choir

So our choir just had a concert and one of our songs is up on youtube. You can watch it if you like.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=njdmpNZ-kC4

I need to blog more....

Lets see, I'm really not good at doing any sort of journal like thing on a regular basis but here it goes...

So where the last blog ended would be my trip to Switzerland with Ben. We went to Grindelwald, a tourist town in the middle of the alps. It was pretty cool. On the second day we took a train up to the mountains. There is another train that goes up the highest train station in Europe but it was like 100 Euros to go up that, so we didn't. I probably would have been worth it, and we could've played in the snows, but my budget doesn't allow for such things. We also had Rösti for dinner one night. Rösti is basically hash browns with eggs, bacon, onions and cheese on top. This was probably one of the best meals I've had here. Switzerland is beautiful and the chocolate is really good. So, on our return journey, we encountered a few problems with the Swiss trains. Apparently the Eurorail isn't valid everywhere, and the Swiss really don't know how to do international train tickets. It didn't take very long but we ended up going into Interlacken to buy our train tickets and paying way more than they should have cost, but oh well. There were tons of flies in Switzerland, which was a surprise to me. There don't seem to be too many here in Tübingen. So that was Switzerland in a nut shell.

Since getting back from Switzerland, I really haven't been up to a whole lot. Val and I were invited to the Neckarfest in Rottenburg, which was pretty nice. There were so many people and Rottenburg is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. We walked around and looked at all the little stands that people had set up, but for the most part we didn't buy anything. Rottenburg had a really nice feel; more like a German town than Tuebingen.

Let's see, we also spend a day in Anke's village. Anke's town is so cute and they always have these little YMCA sponsored events (or just events that involve the YMCA). Everyone in the town comes out to watch and play sports and there is a sausage/cake/beer tent set up. It's very sweet. This time there was a race and the kids had to run all the way to the next village and back. It this was an American race, the line would've been about 40 feet away. It was interesting to see. We also had a movie night with Anke, which was fun. We watch "Young Frankenstein" and "Moulin Rouge". I love watching movies with friends, it always puts me in a good mood.

Other than that, I've been doing more school work. It actually feels like I'm going to school now, as it's about to end. I also got a haircut yesterday, which was a bit of an adventure in itself but it looks good.


I've also been reading a lot. I'm about to finish Harry Potter #1. What can I say Val gave it to me? This will put me at like 6 books (in German for the summer). Go me!

bis später

Rachel

Various Happenings

Hello all, I'm back again, much to your amazement I'm sure. Let's see, I never update this thing enough so I guess that another way too long of a blog is on its way. I'm also trying to upload pictures on my fabulous photobucket, which I've decided is not the world's best program. Let's see, where did I leave off.....

Island and the A few weeks ago Tübingen had it's big annual boat races. You can actually watch some video at www.youtube.com if you don't believe me about how crazy they are. So with the boat races, the population of the town grows to about 5 times its normal size with people crowded on the NeckarNeckar wall. Val and I had a plan to secure the best spots on the Island, but being that we'd had our crazy Tübingen rain the day before, we decided to sit on the wall. This was a great idea in theory, that is until the Tübingen weather did the other thing it does so well, extreme heat, that and with my natural clumsiness, sitting on a high wall was not a good idea. Rachel apparently equals Humpty-Dumpfty. Anyway, so we get to the wall about two hours before the race is supposed to start and wait around for a few friends who wanted to get food for a picnic, in impossible task on a holiday in Germany. It gets super hot so I go home and change into my sundress, without thinking about the burning qualities of the sun and head back into town. Basically this sundress results in a pretty nasty sunburn on my shoulders. (I know mom, surprise!) The races where pretty neat to watch. Basically a bunch of boats float down the river at once and end up getting in one huge pile at the turn around point. Some people end of falling out of their boats and others just give up their German restraint for a day and jump into the river. I also managed to drop pretty much every thing that I brought to the wall with me. Including but not limited to both my shoe and my new water bottle. It was a bit embarrassing, however there was a kind, but creepy German man who returned them to me. Here are some pictures.


Thursday was an eventful day. After the boat races, Val and I tried to go to the Biergarten, but it was way too full so we ate at our favorite place in town. We them met up with my second mentor Barbara. We had an ice coffee together. (Ice coffee is pretty much what it means in Germany. Coffee with a hunk of ice cream in it. I muss say, I do miss Starbucks.) We also went to a movie, my second for the whole summer. It was called "Full Metal Village." It's about this super small town in Germany, full of a whole bunch of gamma Schlechtys that has an annual heavy metal festival. It was really funny. So that's Thursday in a nut shell.

Friday I headed over to Munich to pick up Ben, who came to visit for about a week. We actually stayed in the "international" part of Munich, if you know what I mean. We went to the big beer hall, where they hold Oktoberfest every year and got a big old liter of German beer. Ben got a dark Radler, which I decided was better than the regular Radler and we walked around for a while. We went back into the Frauenkirche and saw the whole thing this time. It's a lot better to see it after church is over for the day. We didn't spend a whole time of time in Munich, because it wasn't really our goal, just a stopping point along the way. We just walked around a little bit in the morning and then it was time to get on the train for Bad Gastein Austria.

Bad Gastein is a little ski/spa town in the middle of the Austrian Alps. Our hostel was really nice and at the top of town right next to the train station. There is a huge waterfall in the town which is basically one giant hill with a casino. We walked down to the town center and saw the giant waterfall. We even stopped for dinner and eat near the waterfall. Being that it was such a small town, everything was closed in the afternoon when we got there and of course everything was closed on Sunday. The next day we wanted to go Para sailing but the weather wasn't very cooperative, so we went up the tram to the top of the mountain and wandered around there for a little bit. The mountains are so cool, you would never believe how beautiful they are until you're actually there, and no photo can ever really capture them. There were also cows about half way up the mountain, which I thought was really cute. So yeah, other than that we just did a lot of looking at mountains and walking around the town. A very nice relaxing time.

Being that this blog is so long and I'm bored of writing it, I think I will continue another time. Until then.....

Vienna, Amsterdam, Internet outages and more...

I have to admit that it's been a while, but it's not completely my fault. First of all, I would like to remind you to look at my photo website. It's really hard to get pictures on here but if you go to the link below, you can click on a city name and see tons of pictures.

http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w30/schlech1/

Shortly after my last post, we had another holiday and super long weekend. Hooray for being in a mostly Catholic part of Europe! Being that we had such a long vacation, Alison, Janelle and I decided to go to Vienna. We took a night train from Tübingen on Wednesday night, which Alison ended up missing. Oops! But don't worry, she caught up with us later. After a long cramped night on the train we made it to Vienna around 9am or so. We found our hostel and then headed into the city. We went into the main square where we immediately pounced on by people dressed like Mozart, selling tickets to the city's Mozart orchestra. (they're mostly for tourists) Anyway, in the end they sold us tickets to a concert. The music was actually very good and we all enjoyed the concert, except for the 20 minutes in the rain that we needed to find the concert hall. We visited Stephan's Dom, which is the biggest church in Vienna. We actually visited a ton of churches in Vienna. We walked around a lot and snuck into the Vienna Opera house and gave ourselves a self guided tour. It was very pretty, but no one was more excited than Janelle. Janelle and I walked around a lot of took the Tram to a lot of different places. We also got lost a lot. One train went to this place called Nussdorf in both directions, so on Sunday we had to check that out before we went home. It was actually a pretty cool little town. It had a park, a church, and an Andechs restaurant. All that a European city really needs. We didn't go to any of the Vienna museums, but we did of course go to a castle. There is an art museum inside of the castle we visited, but Janelle and I didn't really want to pay 8 euro to go in. We did go to the National Library in Vienna. It was Kaiser Wilhelm's private library and it was filled with thousands and thousands of beautiful old books as well as every present the guy had ever received. We also went to this restaurant called Centimeter. You can order sandwiches by the centimeter here, but we couldn't figure out how to do it, so we got other food. Janelle order a 2 meter long sausage and eventually ended up eating all of it. Alison and I had Schnitzel, which ended up providing about 3 meals for each of us. So, that's Vienna in brief.

After Vienna, we were actually home for a little while. Val's boyfriend Thomas was here and we discovered that the bar down the street from us has 2 euro pasta night. This is always fun to go to, because it's after a class that we all have together and that we all hate. Pasta's a good pick me up. While I was home, I visited a school in a town near Tübingen called Rottenburg. I visited a Realschule, which is a school for kids that are going to be going into industry rather than college. I gave a little presentation about what my life at home is like and what I like to do. I showed them a bunch of pictures and things that I'd brought with me, and then they asked me questions. Some of the questions were hard hitting like "What do you think about the war/death penalty/Bush" and some were just curious "what are parties like in America" or "do you like Germany". It was a really good experience. The teachers even invited Val and I back to the school, as well as to the Rottenburg festival in a few weeks. I imagine this to be something like Duvall days, but in Germany. I'm really excited to go and see all of them again.

Around the time of this presentation/being home our Internet went out, which is why I'm doing such a horribly long post at the moment.

Last week was another Catholic holiday and we had the whole week off. Wooo. Alison, Janelle and I went up to Amsterdam and then we met up with Val in Berlin. We stayed three nights and Amsterdam, which was a bit too much for me. It poured down rain practically the entire time we were in Amsterdam, and let's just say that our hostel has less than we expected. They didn't seem to use heat and my blanket was very small and cold. The lights also didn't exactly go out all the way, not to mention that they were on/off at random times. We visited the Anne Frank house, which is pretty small but not really small based on Dutch standards. It's pretty amazing that they managed to hide in their for so long. Dutch stairs are pretty crazy. They're super skinny and super steep, so you have to walk up them sideways, which is a pain. We saw all the "coffee shops" and prostitutes, but we weren't really too interested in them. Amsterdam is a rather small city. We took the city tour and saw a bunch of things that we saw the first day we were there but it was interesting and free. Our tour guide was nice but certainly not the best. She told us that WWII ended in 1944, which would have certainly made Anne Frank a little happier. We didn't see very many hot dutch men, so I don't believe what they say about the Dutch being the most beautiful people in the world. however, the Dutch do make the Germans look efficient, which is very scary in itself. Let's just say that buying train tickets to Berlin ended up being way more of an ordeal than it ever should have been. I must admit, I found it hilarious when the train lady said she'd give me change (coins) for about 120 Euros to use in the machines, so I wouldn't get a service charge. If you know me well, you can guess what my reaction was to that one..... Anyway, we finally with the Netherlands, with a few more H &M shirts (in smaller sizes) and without wooden shoes and head on our way to Berlin.

On the way to Berlin they brought in a drug sniffing dog, who seemed to be more interested in the guy that was sitting next to us than anything else. I guess sausage is more important than drugs. They train ride was long and full of sit switching and a surprising lack of windmills in Holland. To say the least, we were glad to be back in Germany. In fact, we took pictures at the border. So Berlin. Berlin is the coolest city that I've ever been in. I'd really like to go back, but I know that I'm not going to have time. We met of with Sandra and our old hot TA Anselm. It was good to get to see them again, and to ask some Berliners were we should go. We hit up all of the regular tourist sights.We went to the Reichstag, check point charlie, museum island, the Berliner Dom and such. We also went to the Altes Museum. This is currently where all the Egyptian things are on display. I also found out the they had actually split of the Museums during the cold war between America and the USSR. Berlin has such an interesting history. It would be so cool to study there. Our hostel was super nice. It was in old east Berlin right by a lot of ethnic food and outdoor wars, but not really like beer gardens. Berlin is very cool but there are some things that I like better about southern Germany. They make Radler incorrectly in Berlin. They make it with either Sprite or Fanta, which is totally nasty. Radler comes from Southern Germany and is properly made with a Pils beer and lemonade. They're really good when made correctly. We did a lot of stuff in Berlin and if you look at my pictures, you can get more details.

That's about all that I really want to write at the moment, so that's about all that you get. Ben is coming on Friday so I'm meeting him in Munich and we're going to a small town in Austria called Bad Gastein. It's in the middle of the Austrian Alps. The next weekend we're going to Switzerland to Rick Steve's favorite town Gimmelwald. We may even go paragliding. FUN!

Anyway, the boot races are in Tübingen tomorrow and I'll have to let you know how those go.

Until the next time,

Rachel

So, it's been a while....

I guess that it's been a long time since I've written anything here and I should apologize for that. Sorry! Let's see, I've done many things since my last post, but I will try to make this not super long and boring. (that and English is becoming rather hard). After my weekend in Freiburg Janelle came and visited me in Tübingen. We visited the Tübingen castle, which is where the nucleus of the atom was discovered. Woo Tübingen! We also went to Bebenhausen, which is the smallest village that belongs to the land are that is called Tübingen. This was the same day as the Tübingen regional market. We bought a tasty apple cake and some crepes. They were very good, as things from the market usually are. We took these with us to Bebenhausen and had a picnic with Val and her roommate from Russia Daria. The Kloester at Bebenhausen is so pretty. Pictures should be up on my photobucket, so that everyone can see them. I would really like to spend some time looking around this little town, because it is very cute. During Janelle visit we also visited the local beer garden and grilled up so tasty sausages for diner one night.

After Janelle left, we actually met up with her the next in Munich. Munich is such a large city, it was amazing compared to Tübingen. There were so many people and so many things to do. We stayed with Janelle's aunt, who lives in a suburb of Munich. It was really cool to get to stay with a German family and see how they actually live. They were so nice to us it was amazing! We were there over the May Day Holiday, which is the german version of Labor day. We watched a May pole raising in a small village. All of the people were out to see the big event. There was a little Bavarian band and everyone had a Derndl or Lederhosen. After observing the festivities for a while, we headed to Dachau. Dachau was very interesting and depressing. I found it very strange that it was built right next to a residential street with people living it. There were also these beautiful trees that looked completely out of place. It was sad but I didn't cry. I didn't know that Dachau was the first concentration camp. After Dachau we went to Schloss Nymphenburg. This was the castle of one of the baden württemberg king's castles, before he built Neuschwanstein. This castle is so beautiful. It has a huge garden in front of it with many sculptures and water fountains. We also ate at this cute little cafe that's located behind some bushes on the castle grounds. We visited a Beer garden and the Fruehlingsfest, but I don't really have much to say about them.

Here's a brief summary of what's been happening in Tübingen since we returned from Munich. We went to the Fruehlingsfest in Stuttgart, which I really enjoyed. It reminded me of the fair (mostly because that's what it is, only with beer). We also went to a soccer game for the Stuttgart team. They have one more game to win and they will be the champions for the year. Everyone at the game was super excited to be there and I think had had a little bit to drink, but it was still a very nice atmosphere. In the middle of the week we went with Val's friend to the Ritter Sport factory and museum. It was interesting. All the art in the museum used squares as a theme, because that is the shape of the Ritter Sport bars. We bought so much chocolate! I got about 6/7 pounds of chocolate for about 10 Euro, but I intend to bring some of it home, even though it is very tasty. We went to the Opera on Saturday night. We saw "la Traviata" in Italian. The German subtitles were not as good as they could/should have been, so the story was a bit hard to follow. The music was amazing. The orchestra pit was really small so they had some weird converted trombone thing instead of a tuba; it was interesting to look at. Well, that brings everything up to date. There are a lot of pictures on my photo bucket but I will try to put up more soon.

Rachel

Internet down...

So the internet in our building is still down and we really have no idea when it will be back up again. The german libraries are also a bit difficult to use, so it may be a long time before my next actual post. I know, it's sad but you'll just have to wait and see what I've been up to later.

Rachel

Freiburg and more....

Alright, as some of you may or may not know, I have a friend, Janelle, who's in the same program as me, but studying in Freiburg. I left on Saturday morning for Freiburg, instead of taking the tour of Tuebingen with the intro course class. I'm told I didn't miss much. Anyway, I took the train to Freiburg, which by the way had 4 transfers and lasted 4 hours. All in all it wasn't too bad, as it did go through the black forest. The black forest seems like a rather silly concept for me. It's a bunch of really tall, skinny pine trees with underbrush. The underbrush is what makes it unique, as all other European forests are a little lacking in that department. The German country side is really interesting. Some parts look like Ohio or Eastern Washington, but with the occasional German village. Other parts are covered in green hills or thick forest. There are a few pictures I took on the way back:

As for Freiburg, after finally arriving and changing clothes, as Freiburg is a bit warmer than Tuebingen, we walked around a bit and headed to a beer garden by the river. Freiburg also has this really big park with a lake in the middle of it. We spent most of the weekend relaxing on the balcony and people watching. It was a bit too hot to do much else. We went up this cool hill and you could see all of Freiburg from it, so we took a bunch of pictures.

We also saw a nice little dog and played fetch with him.

Outside of that, we did a little sightseeing and a bit of shopping. We went to Ikea and I got a bunch of stuff for my room, which was a challenge to get back to Tuebingen on the train. Freiburg also has a really nice Church. Here is a picture of it. There are more posted on my photo bucket.

Anyway, that's about it for Freiburg. I had a lot of fun, but it's good to be back home. I got home around 6 on Tuesday night. Tuebingen is having a little street fair. I don't know how long it's going to last but it's exciting. Here's one of the pictures from it.




Anyway, that is it for now. Until the next time.

Rachel

Stuttgart

Today my friends and I went to Stuttgart. It's about an hour away by train and costs 10 Euro to go there and back. I really liked it. It's a bit larger than Tuebingen and has a lot more going on. I would post pictures here but I've decided to use photo bucket as it is a lot easier to use and I can add more photos. The link to my photo bucket is: http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w30/schlech1/

Stuttgart has a lot of shopping and a large park/castle. I got a few things while we were there, but we mostly walked around. It was very pretty, as you will see when you look at the pictures.

In other happenings, I met my mentor Anke the other day. She seems really nice and I look forward to getting to know her better. She's lived around Tuebingen for her whole life, in a little village. We went an got a sort of chocolate coffee thing together. She also kept complimenting me on my German :-).

Let's see, Easter was on Sunday. We didn't really do much. Alison and I got up really early to go to church at 6:00. It was interesting but long and too early in the morning. I walked around, read, and sat in the park with Val and Ben. Towards days end, I got an ice cream and watched some cute little German kids play tag. It was very cute. I think it was two families but they must have been cousins or something. The smallest little boy was in his Easter best and the girl had a dress. It was really cute too see and brought a smile to my face.

As for now, I've got to get reading, because Val and I have decided to read 30 pages a day and get ice cream on the days that we finish books. It sounds like a good plan to me!

Rachel

Pictures!

Okay so here are a few pictures. The first one is the sink in my room and in the corner you can see my grocery store bag, which is indeed covered with pictures of meat, mainly pork. The second picture is the Neckar river which is in the middle of Tübingen. There is a park in the middle of it that they use to launch boats in the summer. It's also where all the pictures of the town seem to be taken from. The third picture is a place where Alison and I had lunch one day. Pizza in Germany is a little weird, I certainly won't be eating it very often. The fourth picture is in the city center right next to the court house, the coolest building in the whole town. I'm at the fountain, obviously. I'm not sure why it's there but it is. Well, that's all the pictures for now.

Rachel

The First Week

All right, it's about time I get around to updating this thing. I left Seattle Wednesday morning and made it to Frankfurt at around 8am. I then sat around for 5 hours waiting for my 30 minute flight. I'm still not sure why the travel agency did that. After arriving in Stuttgart, I met another exchange student, who knows relatively little german and is from Oregon. We got train tickets together and eventually ended up taking the bus to Tübingen and a taxi to where we are staying. I met up with Alison and we went to the store and got food. There was also a small party that night. The next day was a little more frustrating, but everything worked out alright. I eventually got my room keys and a blanket that is the right size for my bed, as the previous one had encountered one dryer too many. The pillows they have here a redicuiosly small, so I got a new one of those as well. My room is fairly large. Everything in it is from Ikea. The floor shares a kitchen so we buy alot of fresh food at the store. Nothing is really more than 2-3 Euro. I managed to find a Vodka named Boris Jelzin but have yet to try it.

Tübingen is pretty nice but rather small. There are lots of icecream stores, as Sunday is appearently go to Church and eat icecream day, because nothing else is open. The Necker is pretty and I look forward to the boats in the summer. There are a few parks that are really nice. I would post pictures but my computer has decided to put everything in german, making the task a bit harder than just figuring the technology out. All the buildings are really old and appearently Alzheimer use to live in mine. I think my room was him library, or at least the wall says may room was a library at some point. I guess that's all for now. I'll put up pictures whenever I figure it out.

rachel

Blogging....

So this is my blog. Pretty neat huh? This is just to keep everyone up to date on my adventures in Germany and the rest of Europe. I'm not too vary technical, so I'll do what I can. Check in every now and again to see what I'm up to. I'll try to keep this at least sort of up to date.