought, 'Where's Erin? I haven't heard her laugh for awhile.' But then I looked down the table and you were sitting there at the end, so I was confused."  Well, it looks like it doesn't take long for people to figure me out - this particular individual is someone I hadn't hung out with hardly at all before the program, and already he had learned that I am almost always pinpointable - one only has to be quiet for a moment and listen for my laugh. -_-

Monday.  Our last day in Berlin, and finally we are given a bit of free time to do whatever we would like.  I had finally decided on the Computer Game museum, the only downside being that it opened at 10 which gave me a couple of solid hours in the morning.  I got up at 8, packed my suitcase and stored it downstairs, but even doing it as slowly as possible meant that I checked out at 9.  Returning to the train station of the first day I revisited the bakery and purchased both breakfast and lunch for the train (the pastry I chose this time was much better, thankfully).  Since it was only about a fifteen minute train ride from this train station to the Computer Game museum, I stopped off about halfway to scope the antiques market, but the sellers were in the middle of setting up their wares, so I decided to return afterwards to buy my souvenirs.  Even with all of the dawdling I could manage I ended up at the Computer Game museum about fifteen minutes before it opened, but the wait was worth it.  It only opened in January of this year and was quite small, but all of the exhibits had English displays and it was very instructive to read about the history of the computer and video game.  In true German spirit many of the displays were interactive and I played some of the original arcade games (Centipede, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong), all of which I remember playing on the Atari that was my first video-game system... but I date myself.  There were exhibits on everything from landmark games to creation of a video game to aspects of video game fan culture to video games in the DDR (a highly regulated industry, like all of them).  All in all, though, the museum only took me two hours to thoroughly explore everything, which was just the right amount of time to make it back to the antiques market to meet my friends.  I found the perfect souvenir for Daddy (the identity of which I won't disclose here to avoid spoiling the surprise ;]) as well as a very pretty pair of earrings for me.  There was quite a bit of jewelry there, which naturally made me think of my sister, but I'm so bad at figuring out her tastes that I didn't dare buy her anything until I had spoken with her to get a better idea of what she wanted (not that that would necessarily help).  Then it was back to the hostel once again to gather everyone and head out.  As always with a group this size (nearly everyone had elected to come to Berlin, so we were about 40) there was a lot of waiting around, but we still made it to the Hauptbahnhof in plenty of time for a "last meal" in Berlin (I found a pizza-pastry at a bakery and - of course - more ice cream ;]).  The train arrived exactly on time (it's Germany.  Everything's exactly on time) and we clambered on, trying to get in first to avoid the situation of the ride up.  The seating situation was better this time and we soon settled in for the long ride back.  I had set up a Skype date with my boyfriend for the next morning (Monday, being the 13th, marked 3 months of dating - collective *awww* :P) so I knew I wouldn't get too much sleep Monday night, and in light of this I tried to sleep on the train, but I have a very hard time falling asleep when I can't get horizontal, so it didn't work too well, regardless of whether I tried the window, the table, or my seatmate's shoulder as a support.  But the scenery was pretty, and I had my iPod for music, and the pickle-and-egg sandwich that I had bought as lunch wasn't even that bad (really! it wasn't!), so it was an overall pleasant journey.  For some reason the S-Bahns weren't in operation when we got back to Munich, so we had to take a bus back to the Wohnheim, but that was all figured out by the grad students and required minimal thinking from us.  On the way back we passed a store that seemed to sell exclusively dirndls, which reminded me how badly I wanted one, and I made a note to go dirndl-shopping sometime before I left Munich.  At 10pm I finally crawled into bed back in Munich, and for some reason I felt like I was back home. :)