Bitte Schön

Imagine (just imagine) you don't know any German, except "thank you", "danke." You move to Germany and order some food. You get it and you say, "danke." They reply, "bitte." It's a good assumption that this means, "you're welcome."

Great, now you know two German words.

Next, you try "danke schön" (thank you very much). You get back, "bitte schön". You figure that means "you're very welcome." Aw, that's cute. You start to hear it all the time. "Very welcome, very welcome, very welcome."

Only, the next time you order your Döner, you forget to say anything. You still hear "bitte schön"." Is he being smart with you? They start to say "bitte schön" before you have time to say anything "thank you"s at all. What's with these people? Are they being spitful? Imagine hearing "you're welcome" without saying "thank you".

Turns out, this is one of many phrases that doesn't translate between cultures. From what I've experienced, it's something like, "glad to have helped you." "Bitte schön" is just one of many endearing things about this culture that I'm going to miss. I'm already nostalgic.

The Luckiest Unlucky Day of my Life

15 July 2011. Scheduled to leave Frankfurt Airport at 17:20 for Madrid, Spain. Everything’s planned the night before. When I get out of school, several options for catching the train to the airport, when my plane leaves, when it arrives, and when and where I find my hostel. I get out of school at 13:00. I have the option of catching a train at 13:04 (too early), 14:04 (too late), or 13:34 (just perfect). 13:34 was so perfect, in fact, that I had time to run by the bookstore and pick up a special order (a French-German picture dictionary – what? Don’t give an aspiring polyglot access to pretty reference books.)

So I parked my bike outside the Hauptbahnhof and strolled inside, contemplating whether I had time to grab something to eat or if I should wait for the train. I stayed put and the train ride went smoothly. I arrived at Frankfurt Flughaven at 14:45. I boarded my plane… oh, wait, no I didn’t. Because there are two Frankfurt airports. The other one was only accessible by a 13 euro bus.

I wasn’t even in the right terminal to catch the bus to go to the right airport. So I hopped a shuttle to the other terminal and went inside to look for a red-shirted employee to ask for directions. Couldn’t find one. Minutes go by. Go back outside. Ask a man. Says, “yeah it’s the N-25 and it blah blah blah, oh that’s it, right there! (Points to one of many white buses). It’s the white bus.” Guh. I get in line for the bus he pointed at. Wait a few minutes. Not the right bus. Head to the correct bus; walking not running. If I miss it, no big deal, right? Buses come every 10 minutes, and I have two hours. Only, the sign says this bus ride is 1.5 hours. That can’t be right? Read it again. It’s right.

So I get to the Frankfurt Hahn Airport (the most liberal use of the word “airport” that was ever blogged) five minutes after my gate closed. Found the German TSA-inspection. Hand over my boarding pass. “You must go through Passport check.”

I hate planes.

17:07. Gate closed seventeen minutes ago. Thirteen minutes to departure. Line for passport check hasn’t moved in five minutes. Stop an employee. Explain to him my situation, and he expedites the check. Run to the TSA. Run to the gate. The “closed” gate is still open with 20 people in line. I made it. I made my plane. I cannot explain how unhopeful I was. For a good 30 minutes, I really thought I was going to have to catch a bus back to Frankfurt and a thirteen hour train to Madrid or not go at all. I made it.

So. Much. Win.

Weekend 6: Amsterdam Part II

Amsterdam was a blast the second time around, despite being a shorter trip. We left Saturday morning (I and two friends, Kelley and Shelby) by train. One of them didn't have a train pass for the second leg of the trip, so there was some sneaking around, but I won't go in to detail about it. It was thrilling, though. Looking for some playing cards, we met three German guys, all around 20, and started playing Circle of Death, explaining the rules in broken German and slow English, at about 10 in the morning with warm Jäger. They got a little too rowdy and starting yelling German obscenities at the top of their lungs, but bless the little train people, they didn't bat an eye. We dodged them as we got off the train.

We walked around the city. I was quite cocky, as I had been there before. We made a point to the I AMsterdam sign and we got lost on the way. It was a short day, as Kelley left that night, and Shelby and I had a hotel outside of the city. All in all, we had a good time. I really like the city.

Amsterdam Part II Pictures

Amsterdam Part II BGs

Spaghetti-Eis

This is spaghetti-eis, a typical treat here in Germany, from what I gather. It is vanilla ice cream, run through a spaghetti maker, with raspberry topping and shaved white chocolate as the parmesan cheese. As it is quite a novelty, I wasn't expecting it to taste that great, but I was so wrong. The best part was the secret stash of homemade, not-too-sweet whipped cream under the ice cream. Going back? You bet.

Taking Pictures

When I take or crop pictures, Professor Oak's voice pops in my head with advice about the placement of subjects. Also, how many birds are in the background and if there are any Pokémon-shaped smoke clouds in the background.

Die Noodle Sind Grün Noch

I love being able to have remedial conversations in German.

My host brother, Yasin (age 3): I'm making noodles. (points to a pot of rainwater and grass in the backyard).

Me: Oh cool! May I have some?

Yasin: No. They aren't done yet. They're still green.

Me: When will they be done?

Yasin: Four minutes.

Me: (begin making ticking sound)

Yasin: No, you are not the clock! That is the clock! (points to a Spongebob ball)

Bananasaft

Banana juice is delicious. Banana juice and hefeweisen is even better.

Commissary!

Taking a German to the American Commissary is some of the most fun I've had all year.

Things Hasan (age 20, German-born and raised) had never heard of include:

- Red Mountain Dew

- Cheese in a can

- Double Stuffed Oreos (or Peanut Butter Oreos, Low Fat Oreos, Mint Chocolate Oreos, Mini Oreos, Oreo Crackers)

- Pizza Pringles (or any of our 20 flavors besides BBQ, Regular, and Sour Cream)

- Hot Cheetos, hot Funyuns

- Marshmallow fluff

- Fruit Gushers

- Toast Strudels

- Graham cracker pie crust

- Pumpkin pie

- Carrot cake

- Cake icing in a can

- STARBURSTS (seriously?)

- Fruit juice concentrate in a can

- Cookie Crisps

- Twizzlers

And I thought he was going to collapse at the sight of our ice cream. Edy's Mint Chocolate Brownie, Edy's Butterfinger, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, Edy's SAMOAS Ice Cream. We don't have room for it, but he got it anyway.

Also, he eats Halal, so he's never had ribs or bacon, so I got Morningstar Veggie bacon and ribs so he can at least have an idea. And he tried his first Bud Light. Yes, it tastes like water. Yes, I love it anyway.

My Hair

This has been my theme song the entire trip. Featured almost every time I bike home at night or paint on the walls at Messplatz.

Hair - Lady Gaga

Extra Credit

So, because I was placed in a class higher than my competence (because I am between two levels and I'd rather stay higher than go lower), my test grades are all Bs. Or their equivalent of Bs. I think. The system's complicated, and it doesn't help that I can't convince anyone to explain it to me in English. That's not how we do things here.

Because I aim for higher than Bs, I started asking what I could do to help my grade. Apparently, I can do a presentation every day until I leave. Done. Tomorrow, 15 minute lecture on Japanese. So that's what I'm up to.

Wer braucht Küchen? (Who needs cake?)

It was our neighbor's birthday.

Wallpapers cont.

My best pictures.

Heidelberg Wallpapers.

Munich Wallpapers.

Berlin Wallpapers.

Amsterdam Wallpapers.

Paris Wallpapers.

The Fourth in Germany

DSCF1973 a video by Abiogenic on Flickr.

Celebrated Independence Day on the American military base in Heidelberg. I couldn't stop smiling. (Profanity at the end - so you know, keep it down or turn it off a few seconds before the end.)

4th of July auf Deutsch

4th of July Meal:

Deviled eggs

Green bean casserole

Mashed sweet potatoes with pecans

Corn on the cob

Trains

One of my favorite things about travelling to a different city every weekend is the train ride. I know this doesn’t seem like it is much fun, but if you like TV and organizing files on your computer as much as I do, it’s a good time. Best of all, I just recently figured out that I don’t need to spend 4.5 euros per trip for a seat reservation. I just get on whatever train I want (with my 15 day pass, it doesn’t matter where I go or what train I take) and sit in the floor by the door. If you sit on the correct side, you don’t have to get up when the train makes a stop. The floor is more comfortable and I have more room. So much win.

Also, the train I caught to go back to Heidelberg from Munich – I caught it 4 minutes before it left, 40 minutes after I decided to leave. That is so satisfying – to just jump on a train and travel somewhere, not needing directions or help deciding which train to take.

Weekend 5: München (Munich)

After school on Friday, I rushed to the Hauptbahnhof (HBF – main train station) on my bike and grabbed a train to Munich. I got in to the city early that night and found my hostel. I planned my Saturday over a pizza in my hostel bar. My room had 6 beds, and as I’m used to rooms with 30-60 beds, I found it a little foreign.

I woke up early on Saturday and caught a bus to the Munich HBF, where I joined a Dachau Concentration Camp tour. It was 20 minutes away by train. The train station that we traveled to was the same building that many prisoners arrived in. The original building is still there, and very representative of Nazi architecture. Dachau was… I can’t describe it. The tour was very interesting, but it’s hard to say that I had a good time. I’m glad I saw it. I walked in a gas chamber (it is disputed as to whether this one was ever used), which says “shower” in German above the door. I saw the ovens, crematorium, and the wall where most of the prisoners were murdered if they didn’t die of starvation or disease. Needless to say, my weekend wasn’t one of cupcakes and puppy dogs and smiles.

Something you maybe wouldn’t know unless you visited the site: the surrounding areas are residential. Some houses even overlook the camp from their top floors. Many of the houses in the town were built for camp refugees after the war.

After that, I walked another tour of downtown Munich, one called the Hitler and the Third Reich Tour. We saw the first headquarters of the Nazi Party, which now has an Apple store in the ground floor. We walked in the beer hall where Hitler had the first meeting of the Nazi Party (it has huge chandeliers and flags hanging from poles off the walls; see pictures). I walked by Hitler’s offices (now a very prestigious music school), and I saw a lot of rally points made famous by photographs and newsreels. My guide also pointed out the café where Hitler drank coffee or tea or something and plotted his rise to power every afternoon.

After the tours, I got dinner at an Italian joint. Met up with Beth who was also in town and we had drinks at a place I learned about on the tour – an old after-work pub for Nazi Bureaucrats. I went back to my hostel. Woke up on Sunday late and made my way to the Nymphenburg Schloß (castle), in front of which was a large pond with some very greedy swans. They thought the trash I had was food and barked at me for a while. They almost bit someone. Located in the castle was the Museum of Nature and Men, which was very interesting.

Munich General Pictures
Dachau Pictures
Museum of Nature and Men Pictures

Commissary

Going to the Commissary after being in Germany for 5 weeks is really strange. I was bombarded by Lay's and Nabisco and Kraft and Kellogg's. OMG, I have to go back. Also, for Taco Bell. I'm working on getting a pass so I can bring people with me. While I was there, I got Vlassic Sweet Relish, Cambell's Cream of Mushroom, and *wait for it* pecans! A whole delicious bag of pecans!

Weekend 4: BERLIN

So, Thursday was a Feiertag (holiday) at my language school, so I elected to skip Friday and leave for Berlin Thursday morning. My hostel was amazing, as I posted. The first night, I met up with Beth, who went with me to Paris, and we saw the outside of Checkpoint Charlie.

I hit the hay early and woke up the next morning to activate my three-day museum pass (9.5 euros) for free entry to most museums. I headed to the Natural History Museum, one of the best in the world. I got to see a dodo, the tallest dinosaur on display in the world, and perhaps the most famous fossil in the world (see pics, and you'll see me with it). I didn't even know it was there, until I saw a picture of it in the gift shop and asked about it. I would have kicked myself if I had missed it. I get to see another one in Munich this weekend.

After that, we aimed to grab lunch somewhere, but it began hailing, so we took cover in the café at the museum. Once it cleared, we went south to the site of the former SS and Gestapo headquarters, now a huge, free museum called the Topography of Terror. You can ID it in the War Museum pictures by the outside of the building: it consists of glass exhibits in front of a long, solid piece of the Berlin Wall (which are everywhere in the city, by the way).

Around 5 pm we met up with some other classmates at the Museum Island in the middle of the city and checked out the Neues Museum (under Misc. Museums). Afterwards, we ate some pretty German-y German food (my ice cream sundae is in the General pictures).

The next day, I headed out by myself to the Berlin Museum of Technology (under Misc. Museums). It covered mainly the history of transportation (ships to planes and cars), which doesn't interest me that much, but I got to see some neat things, nonetheless. After that, I wound up in the CSD Parade (short for Christopher Street Day - that's what the Germans call Gay Pride - after the Stonewall Riots). I stayed there to check that out for a while, then got very lost and wound up with a German Lion King VHS in my backpack that I spent my last euro on. ATMs were scarce, and so were metro stations, so I ended up walking for 2 hours in the middle of the city. Took a break at my hostel and then I headed back out for German comic books. Later that night, I checked out the inside of the Checkpoint Charlie museum, and snuck a picture or two, although I was not supposed to.

The last day, I rushed to see the Berlin Ethnological Museum, which is the biggest in Europe. This was easily the best museum I have been to in Europe. The place itself was in the beautiful middle of nowhere, so I got some pictures of that. Inside was amazing as well. I was pressed for time and my camera was dying, so I documented all I could and grabbed a nice guidebook on the way out to read later. Grabbed pizza with Beth and visited the Medical History Museum at this medical school. Saw some crazy specimens that I couldn't take pictures of, like hydrocephalic babies in glass, spines with scoliosis, and huge tumors. The whole thing was very unsettling, but very interesting.

Got my train and now I'm back.

Here are the photos:

General Berlin
Ethnologisches Museum
Misc. Museums
War Museums
Natural History Museum
Berlin CSD (Gay Pride) Parade (SFW except for one guy's butt)

Next on the agenda:

This weekend, Munich.

8-10, Amsterdam (again).

15-17, Madrid.

Also, I'm celebrating the 4th here by cooking Amerikanisch Food for my host family.

Grocery Shopping

Today, I went grocery shopping. Today's exchange rate is ~1 euro to 1.5 dollars.

Bullit Energy Drink: .59 euro

Pineapples: .59 euro each

Sample chocolates: 1.29 euro for nine

Nutella: 1.11 euro a jar

0.7 Liters Jäger: 8.88 euro

6 of these pizzas (they were prettier before they were smooshed): 1.89 euro

I've been busy all week, and I haven't had time to post pictures... :(

Wrote this yesterday before Trivia Night at O'Reilly's. The one on the bottom with the Japanese on each side is the new one. Above it is one from two weeks ago.

How many languages does it take to eat Italian food?

Confidence building exercise:

Sit at the end of a table with 15 international students in a foreign country, making sure that no one around you has the same mother tongue as you. See how many languages you can speak a few sentences of and make a complete fool of yourself in every language but your own.

Done. French, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, German accounted for.

Berlin First Thoughts

While I wait on my classmates to get into town and situated, I have some initial thoughts on Berlin. First, the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) is HUGE. Easily five stories and more like a mall than a transportation hub. It had a glass ceiling, and combined with the prettiest day Germany's had in a week, this was easily the most beautiful train station/airport I've been to thus far in Europe.

Second, it may be the fact that I know a bit of the language, at least enough to recognize words I'm looking for, but this town just seems more inviting. It definitely seems bigger (protip: 50% more people than Paris). My hostel is far nicer as well. Like, it's got pinball machines, a nightclub, co-ed dorms, private rooms, no charge for lockers, and it just looks a lot prettier than the one I had in Amsterdam.

EDIT: Spoke too soon. Pouring rain.

Berlin Morgen

I'm off to Berlin tomorrow morning. I had a great day today, touring an old prison for students (!) at the University of Heidelberg, browsing for used books, and eating some pretty delicious sushi with my classmates, many of whom I saw for the last time. ;-;

Got in around midnight, and I have a 7 am train to catch to Mannheim then to Berlin for a four-day weekend. By coincidence, four of my classmates will be in the city, and we're planning on trekking to the museums together. When I get time, I'll post some pictures of this week, and of course, of Berlin. Now, I've got to pack.

I am aware that Flickr is being a pain and not showing some of my pictures. I'm working on fixing this problem.

Messplatz Revisited

Found another section of Messplatz yesterday, with what looks like a permanent mural.

Been Stormy Here...

Second Week Mural

Thoughts on the Germans

1. Germans don't get in line. If you stand behind someone who is waiting to be attended to, you are likely to have someone slowly stand beside you and slide their way in front of you. They think nothing of it. I'm starting to think this is why I wait so long in McDonald's. It's not that the service is slow (although it is, because they don't put you to the side to wait for your food, you just stand in front of the register and no one else can order), it's that I constantly have people cutting in front of me, and they do it in a way that make you question whether or not you really were there first.

2. Books. Books everywhere. People with their noses in books walking on the sidewalk. Bookstores lining the streets. Bookshelves in the alleys where one can donate a book and take one in return.

3. Travel agencies (Reisebüros) are so common, I couldn't find my way to school without passing four if I tried. Hell, there's one on my street, and there isn't a single other non-residential building for blocks. I don't know if they just haven't caught on to William Shatner's Priceline Negotiations yet, or what. Maybe if Shatner was replaced with Hasselhoff?

4. Cash only. Everywhere. It's killing me, because ATMs aren't as common as Reisebüros, and when you find one, they don't charge 2 euros, they charge 5, minimum, and a percentage of the withdrawal after a certain amount. Grocery stores are usually cash only. Many restaurants/pubs are cash only, and they give you your change right there at the table. They bring a bag of money with you and go around the table taking the cash for the bills, just as if you were ordering. This doesn't make sense to me, with regards to tips, because I would think people would be more inclined to tip better if they can't see the physically money (i.e. they are writing a number on a credit card receipt). At least, I think that way.

5. Germans like their Nutella. Actually, Europeans like their Nutella. And why shouldn't they? It's delicious. I can be bought in gallon jars here, or whatever a gallon is in their wacky system.

6. If you attempt to talk to a German three-year-old and butcher the language, he will cock his head like a puppy and go "was?" It's so damn cute... And no matter how much you say "I don't speak German very well, you must talk slower", he will chat on with you endlessly, like a radio announcer or something.

BOOKS

I went to a used bookstore today. America: please use all of Europe as an example and fill your towns with bookstores. I live in a city over four times larger than Heidelberg, and I have to drive 30 minutes to visit a bookstore, which is a major chain. In the Hauptstraße (main street) here, there are bookstores, new and used, independent and large chains, on every block. The used bookstores sell books ranging from 1 euro, to hundreds, and they often sell second-hand DVDs as well.

Here's what I got (the Princess and the Frog DVD was new from another store, but it was ON SALE):



That, TV fans, is a German copy of The X-Files Season 6, Episodes 13 to 16. Everyone knows that Episode 20 of that season, The Unnatural, is the best hour of television ever produced, and will never be rivaled, but they didn't have it. :( And beside it is an animal encyclopedia.

Wallpapers

Pictures that would fit elsewhere but are sized of wallpaper size and quality.

Germany Wallpapers. On-going.

Amsterdam Wallpapers.

Paris Wallpapers.

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Inside the Rijksmuseum, photos were prohibited. Here's what I saw and liked, with clickable

pictures for further information. (The first one is Dutch language only).

Read the page on this one (there's a drop-down menu) because it's really interesting. Same for the one above.

Weekend 2: Amsterdam

Amsterdam Slideshows:

The main one tells most of the story of what I did and what I saw. If you don't see the descriptions in the top right, go to the top right and hit options to change that. If you still can't see them, click the picture once.

Amsterdam Main Slideshow.

Amsterdam Graffiti and Ads.

Amsterdam Red Light District WARNING: very NSFW. These are photos from an erotic museum and the actual RLD.

A view of the Amsterdam from the canals.

Untitled a video by Abiogenic on Flickr.

This video was taken on a canal tour. There are 2,500 houseboats in Amsterdam, and they vary greatly in size, style, and appearance.

My Graffiti

I talked earlier about the graffiti street in Kirchheim, where I am staying. I've since learned that it can be referred to as Messplatz and it is a legal wall, meaning it is acceptable for graffiti writers, as they are called, to tag there. Graffiti has always interested me; I don't just appreciated it and photograph it, I have wanted to write it for sometime. Enter yesterday, when I went to the street for the second time in a week to once again document the ever-changing walls and talked to someone about the rules regarding spray-painting in the area. During class this morning, I couldn't get the idea out of my head, so after school let out, I headed to the local department store and bought a few spray cans and a small bucket of yellow to wash over an old mess of practice tags. This was the result.



I later went back after designing another tag, and this happened.



I think I'll take on the name "Buró", short for "la Tiburón," a feminization of the Spanish word for shark. It's easy to write, aesthetically pleasing, and, I think, represents me well.

Here's some other tags that have appeared since my last post (not to say there weren't amazing murals painted and covered over since then): Slideshow.

I'll post on Amsterdam later this week, as I'm still getting got up on organizing and studying, and I think I'm staying in Heidelberg this weekend.

Weekend 2: Amsterdam

I had a fabulous three-day weekend in Amsterdam, this time alone. I got in late last night, and had school this morning, and homework tonight, so I'll do a nice pretty update when I can.

Ready for Weekend 2

I'm about to start packing for weekend two. Getting ready with some Lonely Island's Jack Sparrow (feat. Michael Bolton). Just bought groceries, did laundry. Train leaves at 8 in the morning, tomorrow. Monday is a holiday here, so I get a three day weekend to explore my destination city. If you don't know where it is, you'll have to wait to find out! :D

Das Schoolhaus

My Schoolhaus.

Today's schedule was:

08:30 - 10:00: - Classes split up, meet.
10:00 - 10:30: - Break, all students chat in lounge.
10:30 - 12:00: - Class.
12:00 - 12:30: - Break.
12:30 - 13:00: - My class played that game where everyone has a person's name on their forehead and they ask questions to figure out who it is. In German. Because, as I think I mentioned, not all of my classmates speak English, so our textbooks and questions are German only.

Weekend 1: PARIS (TL;DR)

So, this past weekend I was stranded in Paris. Well, I had a way out, but it was a day later than I had planned. See, I'm not the best planner. I have this train pass good for 15 days of travel to most European countries within a 2 month period. On Friday, a friend named Beth and I reserved seats on a train to Paris for Saturday morning, planning to stay one night in a hostel and travel back Sunday night. We were to get off in Paris and plan our trip back, then find a bed for the night and see the Louvre. Be warned: June 4-6 is a French holiday, and it will not say so in any travel books. Yeah, so the soonest train we could get back with our passes and not pay anything out of pocket was on Thursday, June 9, and even if we paid we could only get back on Monday. Everything else was sold out. And of course, the hostels were all booked. So, an extra night + actual hotel + train fare. Sucked. Lesson learned. Of course, I could have used common sense, but I left most of that in Memphis.

Heidelberg HBF train station

bicycle parking outside of the HBF

double-decker high-speed train

So, we found our way through the daunting Parisian subway system before we ever breathed fresh French air. We made it to the hotel before 17:00 and trekked to the 3rd (read "4th") floor. For the price, there was a lot to be desired. We had running water.

The first night, a Saturday, Beth went to mass at the Notre Dame and I walked her most of the way, then detoured for a drink at a notorious gay-friendly restaurant named, heh, the "Banana Club." I had a good enough time, as the drinks were cheaper than most of the others I saw on the way. I saw a guy I thought might know where I could find a club for the night, and asked him in broken French. He pointed me to someone who knew, and sure enough I got an answer. While I was gesturing to him my message, an eruption occurred at the entrance of the bar. The waiter pushed me aside and I was tempted to find cover as five or six waiters made a blockade to prevent a shouting man from entering the bar. It appeared to be a anti-gay tirade, and it lasted a good few minutes, but I didn't ask what had happened, as it really seemed (justifiably) to disturb the staff.

first meal in Paris, on a sidewalk

my table at the Banana Club

crêpe dinner, with gas station beer and Lindt white chocolate

a vegetable quiche from a street vendor

Tired, I didn't go out that night. Beth and I grabbed groceries and that night I ate what would become my staple meal: crêpes and Nutella. The next morning we walked to the Louvre and encountered a line. A line that lasted a quarter mile at least and was moving with the speed of a sick tortoise. My guidebook mentioned a Metro entrance, so we paid for a ticket to the subway but the door was locked. Later, by chance, we found the third entrance, one I had heard about. See, under the glass pyramids that greet visitors to the museum is a high-priced shopping mall with a food court, an Apple store, several souvenir and book stores, a Swatch shop, and a Swarovski. There was no line to get in, and we discovered that it was free (because it was the first Sunday of the month), but I bet the crowds are that bad on most days anyway. I saw all the great works of art. I flipped off the Code of Hammurabi (don't read anything artistic or meaningful in that; I just felt like it).

That night, I grabbed dinner by myself at a Japanese restaurant (there are a LOT in Paris) and I unintentionally sat next to an older couple from Spain. We talked for a while, and I brushed up on my Spanish. The conversation somehow turned toward the Basque people and their language, and they were, I feel, a little biased in their assumptions that the language has no more native speakers, and that my teacher at the U of M was a liar. They were nice people, but they were a little misguided.

After that, Beth convinced me to visit the Eiffel Tower at night and we ventured there by Metro. When we emerged from underground, the sky looked pretty ready to torrent. We ran in the storm, and we were soaked to the point of being see-through. We saw the tower close to midnight and relished in our bravery.

ominous clouds

downpour

LIGHTNING!

Monday, we checked-out of the hotel, and headed for the Bastille prison, which it turns out is no longer standing, only marked by a tall tower in the center of a roundabout. We walked from there to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. There we visited the graves of Chopan and Jim Morrison, but didn't have time to see Oscar Wilde's before our train left.

We got back around 17:00 on Monday, and I arrived to find my laundry done and hanging in my room. <3 Thanks, Janine!

Slideshow: Sightseeing

Slideshow: Parisian ADs

Slideshow: Parisian Graffiti

Slideshow: Stuff for Sale

Slideshow: Other Stuff I Liked

Ride to Town

I've mentioned several times now that I live about 20 minutes away from school on bike. I think it might be shorter than that, but I like to take it slow and enjoy the scenery. As far as commutes to town go, mine's pretty sweet, with a healthy mix of urban, suburban, and rural sights in a short ride.

My host family's house.

Houses on my street.

Badass gas station logo.

Roses and wildflowers line the streets in Kirscheim.

And small, family-sized fields surround the houses.

"Fruits and Vegetables"

I love this colorful house. <3

The fountain right beside my schoolhouse (pics of that next week).