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
