It has almost been a week since I started my trip to
Germany. I am happy to announce that I have officially overcome my jet lag! It
is hard to catch up on sleep when you are still recovering from a sleepless
finals week and transatlantic travel. Nevertheless, I feel quite comfortable
here. Osnabrueck is a bit dreary itself with all the clouds and rain but you
quickly adjust to it. True Osnabrueckers don’t seem to use umbrellas and they
will not let the rain ruin their fun outside.
On May 10th I met my international face time
(IFT) partner, Magnus. He was just as fun and sarcastic as I thought he would
(he is studying law which explains the cynicism). We hung out with a group of
other face time partners and USF students at Café Arabesque. I got the “arabische
limonade.” Let just say I won’t be having it again. We wondered the city for a
bit and then got ready for our guided Night Watchman Tour. The tour was great!
We got to go inside cathedral towers and secret tunnels. The history of Germany,
specifically Osnabrueck is amazing. To put it into perspective we saw things
that were 3x the age of the US.
Yesterday was our first excursion outside of Osnabruck to
Koeln. It was a beautiful city. We had a guided tour through a Roman and German
Museum and then a tour through the magnificent Koeln Cathedral. I would definitely
recommend Koeln Cathedral to everyone. It is by far one of the most spectacular
cathedrals I have ever seen. I loved the fact that it was constructed/reconstructed
so it is compilation of the 17th, 18th, 19th,
and 20th century. I also loved that it still has a congregation!
We are fortunate enough to travel to Osnabrueck during
Maiwoche or May week. Every night there is music or entertainment (and lots of
beer). We went with Magnus and the IFT partners during the opening night. It
was very crowded and busy, so much so that we settled into a quiet Biergarten
outside the festival. There, all of the Americans had an essacher luft shot. I
don’t know the contents of this shot however to be initiated into the Uni of
Osnabrueck and the city all the freshman/newcomers must do it. It has some sort
of chili in it so you can imagine our bodies’ reactions to the shot. My eyes watered for about ten minutes and my
tongue was on fire! Definitely an interesting experience!
Today we are going to another museum and park Karlkriese. To
touch on the language, our German lessons are quite simple and I haven’t
learned much however they are definitely refining my accent and I am starting
to think a little in German. I have a tendency to automatically say danke,
bitte, beispiel, hallo, entschuldigung rather than the English equivalents. If
I were here longer I would definitely learn the language. My German I from last
summer and my language experience with Mikey (and his family) have definitely provided
a foundation in which I could potentially gain fluency in the language with
some more time! However, until then I am having fun learning new words
everyday!
No comments:
Post a Comment