Auto show

Two weeks ago I went to an American car show with Alex and Julia. I found it hilarious: some of the cars were really cool, really expensive, really old, really high end cars, and some were just 'oh... That's a truck..?' I guess they don't really have those here in Germany though. 

Here's somePictures of some really interesting cars and some really NORMAL cars that Germans find interesting...

Weimar

In the beginning of March, the fifty of us with ASSE traveled to Weimar (a small gorgeous town in central/east Germany) for our mid-year seminar. It was very fun seeing everyone again and Weimar is an incredibly beautiful town with so much history. Unfortunately I don't know what happened to the majority of my photos! But I posted what I could find. Besides reuniting with the other exchanges students and sharing our experiences thus far, and exploring the town, we got to see a lot of incredible historical places. Both Schiller and Goethe (famous writers, the German equivalents to Shakespeare, Goethe wrote Faust and The Theory of Colors, among others, Schiller wrote Love and Intrigue, William Tell, The Robbers, among others) resided in Weimar, and we got to tour both of their houses. Weimar is also the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement of the 1920's, the art and technical movement that popularized simplicity and 'form follows function.' We got to tour the bauhaus museum and walk around the bauhaus-style neighborhoods. The last very important thing we got to do was tour Buchenwald Concentration Camp, located just outside of Weimar. So far that is the only concentration camp I've seen, and it was very emotional. The best word I heard to describe our time there was 'reflective'. It really made you think and consider, I don't really know, everything. It was tough, and an experience I am thankful for but something I wish I never needed to experience. I remembered reading Night, by Elie Wiesel, in Honors English, and it was crazy relating his experiences in Buchenwald to the actual place. 

With that somber thought, here is (the pictures that I was able to find of) Weimar

 In the house of Schiller, I believe

A small jewish cemetery. Rocks are placed over the graves in lieu of flowers (I didnt know that before!)



I did not take any pictures of Buchenwald. While you can take pictures, I didn't feel like that was the point of my visit. However, here is a picture (from the website) of the gate, which reads 'jedem das seine' meant to be readable also to the prisoners in the camp. It translates literally 'to each his own' but means 'to each what he deserves' or 'to each his due'. Food for thought.

Berlin

Back a long time ago in February, Julia and Alex took me to Berlin for the weekend because Alex needed to go look at possible apartments. Berlin was awesome and for early February the weather was really nice and I can't wait to go back in May! Pictures

 the (old) border control btwn east and west germany

 the apartment we stayed in

 just like humboldt

 east and west berlin

 real berliner currywurst

 yum

 brandenburg gate with a 'save the whale' protest in the background

 the russian memorial

 berliner weisse, flavored beer at an irish pub

 i am tank girl

 checkpoint charlie ft. soldier who makes you pay for taking a photo with him

 sanssouci palace in potsdam, the summer home of frederick the great 'castle without worries'

don't read this if you don't like cute things that will make you happy

The blog posts that I am not on top of include a trip to Berlin in February, Weimar in the beginning of March, Paris for a day, and last week in Vienna to visit Alex, but all that has to wait because I have something much more important to share with you:

This is the love of my life, Opi. I'd marry him except you probably can't legally do that I don't think. But I really love him a lot and I'd take him home with me if I could.

Julia and Alex for Christmas got me THE BEST PRESENT EVER a trip to a camel farm and we went with Rachel and Sandra and Reiner and Clemens and Greta and we got to play with the camels and clean the camels and ride the camels and camel camel ohmygosh it was lovely. They had dromendary and bactrian camels and a lot of them came from circuses and the others were mostly born at the farm. We got to feed the 10 month old baby camel who was already huger than me, and we got to ride Karl the camel and wow it was all so great. Here are all the pictures and the video where I giggle a lot when Karl stands up.

Ps camels are really soft and really nice and they are so lovable they are the best

Karneval

Here in Germany, Karneval is the equivalent of Mardi Gras in Brazil. Everyone says "Here we have five seasons. Winter, summer, spring, fall, and karneval." The season begins on the 11th of November at 11:11am, and it ends with a huge celebration the weeks before lent begins. I told y'all about the karneval sitzung that I went to, that's the kind of stuff that happens before karneval week.

Oh! Also, I should mention I'm REALLY lucky to be living here, because karneval really only happens in the Rhineland region of Germany, with Düsseldorf and Köln being the two centers of Karneval celebrating; meanwhile people in north, east, and southern Germany don't really celebrate it at all, or, if they do, they are small, local celebrations.

ANYWAY the first day of Karneval is Thursday, altweibernacht (old woman's night).  This is the day when all the girls get to run around and cut off all the men's ties (that happened to my philosophy teacher but that all I saw of that). We got out of school at 11:30, but really, by 11:11 everyone was done. And I was possibly the only person in the entire school who was even a little bit sober (maybe I'm the only one who received the dozen memos that alcohol that alcohol is EXTRA forbidden at school during karneval???). Oh and I forgot to say, this was our version of halloween, because everyone wore their costumes to school. After school, I met Rachel and Julia in Düsseldorf. We went to the altstadt and it was insane and I won't be able to properly convey the craziness which is a bummer. We looked to meet up with Julia from Canada but nobody's cellphones worked because it was THAT crowded and we couldn't find her on our own because it was THAT crowded so we went to the square where a concert was going on and danced for about a half an hour and then it started raining so we tried to go inside a pub -- horrible idea. Everyone was trying to get indoors to get out of the rain and use the bathrooms and it was a madhouse. We got swept all the way inside by the mass of people, and it was so full of people all trying to get either in or out that nobody could really go anywhere. We tried to leave but that was even harder than getting in in the first place -- I think we were in this pub almost half an hour and my feet almost never actually touched the ground; I was propelled everywhere by the force of everyone else. Another woman my size finally got out of the pub in tears. When we finally got outside, we decided that was enough of an experience for one day, and also it was still raining, so we decided to go home. But, again, EVERYONE had made that decision, so the street that led to the u-bahn station --maybe about two or three blocks long-- was pretty much as packed as the pub. We finally got headed home, and rachel and I were ABSOLUTELY DONE for the day so we had a movie night on the couch while Julia went out to party in Langenfeld.

Rachel stayed the whole Karneval weekend with us and to be really honest I dont really remember what we did Friday but it wasn't karneval related. But we did go to the altstadt Friday night and Rachel and I sat in the square and just watched all the drunken people frolic around. A couple time really drunk guys came up and tried to talk with  us and by the time we went home our mantra was "thank god for the sober friends" who would come and apologize and take their drunken companions away.

Saturday was Alex's last day so Julia and Alex and I went sightseeing. We went to these old ship locks from the 1800's (?) and a ship museum and that was really cool. And then we walked around this old city called Hattingen where all of the buildings in the old town came from 1500 or 1600 and they were old and beautiful and I told Julia that that's what I thought every German town would look like and she laughed. And then we went home and had fajitas with Rachel and it was great.

Sunday morning Julia and Rachel and I woke up really early and dressed up and went to Köln where we stuck out front row places for the parade. Everyone drank and had fun an the kids all begged for candy and roses from the paraders and Julia and I saw friends of ours in the parade and it was just really really fun. Afterwards we went to a bar and  danced for a few hours. We went home and it was Julia's turn to be dead while Rachel and I went out to the gardens across the street from our house and crashed a karneval party. We were the only people under the age of 65 there, and we just danced in the middle of the floor by ourselves and eventually some old women came to dance with us and when they found out we were from America we became the guests of honor. That was the first time in my life I have seen 70 and 80 year olds completely wasted. Only in Germany... Then we went home to eat dinner, and then back out to the altstadt for more drunk-people watching. Monday we got dressed up again and went back to Düsseldorf where we met up with Holger and Sabine (Rachel's temporary host family from language camp) and found a place to watch the parade. It was a huge street parade of everyone dancing together and then the parade came and then more dancing, only interrupted my the street cleaners who came through (There is even a karneval song to play when the street cleaners come!). By 2 in the afternoon I was barely able to stand up anymore, we were all completely exhausted. And that was karneval!