The Move

Bwaah, was it that long ago that I was crossing off the one-month mark until I left for Germany? It's the reverse now, having been here for a month, but it does feel like no time has passed at all.

So. I've almost made it through my first week as a German high schooler [whether entirely in tact or not is subjective]-- but before I talk about that, I want to send a shoutout to everyone reading this blog! It makes me so happy to see it becoming international; much love to all of you in the U.S. and Germany of course, but also to y'all from Britain, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, Finnland, Russia, South Korea and Malaysia. Absolutely mind blowing; ich hab' euch lieb! <3

So last Saturday was the big move from my temporary, 3-week language camp family in Bottrop to my more permanent one in Marl. They're all of 30 minutes away from one another, which I believe made for one of the shortest trips of us exchange students; others had to go for five-hour-plus train rides all the way down to Baden-Wurtemburg and Saarland on France's border. Anywhere in Germany is fine, really, but not having to manage my ridiculous suitcases [and then all the stuff I managed to accumulate in Köln] on and off various trains is an experience I am more than willing to go without:)
Also, hearing back from all of the south-bound students, I am so so so thankful I'm up the North, and not having to deal with the southern Swabbish-dialect rage [It's hard enough to understand what's going on as is].
 
As for my host family, I absolutely adore them. Maybe it's my ridiculously cute siblings, or maybe it's the talks with my host parents over tea and cappuccino, or maybe even the goldendoodle [I love, love goldendoodles]...
Or maybe it's because of the little present I found on my windowsill when I went into my room for the first time.

Kindereggs? Oh yes.

 We're going to get along fabulously.

 *******

It is absolutely gorgeous here. Ten minutes away is downtown Recklinghausen, and that place makes me so happy it's not even funny. It's this adorable downtown with everything cobblestone and bricks and hints of traditional German architecture. Little patches of winding ivy on buildings, a courtyard with cafes and little gazebos spilling into one another, and some pretty darn good shopping options to boot. Really, it's just like Köln, on a smaller scale and minus all the hubbub.
And I do like that.
Not only are all the tourists gone[No, I'm not a tourist. I'm an exchange student.]-- but so is the noise. Thoughts get lost in Köln, but here I feel like you can have your morning cup of MilchKafee and actually savour it and the morning and the town.
Which I did with my host mom earlier, actually:) 

The best part?
This little mecca is a five minute walk away from my school.

And.
Speaking of school.
[Ha.]
That warrants its own post.
..
Later.

Cast of Characters

Language camp is officially over, so here's some drabble paying homage to my time in Köln. The city is one giant melting pot, and seems to have  no end of interesting people to meet.

 

Customer service in America scares me. Ordering stuff in English is bad enough as is [like repeating your order to the Taco Bell drive through people five times and still getting a gordita when you clearly ordered a quesadilla].

Auf Deutsch, it doesn't get much better.

Which is why my little Oberhausen Hauptbahnhof cafe has a special place in my heart. The staff there was so friendly, that my daily Milch-Kafee-mit-ein-löffel-Zucker run was something I actually looked forward to. 

...

Or maybe it was that they memorized my order two days in, so I never actually had to order. Pfhah.

 I don't understand why this isn't more famous. It's döner. In a box. Chinese takeout style. It's absolutely brilliant. And the owner of this store speaks Arabic [guess what my second language is?], and being able to actually converse with someone fluently was oh-so-nice. And the staff here are just so gosh darn nice and the food is nice and this place makes me happy.

If you're ever in Köln, go eat at Imbiss Hop behind the Dom Hauptbahnhof. Go get your döner-in-a-box, and be proud of it. 

And for goodness sake, don't skimp on the calories. Get the baklava as well.

 

This. Is. Spartaaaa!

Actually, it's the biggest ripoff in Köln.

A lovely line of costume-clad people stand in front of the Kölner Dom, taking pictures with tourists. 

We're not tourists, we're exchange students.

When trying to get a group picture, this Roman guy literally wedged himself into the middle of us- and then demands 3 euros-- 50 cents apiece-- for the photo.

Say whaaaaaaaa?

And for a 3 euro photo, it's not even good.   

 

 

It's the two-jokes-one-euro guy!

We ran into this guy in the middle of the main shopping street on one of our daily afterschool romps in the city. After asking for photos, he responded- in English! That's not surprising [because everyone in the world and then some speaks English], but it turns out that once upon a time, he was an exchange student in the U.S. as well!

One of us CBYXers could end up telling jokes and wearing elephant hats one day.

I love it:)

And our last noteworthy cast member is who we have dubbed the most interesting guy in Köln.

 On our last day in the city, we bypassed the main street and explored some gorgeous European backstreets and alleyways, where we stumbled upon this gem of a bookstore- an English bookstore. The five of us in the group went in-- and quite possibly did meet the most interesting man in Köln. 

We instantly stumble into a discussion about politics, at some point in which he pulls out a ukelele, a short time later replaces it with a tenor guitar, both of which he played and sang to- after which he's prompted into an art discussion, being both a photographer and photography teacher.

All delivered in a fabulous British accent, which instantly makes anyone fascinating to listen to.

And the best part?

He was an exchange student himself twelve years ago.

He came to Germany, ended up in Köln.

That could be one of us twelve years from now.

Playing our ukelele in a bookstore when a group of cute widdle exchange students stumble in.

There are exchange students everywhere. 

Where on earth are we all-from this group, this year- going to end up?

Ausflug Recap

Yesterday was the three-week mark.
Three whole weeks--- or is it, only three weeks?
Time flies and stands still here. Every moment is long, but looking back, I can't put my finger on where the time went, really.

And.
It's the last week of our language camp.
If nothing else, simply being in Köln made it worth it. I never, ever get tired of stepping outside of the Dom Hauptbahnhof and seeing this.

Regardless of the constant reconstruction , it is absolutely amazing.
The nice thing about having a language camp in Köln is that our group of twelve-something exchange students had a variety of easily accessible places for field trips, in addition to looking around the city itself.

 Ausflug A would be the Kölner Zoo- unremarkable in most aspects except for the really, really extensive duck exhibits. I swear, over half of this zoo is dedicated to ducks- regular mallards, blue-billed things, exotic duck-shaped bird and more- and that's not even counting the other bird exhibits, with everything from storks, to flamingos, to penguins and ostrich-like things. I guess you'll never run out of poultry for dinner at this zoo, at least.

Big dollops of fat and adorableness.

 Ausflug B was a trip to Bonn, and more specifically, a tour around the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (literally, "The House of the Story of the Republic of Germany"). After the tour we did yet more tour-esque activities, going shopping and checking out the city.
My favorite part of Bonn absolutely had to be this one fountain. At first glance, it's adorable, with little children frolicking alongside ducks.
On second glance:

Arme Enten ):

One thing that I finally got around to doing was walking the bridge over the Rhein, with all of the locks in the links of the fence. I've been dying to do so since my first day in the city- it's just so romantic, with the tradition being putting a lock on the fence with your loved one, and throwing the keys in the Rhein after closing the lock to seal your love.

Going over the bridge, it's just overwhelming to think that each and every lock has a different story.

Locks and locks and more locks.

Some locks had the absolute cutest little inscriptions on them, and were total gems.

"The key lies in the Rhein, thus our love will be endless."

Others were a bit kinky...

Meowww

 And others yet were just a bit stupid.

I would think so...

 I think I'm rather going to miss Köln.

Überraschungkinderabendteuer

When I was little, I lived for these things.

 

 Kinder Eggs are pretty much heaven on earth and in your mouth.

They're eggs; milk chocolate on the outside, white chocolate on the inside, and hollow. Inside is a little plastic nugget in which there's a toy of some sort.

There's a toy. In chocolate.

 It doesn't get much better than that.

So basically, those were my childhood. In fact, to this day, at my house (in a land far, far away called Washington), we still have several gallon-sized bags in our garage filled with all of the plastic nuggets and all the toys accumulated from these Kinder-wonders.

Then they stopped selling them in the U.S.

"The popular German chocolate eggs are not sold in the U.S. because they are considered a choking hazard. [...] The treats are considered adulterated food by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration," as quoted from this Vancouver Sun article

....................

That translated to having to undertake a 2-hour drive to Canada to smuggle back Kinder Eggs.

Oh, thug life.

So understandably, when I found out I was spending a year in Germany,  home of Kinder Schokolade, I had these eggs in mind from the start.

No, literally.

As in, we landed in the Frankfurt airport and the first thing I did was go searching for them at the concession stands.

Nobody there knew what on earth I was talking about. :(

 A week passed in Germany and I still hadn't seen them anywhere. Not in grocery stores, nowhere in the train station-- but I knew they were there.

Then one day, I saw them. Sitting right by the cash register in orderly little rows, "Kinder JOY" written promisingly across the egg.

I was duped.

It split in half. 

Kindereggs are not supposed to split in half.

Instead of my promised chocolate egg, I got two wimpy balls of choco-something in this white cream. And a toy thing on the other side.

No.

No, no, no.

But then, a Kinder egg.

Not a Kinder Ei, as I had tried to literally translate it as, but a Kinder Überraschung.

It was every bit the egg that I remembered.

Ich war ehrlich begeistert.

Easter's come early with this egg hunt;

I still haven't seen them for myself, but they are out there.

Somewhere.

Jude Law and Playing Hooky

Sometimes I forget I'm in Germany, because so many things are just so... English.

On the radio, maybe one out of every ten songs is in German if you're lucky. Driving through Oberhausen and Dusseldorf and Duisburg and other very German towns singing along to Lady Gaga and LMFAO isn't quite what I'd imagined-- but it's such good fun.

On the T.V., I've watched Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs, and Hannah Montana and CSI Miama, and seen movies from Catwoman to the Echelon Conspiracy-- again, all very English. In fact, apart from news, I don't believe I've watched anything German in origin- which isn't to say I won't, but I never expected things popular back at home to be carried overseas.
 But oh man- people here do love their dubbing.
Now, sometimes voiceovers are fabulous.
But then the actors launch into their superschnell dialogues and it just all goes way-y-y over my head.
And other times the voices are just a little bit painful.
Or just a lot painful.
So my lovely host sister, who is my age and was actually an exchange student herself in Hawaii last year, speaks quite fluent English. This translated to getting to watch Sherlock Holmes 2 Spiel im Schatten with her in English (and actually understanding what was happening!) the other day.
My other host sister wanted to watch it in German today.
And whereas I'll admit Robert Downey Junior sounded quite like himself, Jude Law auf Deutsch just made me sad. His own, actual voice is just so... and the mustache just makes it even more so.... and in German it was just so not.
Bah.
-------------------------------------------------------------
In my previous blog post I talked about my issues with the train system here. Well, it turns out my commute wasn't very well planned-out, and it hasn't gotten much better since. Namely, my trains come at very unfortunate times, and I spend more time than should ever be necessary commuting. Totally spent, and barely getting sleep on top of residual jet lag, I wasn't feeling at ein hundert pro-cent, so I stayed home to recharge. 
In German, recharging apparently translates to roadtrips with the fam-bam:)

A shopping trip to the Netherlands (no big deal or anything) happened. It was adorable, with cobblestone streets galore in the town and more bikes per capita than people, and the stereotypical [and yet absolutely gorgeous] European look. I finally got to eat my European 'pommes-frites' with a little fork and mayonnaise as well, which made me very happy:)

Netherland riverfront

Soo many bikes

Raesfeld Schloss

And then, another castle-run was called for. 
A while ago, my family took me to see Raesfeld Schloss, which was an adorable little castle with no less than three weddings there that morning alone. This time, we drove over to Sauerland to visit Burg Altena. This was more of a fortress, with all sorts of cool super-tight spiral staircases and little slots from which archers lined up to fire arrows. A museum wound around the inside of the castle as well, and one of the displays was this cute little replica of the place.

Altena mini-model

Burg Altena

There are so many castles here, it's like having giant playgrounds in every other town:)

And on an entirely irrelevant note;

In the houses neighboring Burg Altena, there was a dog wearing pants on a roof. 

 Take notes boys, that's some straight-up German swag right there.

Public Transportation

Today didn't go quite as planned. I have to commute a good hour-and-a-half every day to get to a three-week language camp in Cologne. That trip consists of a ride from Bottrop to Oberhausen, and then an hour-long ride from Oberhausen to Cologne.
The first train that I got on never went to Oberhausen.
Somehow I ended up way off past a neighboring town, had to jump off the train and take the one going to the central train station in that town, then from there take a train back to Oberhausen, from where I finally back on track to take the train to Cologne. Whereupon I missed the subway I have to take from the train station to the camp building, and then had to wait for the next one to roll around.
O je.
My 1.5 hr commute became a 3-hour mess this morning.
Was I on time to school?
Absolutely not:)

But! I did get to practice mein Deutsch, and must say it's so cool to know you can ask for help in another language, understand the reply you get, and figure your way around totally foreign place without needing to fall back on English. In addition, everyone I talked to was not only helpful, but so nice and understanding that I can't understand how the ice-cold German persona stereotype still persists. I didn't get one dirty look or impatient answer, which is more than I can say for Seattleites [with a common language, even].


Apart from my first time commuting via train being entirely disastrous, I did notice something about public transportation- it's not used anywhere near enough in the states... Granted that I used the train system earlier-- but why does nobody ever use buses? Maybe it's a Washington-suburbs thing, but buses, trains, subways, metros, whatever. They are chock-full of people here, whereas the few times I've ridden a bus in my town, there would be less than a handful of people present on a busy day.

And yet I'm nonetheless scarred.
If anything, it's fabulous language practice. Bring on the adventures!

Alles Deutsch und Mehr

Holy schnitzel.
I'm in Germany
And I understand absolutely [next to] nothing.

Rewind.
Five days ago [although it seems worlds away now] I finally met up with the fifty-some ASSE kids. Finally! Flying into the Dulles airport, we drove an hour to our hotel in Virginia and crashed hard. How cute, thinking that our five-hour-flight across the U.S. was something strenuous.

The next morning, 50-some adorable exchange students got up with stars in their eyes.
Washington D.C. did everything in its power to rip them out and break us down. Now keep in mind that we're all from the west coast [repping Seattle here] where 80 is a stretch.... it was upwards of 100 in D.C. and humid to boot. And not humid as in, your hair is going to get frizzy. Humid as in, your perfectly straightened hair is going to spring back into curls the second you get outside.
Humid, as in the outdoors is the equivalent of a sauna.

Nonetheless,  we touristed and monument-hopped with our group, directors, and awesome tour guide, and were carted around D.C. to see and be seen.
And so!

Day one started with a photo-op in front of the United States Capitol!

Afterwards came a surprisingly sobering trip to the national cemetery. We got into these blue people-movers and chugged around the place- and though I took quite a few pictures, all of them together couldn't portray the place accurately. It's huge- beyond huge- and to think of so many souls gathered one place is crazy. Not only that, but it has an average of 27 burials a day, even though it's near impossible to meet the requirements to be buried in it.

At the cemetery, we were taken to the tomb of unknowns, and watched the changing of the guards ceremony. Not much commentary on this one, other than props to those guys for toughing out the sun and humidity in full uniform.  

 

After that came a bit of memorial-jumping, and we saw the Iwo Jimo Memorial next to the National cemetery, as well as the Martin Luther King one. The Iwo Jima is such a well known- and just plain American- picture, that it was surreal seeing it in real life. On the other hand, I'll admit that I'd never before heard of the MLK memorial, and was pleased to see how it depicted him and the impact he made in his life.

 Next up was a trip to the one and only Smithsonian! Our time here was unfortunately limited, so my group decided to go for the classic (and Ben Stiller-endorsed) Museum of Natural History! Oh my goodness that place was huuuge, and yet only one part of the Smithsonian collection. Nowai.
We saw the famed dinosaur exhibit from 'Night at the Museum', insect exhibits, underwater exhibits, bird exhibits, animal exhibits, the rock/mineral and Hope Diamond exhibits [two of my favourites], and more than I can even remember or care to name. Go see it. That is all.

... There was also a 'life-sized' Bengal tiger plushie that was like four times my size and $700.
But macht euch keine Sorgen, my friends.
They ship for free.

 Onwards to Day 2!
On this day we went back and got up close and personal with the Capitol, and it was something alright. If you think you've seen all the fancy white marble possible while roaming D.C., wait until you stands on its white-marble steps and look up and around you.
This morning was designated for us to meet the senators from each of our respective states. However, senators are busy people. Sehr busy people. So, we had appointments with Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell's aides.
That is, until Maria herself walked through the door.
One of the Washingtonians guys just about died and went to heaven right then.

 After that we got to go inside, and even the horrible tour couldn't take away from some insanely cool aspects of it. We got to pass over a star- a marble compass, actually- inlaid in the floor of the Capitol Crypt that marks the center of D.C.

 And then.
Drumroll, bitte.
The Whitehouse.
Even the squirrels there are white.
I will say it was quite anticlimatic. It was a speck of white in the distance, and we took pictures and left within ten minutes, but still. There's yet more white marble for you guys.

 .... followed by a quick trip past the Washington Monument...

 

... and then to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial!

  

...... and then the World War 2 Memorial. We were beyond tired at this point, the monuments kind of became a blur. Nonetheless, we found Washington's little wreath in the circle of states who participated in the war!

 And then our last stop, a triple-hit with the Korean Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, and Vietnam memorial.

 

And with that grand finale, we finished D.C. Our pre-departure orientation left us totally blindsided and fried -we left the place looking like prunes- with blistered feet and jetlagged minds.

In other words, the best of shape to hop onto an international flight in:)

I never in my life want to go through those 8 hours again [do not talk to me about how I'll be on the same flight coming back in a year], but we did arrive.

We arrived, quite worse for the wear, but we arrived.

Ach, Deutschland.

Stumbled out the Frankfurt airport, hopped on a train to Cologne, made broken conversation with two German guys ("So you guys represent... ass?"  "No, no, it's A-S-S-E." "But when you say it together, it's ass... y." "Errr..."), ans stumbled out of the train to meet our families.

I was lucky enough to be picked up by my permanent host mother and driven to my temporary host family about an hour and a half from Cologne in the city of Bottrop (since the former is taking a vacation to the island of Mallorca, Spain during my language camp). Yay for more German 'relatives'! Everyone is so understanding and kind and speaks English (oh America, way to prepare us for this. Everyone else in the world is  bilingual by default), but I'm trying to make do with my broken German.
I actually went back to Cologne today to practice using the train system. I'll need to commute an hour-and-a-half there for the language camp, but Cologne is so gorgeous that I don't mind a bit.
Pictures and more on Germany to come in later posts:)
Tschuuuuuuss!