An English Christmas

To start off, I would like to wish everyone a very happy holiday season. In Germany, we say, Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr (Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year)!!

The past week has been a roller coaster ride. However first off I would like to thank Laura and her family for having me at their home to celebrate Christmas! I had the most wonderful time, filled with great food, drink (of course), and company! I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Wilmslow, a suburb just south of Manchester, England. Laura and I made the trek into Manchester the day after I arrived for a couple reasons: 1) The airline temporarily lost my bag, therefore I needed clothes; 2) We wanted to see the city; and 3) We wanted a fantastic cocktail. Well, I have to say, Manchester did NOT disappoint! We took the train to Manchester Picadilly (can it get more English than that?!??!!) because of the awful weather England had been experiencing. I have to say, I really really wish Milwaukee had trains as easily accessible and useable as Europe...theres no excuse! They are so user friendly and convenient! Anyways, we walked around the city a bit, went to Primark to get some clothes to hold me over, explored a mall, then ventured to the bars. Now, we really didn't have the intention to party it up in Manchester, but it happened - go figure :-) I think we went to about five bars and didn't return to Laura's until the wee hours of the morning.

The following days were filled with family time and wondrous meals, and also a night out in Wilmslow with a few of Laura's friends. We had a fantastic time ringing in Christmas at The Rectory and The Bollin Fee, complete with some Veuve Clicquot champagne...yum. Christmas day was nice and relaxing, and even filled with gifts! Laura's family and friends were very generous and lovely, really showing me a great English Christmas. I will definitely remember this one for a long, long time :-)

The flight home was really uneventful, which was welcomed considering how stressful the flight to England was. Cancellations, lost baggage, and unhelpful staff really made the beginning of the trip a hassle. Needless to say, Lufthansa is going to get a really angry call tonight... Maybe I'll get some reimbursement?? Cross your fingers!

Tuesday morning bright and early I'll be picking up Collin at the airport!! He will be here from the 29th of December through the 8th of January. Very excited for him to come so I can show him around Frankfurt. Hopefully we'll be able to get out of town to see another city/country as well.

Grüße!

Austin

Berlin

Hello again everyone...hoping all of you are well and enjoying the Christmas season wherever you are celebrating it.

I recently traveled to Berlin and really enjoyed getting to know another city. My friends and I arrived very early on Friday the 4th of December and stayed until the evening of Monday December 7th. Since we were there for a good amount of time, I really got a feeling of the city. I have to say, Berlin is nothing like what I expected. I was thinking more along the lines of New York...tall buildings, everything crammed close together, nothing green, etc. Boy was I wrong...

To start off, I knew that the city was big, but WOW was I surprised. Berlin's population is nearly 3.5 million, but it feels like more. Most of the buildings there aren't very tall, so in order to house everyone the city sprawls out, gobbling up smaller towns as it grows. Also, the amount of empty space in the city is astonishing. Parks, squares, and empty spaces are around every corner.

Another observation, Berlin uses many more above ground local trains that they do subways. I was surprised to find this out, again thinking everything would be more New York like... In Frankfurt, I can get from my dorm to the other side of the city in about 15-20 minutes. In Berlin it was muuuuch longer. Also, as with all cities here, there is no rhyme or reason to the streets. Each road twists and turns in all sorts of directions, making it nearly impossible to navigate the streets, even with a map.

Our hostel was really nice and very clean. Despite an incident with an Irish and a Fire extinguisher, the stay there was rather calm ;-) But oh yes, there was a pool table :-) It had been AGES since I've played and was really rusty, but it was fantastic nonetheless. At only 9 euros per night in a great central location it was a steal, and we even had our own bathroom...

Tomorrow, Sunday the 20th, I'm off to Manchester, England. I will be spending Christmas there with my friend Laura and her family. I'm really excited, and cannot wait to have an English Christmas! However, its supposed to snow buckets tomorrow...lets hope the flight isn't cancelled!

Visitors

Just thought I would write a quick update today. Its Sunday evening here in Frankfurt and I'm sitting outside Starbucks having a latte (its one of the only places open on Sundays here... Anyways... 2 of my friends will be coming to Germany to visit.

Collin arrives December 29th in the morning and will be here

until the 8th of January. During his visit I plan on showing him

much of Frankfurt and in early January we will go to Spain to visit his friends there from his study abroad.

Shortly after Collin's departure, my friend Amy will arrive. She gets in on Friday January 15th and will stay until the 26th of January. I will of course show her the sights here in Frankfurt, but I'm sure we will take a few trips to neighboring cities or maybe even further :-)

My trip to Berlin is quickly approaching and I couldn't be more

excited :-) As for classes and such, they are all going well. I think I get a paper assigned rather soon in one of my courses, but it shouldn't be too bad.

Anyone else who wants to visit, you're more than welcome to come!

A

Update :-)

Its been a month since my last entry, and so much has happened! I am now in my 5th week of classes here at Goethe Universität. I'm taking a total of four courses: Sex and the City: Geschlechterverhältnisse in "Chick Flick" Filmen; Security Communities and the Critics; Interkulturelles Lernen; and Classical Theories of Political Myth. The courses are all really interesting and I will be learning a lot this semester. Also, after some manipulation of the system, it seems like the requirements won't be incredibly awful.

Over the past few weeks I took three trips. One of them was to Mainz, a neighboring German town about 30 minutes away on the train. A group of about 10 of us spent the day there sightseeing and walking around, it was a great time! The next trip was to Luxembourg, a border country of Germany. It is only a few hours away from Frankfurt traveling with a coach bus. I was definitely surprised when crossing the border...the bus never stopped and neither did any of the cars driving alongside us. Also, none of our passports were checked. Gotta love the free movement through the EU :-) My third trip consisted of traveling via train to Bonn to visit Chris, a German exchange student that my family hosted back in high school. We saw some of the sights in Bonn and then took a short train ride to Köln (Cologne) and did some sight seeing there as well. Both cities were beautiful, much different from the semi-modern concrete jungle that is Frankfurt. It was refreshing and fun to go see some other German cities and what they have to offer. I still can't get over being here. It seems like yesterday I was in German class learning about these famous cathedrals and now I'm taking pictures of them in person. Very surreal.

As I'm sure many of you know, yesterday the 9th of November was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall (or as its called here 20 Jahre Mauerfall). Unfortunately I was in class most of the day, so I couldn't go out and see any daytime festivities, but I did catch up with a bit on the news in the evening. The dynamic of the anniversary here is rather interesting... Not everyone here is very happy with the fall of the wall for reasons that I will leave unmentioned, but I encourage you to do some research on the subject. Needless to say it was an extremely important anniversary for the current German state, and I'm glad I was here to experience the momentous occasion.

December 4th - 7th I will be exploring all that Berlin has to offer. I'm really excited for this weekend trip with a bunch of friends. Rountrip airfare was only 23 euros, and the hostel for all 3 nights will only cost around 30 euros. I don't think I could have booked this trip any cheaper! I'm not sure what we will be doing, but I'm sure a decent amount of sight seeing and knowing me a good amount of beer drinking during the day and dancing at the clubs in the evening. I'm sure the Christmas markets will be beautiful and hopefully I can get some fun little souvenirs.

I miss all of you back home and hope to hear from you!

FYI I enjoy getting mail. Let me know if you want my address :-)

Austin

Classes & Heidelberg

Its been a while since my last post, my apologies. Today classes officially started, however a lot classes here don't start until next week. All but one of my courses start this week :-) Today I had "Security Communities and the Critics." This class is taught in English and its going to be really interesting. Its a very small seminar, with only about 8 students so it will require a lot of participation from all of us. We discussed the topic of the course and debated a little bit. It should be very interesting and a great course to add as part of my degree. And I would have taken this course whether it taught in English or German, so no negative comments from any of you! :-) Next week Monday starts my course on, thats right you guessed it, "Sex and the City." This course will be taught in German and I'm taking it with my friend Laura. I cannot wait to see what will be required of me for this class...if its too much I may consider dropping it, but we'll just have to see how it works out :-) This week I also have Politics of the EU, A United Nations course (focusing on the rights of a child), Intercultural Learning, Political Myths, and German Foreign Policy. I'm probably going to drop one or two of these courses, depending on the amount of credits and work each one is.

On a different note, this past Friday I travelled to Heidelberg with some friends. It is about a hour and a half from Frankfurt via

train. Heidelberg is a quaint German town on the Neckar river. It is known for its Castle and beautiful Altstadt. Pictures are on facebook, but I'll include a few here as well. We arrived around 10:30am and got some food. Around noon we made our

way up to the castle and spent a while walking around, exploring, taking

pictures, and of course laying out in the sun. Afterwards we walked around the Altstadt and had some coffee and cake. We wandered around for a bit more, then decided to make our way back to Frankfurt. It was a fantastic afternoon and it was nice to experience something a bit

different than what would be found in Frankfurt.

Oktoberfest, Stuttgart, Bundestag

Well, as it turns out, I decided to go to Stuttgart on Saturday for an Oktoberfest Celebration. We left our dorm around 7am (well with Austin time it was about 7:15am) and walked to the U-Bahn. We made our way to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and purchased our train tickets for the trip. It only cost us 7 Euro per person for the train ride there and back. About 3 and a half hours later we were in Stuttgart and ready to start the celebration. After the day was said and done, each of us had done our very best and polished off a few liters each. From my calcuations, I ingested somewhere over the 5 liter mark throughout the 8 hour celebration. See the fantastic glasses in the picture? One of them may have “fallen” into my bag and made it home with me. How did that happen??? We had an absolute blast in the German Beer Hall dancing on the tables/benches pretending we kew what the hell was going on. I’m sure we fit right in with all the other Germans there... loving life, and beer. In fact, let me take this time to tell you, that is what they do here, they love life everyday with coffee, beer, and wurst (not to mention the rather short workdays). If you couldn’t tell, I’m enjoying myself.

Sunday was spent......Sleeping!!! Yeah you guessed it! Upon waking from my well needed rest, I watched some live streaming coverage of the Bundestag elections here in Germany. Needless to say, Angela Merkel will once again be Bundeskanzlerin. The main upset with the election was how the right won so much this election. Turns our Germany will now be governing with a more central right influence. So, it was a win for big business and a disappointment for the more left leaning parties.

Today marked the last day of my pre semester course. So in 3 and a half weeks I managed to earn 3 American credits toward my graduation requirement. Now I’m only required to complete 9 more American credits, roughly 12 ECTS (3-4 courses). I’m going to start out this semester taking about 6, decide which ones I like, then drop one or two. Taking only 4-5 courses here should leave a lot of free time during the week, enough to perfect my resume and start the job search while I’m still here. Wish me luck...

A

Freizeit! Politik...

Today I had my Referat (presentation) and I think it went pretty well. I've also narrowed down the courses I would like to take. The choices are: Gender and Development, The Political System of the European Union, 20 Year Review of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, Intercultural Learning, Decolonizing Europe: Power and Politics in a Postcolonial World, and German Foreign Policy. All of these are taught in German, eeek!

Tuesday marks the day that I will finish the pre semester intensive German language course. On Wednesday or Thursday I would like to take a trip to see a concentration camp and maybe stay overnight in the city we go to. There aren't any really close to Frankfurt. The options are either Buchenwald or Dachau. The famous holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, author of Night was imprisoned at Buchenwald along with his father. Seeing and walking around these camps will undoubtedly be incredibly difficult, but I believe it is something I have to experience while I'm here in Europe.

Ok, on to a lighter topic! This weekend... Tonight I'm going out downtown for some dancing and

bar fun. Tomorrow morning I'm going to head to the Museum of Modern Art here in Frankfurt. For anyone interested, here is the link http://www.mmk-frankfurt.de/ As for the evening tomorrow, I'm thinking dinner by the Römer. This building has been around for about 600 years and houses Frankfurt's "Rathaus" or town hall. Again more info found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Römer

Edit: I almost forgot! This Sunday is Germany's Federal election! They vote every 4 years like we do, so its a treat that I get to be here for this. The streets have been full of various candidates campaign posters and signs. Germany has a ton of political parties, but the most prominent are the CDU, SPD, Greens, FDP, and The Left. Angela Merkel is the incumbent (CDU) and is running against Frank Walter Steinmeier (SPD), and Guido Westerwelle (FDP), along with a few others. A few days ago Al-Qaeda threatened Germany regarding the elections. They said that if the election doesn't turn out how they want it to, they will attack the German citizens since in a democracy it is the citizens who choose the leader. They want good 'ole Angela out because she [somewhat] supports the fighting abroad. The heightened security in public places is already noticeable. Polizei with big guns in the subways, train stations.... I highly doubt anything will happen, and I think Angela will win office once again.

I think all of you have had a good enough history lesson for today! Have a good weekend everyone!!