I tried to write some account of things I've been up to over the last month or so but bored the piss out of myself and could only imagine what it would do to you. Instead, here's a bullet-list of fun facts with accompanying support.
Bicycles are fun. I now own a bike, which I used to travel around the big parks in Munich and check out all the Fall foliage. Experiencing Fall for real was been really fantastic... let's see what I say once I'm in Winter.
The Rhine is pretty. No really. I took a trip towards the center of the country and did some town-hopping up and down the Rhine with Ashlan and Chris, the highlight of which may have been a boat ride upstream. Since I'm too lazy to write a recount of that I refer you to Ashlan's.
It pays to lift TVs for old German men. While wandering through the tiny town of Boppard during this Rhine trip I was stopped by a German man standing outside his home. He asked me if I could help him and for some reason my immediate response was, "yeah, of course!" I helped him lift up a new TV onto a wallmount, which took all of 30 seconds, while Ashlan and Chris talked to his wife. Then we got a chocolate bar as a reward. Not bad I say, not bad.
Now the rest of this post will be the same format but written now. Notice the utter lack of details all because I'm an idiot and waited a month before writing anything.
Clichés can be fun. I went to visit my favorite Russian drinking buddy, Sergey, in Bremen, very far up in Northern Germany. One of my favorite things about my friendship with Sergey is how much we can bask comfortably in each other's stereotypes and just marvel at the German way compared to ours. Sergey met me at the train station and we started off speaking German before I decided I wanted to be able to say things to him and he decided it'd be good to practice his English while he could. One of the first questions he asked me in English on our walk back to his home was "What can you drink Jack Daniels with?" This was a clue: We are going to be drinking Jack Daniels tonight. And this is what I'm talking about. Sergey wanted to have something to drink together, had never tried Jack Daniels, and figured I must be an expert on it. The next day, after touring Bremen all day, which is a pretty neat city, Sergey had organized an American themed party with some of his work friends and enlisted my help to cook, of course, Hamburgers. To go along with the very American Hamburgers (which he even put tiny American Flag toothpicks into!) we had some liquor... from Cuba... pretty much exclusively because Sergey knows trade with Cuba is illegal in the US and he likes to tease me about breaking my home country's laws while abroad (last summer we did this same ritual with Absinthe).
Bremen is ironically obsessed with the Brothers Grimm. I mean most German cities that have any connection to the Brothers Grimm are exceptionally proud, but Bremen is proud of the story "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten" or "The Bremen Town Musicians," a story about four animals that decide to become musicians in Bremen. The problem with this is that the animals never actually make it to Bremen. In fact Bremen really has nothing to do with the story, except that it is being made fun of because these old decrepit talentless animals think they can surely become musicians there. But that doesn't stop Bremen from sporting all sorts of statues and memorabilia. I don't get it.
Altbier is the bomb. Another nice weekend I had was with Marco in Düsseldorf, the land of Altbier. It was a really cool weekend, despite both of us losing a single glove. We both lost our right glove too. Weird.
Munich in white is pretty. On the ride back from Düsseldorf it snowed like mad. The five hour drive from Düsseldorf to Munich ended up taking about twice as long so that I didn't show up to Munich until 3 in the morning, well after most of the normal public transport has stopped running. The upside is that I was pretty much the only person in the street and the entire town was white. There were hardly even footprints in the snow. I flagged down a tram driver who I think felt bad for me and took me as far as he could even though I'm pretty sure he was only on a service drive. The ride from Odeonsplatz to a few blocks away from my place didn't take long but was pretty surreal. Really beautiful too. The next morning the snow plows had made their way through so that the streets and sidewalks could actually be seen again but I was really glad to have seen that spectacle. Also really tired.
Students don't know what they want. I've been a TA for my professor's class "Einführung in die Quantenmechanik" (Introduction to Quantum Mechanics). After about three weeks of the class hearing me butcher their language one of the students asked me to speak English to the class. I asked if everyone agreed and then when they did I spent that class, as well as the next, speaking mostly English. Then the class had evaluations for their teachers. My class's only comment to me was that they wanted me to try to speak more in German. Come on! Now I just speak whatever I'm spoken to in.
Without a camera, I've been relying on other people to prove to the rest of the world that I still exist. Now, I can pass on a couple of those proofs. The first example comes from our small group trip to Andechs, the Monastery just outside of Munich that has been brewing beer for about 500 years. This picture was taken at the top, after about a liter of beer and some Haxe. Mmhmm.
Left to right we have Sergey (Russian, not the one in Bremen), Alena (Russian), some stranger, and Duygu (Turkish).We had a symposium in honor of my professor's 65th birthday and it was well documented by members of our group, which means a couple pictures exist of the group. Yay!
Call me crazy, but when I look at myself in this picture all I see is Ian. Forgive my position in the background.
A nice collection of the group. This was however after two hours of teaching and then two hours of sitting through scientific talks so I'm in somewhat of a daze.Now I have a favor to ask. Keep on bugging me to keep this thing more up to date. I'm apparently failing with the self-motivation.
1 comment:
Brilliant writing Shano! Bravo.
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