Rosenmontagszug

Last Monday was the famous Rosenmontag of Karneval. In celebration, the entire city of Münster shutdown (well almost the entire city). In addition there was one of the longest parades I have seen. I think we watched for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours, and we were even walking towards the end. I did manage to snap a picture of every float in that parade though. I think there was somewhere in the area of 80 - 90 floats. Here are, what I think, some of the best pictures from that parade (Rosenmontagszug):

Note: These models move. For example, the blue guy tilted towards you and a mouse fell out of the cup.

One of the more political floats in the parade. This one is portraying Germany as the mother pig with all the other EU country piglets feeding from it.

Umbrella = perfect candy catcher!

The float of the Prince!

And thanks to Rosenmontag, it was only a three day week for us. Boy do I enjoy having Fridays off. It does throw you off though. I keep thinking that Friday is Saturday, Saturday is Sunday, and Sunday is that well-sought after extra day in the week.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we head off to Hamburg on a group trip. Should be lots of fun and lots of camera button clicking. We probably won't get a chance to blog until next weekend when we get back. Lots of stories and pictures to come.

Bis nächstes Wochenende!

Jake

Karnival

Well I thought I would give Jake a chance to talk about Carnival, but he has not so here I go.
Karnival is a huge deal in much of Europe. Starting on Weiberfastnacht (which Jake talked about-basically the night when it is socially acceptable for all women to turn into Maenads), and going until what we call Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras, Karnival is a huge celebration. The Monday during this period is called Rosenmontag and is usually the biggest celebration. That is when there are parades in every major city and people use it as an excuse to start drinking at 8:00 am or so.
So we went to the parade in Münster. It is not considered especially big for Germany, but it is bigger than any parade I have ever been to before. Rosenmontag parades consist of floats, often extremely elaborate, that are made by Karnivalklubs. They are groups who's entire purpose is to plan and build these floats and then take them to the parade. These groups can be businesses, political groups, or just random people. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

I'm not really sure what this one was supposed to be.

The Euro-sow. Nice political statement.

And the wild west float.

So that was an interesting experience. The parade started at 12:11 and it was still going on when we left at about 4:30.
Since then has been normal class. Not too much to say. There was a test in German, a short paper in Paideia. I think they both went fine.
Bis Später,
Marcus

Wir kamen, wir sahen, wir überwanden: Bremen

All of the guys on the trip-Jake, Nick, Phil, Kirk, and I-decided to go to Bremen on Saturday. There wasn't any particular goal or reason except to see another city in Europe. There is a deal with the trains in Germany called the Schönes Wochenende ticket which lets five people take as many local trains as they want until 3 am the next morning for 40 euros. Normally a trip to Bremen would cost 40 euros each way per person. This way it ended up being just eight each. Well actually ten. You see, the meeting time was set to 7 am on Saturday. I was a little worried cause my bus got to the train station at 7:03. It ended up not being a problem though-Phil, however, did not show up until 8:30. By 7:45 we had decided that if he wasn't there by five to, we would leave without him on the 8:03 train. So this is what we did. We took a train to Osnabrück and another one to Bremen. Osnabrück was fully prepared for Rosenmontag, but because it's Carnival weekend, almost everything was closed, including the big church.

This isn't the big church, but the train station. I thought it looked kind of neat. Unfortunately, the picture is really blurry.

Outside the church were lots of porta-potties for Carnival-not something I expected. There was also this:

A sort of sculpture featuring a man being run over by a car.

When we got to Bremen, we just walked around for quite a while. After getting out of the train station, it took a little bit to figure out where we were in relation to the rest of the city. A nice big map made this pretty easy though. We went across the canal to where the old city is and, on the bridge, we saw this:

a huge windmill of the sort that you'd expect to find in the Netherlands. Unfortunately it was just a really expensive restaurant.

So we went on into the old city. It's very cool looking and pretty neat. We walked around to try to find a place to eat. We ended up happening upon this little restaurant serving Italian food and decided to try it out. Right when we walked in, the guy behind the counter said something to the effect of "You boys hungry?" in really fast German. Caught off guard, it took us a little while to figure out what just happened. He turned out to be very friendly though. I got a pizza for 5 euros, I figured it would be pretty small, but I had already eaten some things that I had brought from home. This is part of what I ended up getting:

Needless to say, I did not leave there hungry.

After eating, we checked out Bremen's Frauenkirche and Dom, which are within meters of each other. We found the Bremen Stadtmusikanten sculpture, a sculpture from the famous fairy tale by the Bothers Grimm. Then we just walked around. It's a very pretty city in the Altstadt, so this occupied us for about an hour. We found on accident a little tiny street with quaint little shops and restaurants on it. When we got to the end, we found a plaque saying it's really famous for just that. Then we went to the Überseemuseum-the over seas museum. It was interesting. It had a lot of stuff, but everything was very disorganized, kind of as if they placed the exhibits by playing darts.

The Überseemuseum. Surprisingly not terrible picture.

This closed at six, so we did not get through all of it. But by that time I think we were all a little bit tired of it anyways. We did spend three hours in there. After this we went to a little döner shop where I got falafel. After that we went to catch the train. This was at about 7:00. We got back at around 10:00, got on the bus that we happened to be just in time for, and went home to bed. It was a successful trip.

Today I went with my family to a cloister where there was an interesting art exhibit featuring moving light. Then I read Martin Luther for several hours. I was going to go to church, but I was really tired from yesterday, so when my alarm went off at 7:00, I decided not to. I realized too late that this meant that Jennifer probably went there alone with the Stedings, which she probably did not enjoy. Sorry Jennifer, I'll go next time I think. Well that's all for now

Bis Später,

Marcus

Weiberfastnacht

The Thursday before Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) is called Weiberfastnacht, essentially an official girls' night. Thus, us men, Kirk, Nick, Phil and I, decided to have a man night. This started with us (minus Kirk) going to all of our houses to drop off our backpacks. Then we, Phil, Nick, and I went searching for an Italian Restaurant. We walked around for about an hour looking for this place and couldn't find it (Turns out we walked right past it but didn't see the name on the door). So we ended up going to a small Chinese  place called "City Mack". Turns out German with a Chinese accent doesn't sound too crazy.

However, we finished eating around 8:40, leaving us 20 minutes before Kirk showed up at Nick's house. 20 minute speed walk later we were at Nick's house with Kirk waiting up in Nick's room. Which I should mention that Nick's parents didn't quite know that we were coming, so it was an awkward introduction for Kirk. :-) Unfortunately, Nick's mother had a lot of work to do and didn't want us over there, so off we went. I think we walked around for another hour or so.

In conclusion, we walked for about a total of 4 hours, ate at a cheap Chinese restaurant instead of a nice Italian one, and couldn't play games. So an interesting night indeed.

Bis bald,
Jake

Klassen und Andere Dingen

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, class went pretty much normal. Religion is interesting. The professor is an old pastor. Each week, I guess he just tells us to find out about a certain heretic group. We look online and find whatever is there, and in class we talk about that group. This week was the Cathars, and next time, which won't be for three weeks, is the Waldensians. Lots of fun, these heretics. German grammar is not going all that badly. It is kind of interesting. Tonight I have to find three adverbs that I don't know to bring to class tomorrow. That is not as interesting.
I have been reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in German (Verblendung) recently: it is by no means easy. Because I don't want to spend the whole time looking up words, I sometimes go whole paragraphs without really knowing what is happening. However, since I know the story already, that is not much of a problem.

Here's the living room area. To the right is outside. To the left is the dining room area, and, closer to the camera, a door to the hallway. The fireplace is pretty much always lit since it is most of what heats that room.

It sounds like Joana is taking a shower. She does seem to do that at odd times. Once she had friends over and took a shower just after they got here.

Today after class, a few of us went to get Döner. Pretty much beloved by Germans and pretty much everyone else here, they are the same as Gyros in Greece or Schwarma in the Middle East: just the Turkish version. They are good though, hence the saying Döner macht schöner. Then we (minus Jake) went to the farmers market that happens on the Domplatz every Saturday and Wednesday.

The edge of the market. Normally there is much more going on, but today it was very rainy outside.

So now all there's left to do is finish taking notes for Paideia, write up a reading log for the same, and find three adverbs for German. Fun fun!

Bis Später,

Marcus

Finnland und Aasee

As Jake has mentioned, we spent most of the day on Friday together. We went on the frozen Aasee and then we went to a play, Finnland. It is a play about the history of a family written by four different writers of four different nationalities. There were four acts, each of which was from a different perspective. It is a man looking back at his family and trying to understand what happened, mostly concerning a girl, his father's half sister, who was repeatedly abused and raped by his grandpa, who later died at her hands. Each act had to do with a different part of her story, this girl who was born out of a fling between the grandmother and some guy from Finland. It was very interesting, even without understanding a large amount of the dialogue.

 Here's a terrible quality picture of Jake with my host family at the theater waiting for the play to start.

The play was very enjoyable and, like Jake said, the set was very interesting. It was modern theater in almost every sense.

On Saturday I mostly did homework. While Jake went and skated, I went to some design exhibition at the university. This was with my host mother, Joana, Kim, and Phoebe. The others liked it. Well except for Joana. We found it very boring. Apparently it's usually much better than it was this year. At night, we watched Loriot, a TV show that was very much like Monty Python and aired about the same time.

Today I finished up some homework. Jake came over for lunch. That was chicken curry. I thought it was very good, but they all said it was too spicy. Germans apparently don't like spicy food very much. We then skated on the Aasee (Jake and Joana and I). I used skates that belonged to Jonas I think. They were about two or three sizes too big, though, so it was very painful. Nevertheless, the three skated the length of the Aasee twice (since we started in the middle), which is about three miles.

Here is me and others on the Aasee. It's funny because they think 28 degrees is super cold and I have my jacket unzipped. Like I told Jake, die Deutschen Leute verstehen gute Wetter nicht.

Now it's Sunday night which means we're gonna watch a detective sort of TV show at about 8:15. It's the only time they watch TV during the week, and they have to pull the TV set out of a closet somewhere. Tomorrow we have religion again at 9:00-12:00 and Paideia at 2:00.

Viele Dinge zu machen

Ah the weekend, time to do homework. But before that, a brief recap of yesterday and today's events.
So on Friday I spent most of my time chillen (official german verb, by the way) with Marcus. First, I navigated my way to his house on foot (zu Fuß). I took one wrong turn and that made the trip a lot colder than it should have been. Anyways, he gave me a nice tour of his house and then we headed of to the Aasee. After walking across that frozen lake, we made our way to der Schloss (palace) and had a peek inside....its really not that interesting because it is now part of the university. So just boring classrooms and offices.

However, the outside is rather pretty. :-)

Somehow we made it make to Marcus' house after this for lunch. Some kind of soup with sausage. It was pretty good. And I had the great pleasure of consuming my first bar of full milk chocolate. Sooooo delicious. The best milk chocolate I have ever had.

Later that evening, I went with Marcus and his family to a play called "Finnland". I was iffy about it at first, but as the play got rolling it got pretty good....well as good as something can be when you can't understand what is going on. So by that I mean that the stage was really, really cool. I will let Marcus talk more on this, since he seemed to understand more than I did.

Today, Saturday, Nick, Phil and I met up at the Aasee again to go skating. Turns out I was the only one to skate while the other two walked. We probably went a distance of half a mile...and I did fall until the very end!

Okay, not of us skating, but you can see skating happening.

We then decided to walk to a large cemetery. There were some very neat headstones there, but it did feel kinda awkward randomly walking around a cemetery. At that point though, we were all freezing, so we headed home. And that is all for the day. Jetzt muss ich meine Hausaufgaben machen.

Bis bald,

Jake

Die Aufenthaltserlaubnis

Today started out with us all trying desperately to get to Ludgeriplatz at 8:15 in the morning. For me, this meant that I had to leave at about 7:30, which is normally when I'd be showering. But this was ok because there were some neat ice crystals on the wall of the bus stop enclosure.

(Bad picture, I know, but it's what I've got)
Being a different bus stop, I looked at the bus schedule last night in order to figure out what exactly to do bus-wise. Well it turns out that was not very useful. Because there's construction going on in the downtown area, bus routes are changed a little bit. I ended up getting off the bus at the Bahnhof, where the route ended, at 8:08. This means I got to run the four blocks or so to Ludgeriplatz. It ended up ok though since I wasn't the last one there.
We had to go to this government building on this roundabout to get our Aufenthaltserlaubnisse, our residence permits. We had previously filled out two forms for this process and now we were going in to have them dealt with. That went surprisingly smoothly-the lady taking care of it was really nice-until her computer froze. We ended up not finishing everyone's paperwork. I was one of the lucky ones, but some others, including Jake, have to go back sometime next week.
In other news, today is the end of the first week of classes. It has gone well for me, and I believe Jake would say the same. There's kind of an obligation to dislike Paideia, religion is at this point still uncertain, and German grammar is much better than it sounds. Now I just have to figure out something to do this weekend.
Bis später,
Marcus

Das falsche Buch

As Marcus mentioned, we had our first German class on Tuesday and then our second on Wednesday. I do have to say that it is rather nice only have one class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The first day of class wasn't bad, but it was interesting getting back in the groove of taking a German class...and classes for that matter. Since our class on runs for half a semester, we got homework right from the start. Nothing too bad, I just have to get into the habit of doing homework again. However, after we had to go to the bookstore for 2 books...and they only had one copy of one of them so I had the chance to order it.

Wednesday is the same old thing. I had to give a presentation on an object and how it represents me...so I picked my Zauberwürfel (Rubik's cube). After class I went to pick up the book I ordered...and it turns out that the wrong book came. Instead of a German grammar book in English, it was in...Polish!!! Now I know my last name is Polish, but that doesn't mean I can speak it. :-)

So we had to go through the order process again and I should have it on Thursday (hopefully the right book this time). But right now I have got Paideia reading and a paper to stop procrastinating on.

Bis bald,
Jake

P.S. Tehe, I just noticed that this didn't get posted. So here it is...a little bit late.

Schule Fingt An

First day of class was on Monday. We have a few little rooms in the Paul Gerhard Haus downtown Münster.

The religion professor, Pastor Mahler, started off the class by asking us who we think will win the Republican nomination (he is a German and lives in Germany). During the break, we split up and went off into the city. We walked around a bit before finding a nice little cafe which has cookies called "Americans" which are the biggest cookies there.

Today was the first day of German class. It was mostly uneventful. I did, however, go to a concert for the gospel choir that my host parents are in. It was kind of funny and cute to hear English gospel songs sung by Germans. Just now, I asked a little question of my host mother. Our assignment for German was to ask what their favorite German city is besides Münster. Well I got the answer to that, but I also got an hour-long discussion about the different theaters in the city among other things. It was interesting, but now I'm up later than I would otherwise be...
Bis später,
Marcus

Ein schönes Wochenende

On Saturday I went out into the city looking for the cafe we would be meeting at on Wednesday, the Münster Büro, and to check out the Wochenmarkt. I was actually proud of myself for building up enough courage to ask some people on the street where the Münster Büro was. However, three of the four people I asked didn't know and I muss have misinterpreted the directions from the other. I was happy that all but one group of people answered me in German, although I could see the smirk on one of the guy's face when I start saying, "Könnten Sie mir bitte sagen,..."

I then met with four other people on our trip, Kirk, Pheobe, Nick, and Eve. We went out to do, well, more exploring. First we headed to Karstadt first because Nick needed to buy a few things. Then we headed out to find Marktcafe, Sunday's meeting place so I was able to help direct us there. It was then decided that we should stop for some Kaffee or Tee or, in my case, Kakao. However, Marktcafe was deemed to expensive so we sent out to find a different cafe and stumpled upon "Der burnte Vogel".

To end the day, we ended up going to Karstadt...twice. First we were almost out of the city a couple of them announced that they needed to go to the bathroom. Back to Karstadt. Then as we were leaving again, we realized that we had gone out the wrong way. Back into Karstadt. This time though we had the pleasant surprise of running into Herr und Frau Steding.

On Sunday, Marcus came over to visit for a bit. In that time I was able to boil milk on to the stove and making a mess and then go on to beat Marcus at chess. So everything evened out. :-)

At 2 we took the bus into the city for Kaffee und Kuchen with the Stedings and the rest of our group. Afterwards, I walked around with Nick taking pictures of different buildings around Münster.

Überwasserkirche

One of the remaining towers of the city fortification

Some German looking buildings with a statue in front.

That is all for this post.
Bis Bald,
Jake

Die Innenstadt

I tried my hardest to get a little bit lost Friday morning. I was walking around in the inner city for about two hours, but I only got a little bit confused at a couple of points. We met as a group to get month passes for the bus system. That took a lot longer than I expected, meaning that I got home later than I said I would. I felt bad but I didn't really know how to convey that.
Frau and Herr Schulte left last night for a trip with a gospel choir they're in. That left me and Joana here alone. Joana had some friends over to make spaghetti, but I was tired so I went to bed about 9:00. The plan was for me to go to breakfast at the house of a neighbor who is hosting Kim. I am completely sure that when Joana said this yesterday, she said "sieben Uhr." So for some reason I didn't question it and went over to their house at seven. When I saw that it was dark I came back. Joana was getting ready to leave to go work and she asked why I was already up "Wieso bist du schon wacht?" Well I wasn't about to say that I misheard her, so I just kind of said I didn't know. Then she said to remember breakfast at ten.
I went over at ten and we ate (Kim and her host mother and I). Then we went and checked out the market on the Domplatz. I got a couple of notebooks and we came back. Later we go to see some movie that I can't remember the name of. Now I'm sitting in my room writing this at this little table.

Well that's all for now.

Bis Später
Marcus

First Night in Münster

As Marcus said, the trip to and around Münster went well even though some of us were very tired afterwards, me include. When my host mother, Frau Gosing,  came and picked me up, we said our greetings in German but quickly moved to English. We stayed with English the rest of the night with some German sprinkled in. She showed me where the bus stops, a bank, and the grocery store are. Heck, she even took me shopping for a few things. When we returned, Shaolin, a Chinese foreign exchange student who is also living here, was home (and had to let us in because Frau Gosing had forgotten here keys).

While Frau Gosing had to go get some work done, I was to keep up some simple conversion with Shaolin, although I had to ask her to repeat herself far too many times. Then Tom, Frau Gosling's son, came home and we sat and chatted for a while (again in English). I kind of wish I would have spoken more German with both Frau Gosling and Tom, but they seemed intent on keeping to the English, probably because I would have a hard time keeping up otherwise. I was thankful that Shaolin was patient with me and that she tended to stick to simpler sentences.

At 7 o'clock, our agreed dinner time, Frau Gosing made me a nice supper of potatoes, what I think was cooked zucchini, and chicken bath in some kind of yummy sauce. After that, though, I went up to my room, laid on my bed, and was out. I woke up at 9 this morning and still had a hard time believing I was in Germany. However it is now lunch time and I need to figure out how to make myself a meal before our group meets again.

Bis bald,

Jake

Die Erste Nacht

We all got here normally as you would expect. Only one person had one bag lost and it wasn't Jake or me. We spent what felt like forever in airports and airplanes. The flights weren't so bad except for the ascents and descents when I had massive ear problems. Other than that they seemed easier, faster, and more comfortable than I expected. It did help that I got an aisle seat for all three plane rides.

I had an interesting conversation with a German high school girl who was returning from a semester abroad in Virginia. She had a lot of very interesting things to say about the US. A lot of it was about how ignorant the people she got to know were about the world. But what was more interesting is that when I mentioned the "Here are some stupid Americans" youtube videos that seem to be all over-you know, the ones were they ask people very simple questions and they can't answer-she said that there are similar videos with Germans as the subjects. So maybe every culture has stupid people, we only notice it in our own.

Finally getting to Germany was fairly uneventful. The flight into Münster was pretty normal for a thirty minute plane ride. Although, because it's Lufthansa, they still figured they have to give us something to eat and drink. What we got was water and this little banana bar called "Corny."

When we got to the city, though, we dumped our luggage at the building that we will be having classes in and Herr Steding gave us a very small tour of the inner city. From the looks and comments of other people it seems they still won't be able to get around on their own, but at least they know about some things that are there. Everyone was very tired and for some it was a struggle staying awake. We went back to the building that had our luggage and awaited the arrival of the families. They all seemed to end up coming at the same time, which meant it was kind of chaotic. But as far as I know everything worked out smoothly.

At first, being with my host family was very overwhelming. I was picked up with Kim since the two families are neighbors. The two mothers and their two daughters talked very quickly the entire way back. Kim at least made some attempt at understanding what they were talking about, a venture which seemed to be for the most part successful. I was just very spacy the entire ride.

Once we were dropped off, however, the talking became a little less rapid. I was able to make sense of far more than I expected, and I was actually able to carry on a somewhat decent conversation for a short period of time.

We ate some waffles and then Frau Schulte insisted on taking me in the van to see where Jake and Kim were staying, along with some bus stops and many other things in Münster. It was interesting, but I have no idea how much I will remember even tomorrow. Well it looks like that is all for now. Things have started very well, and I'm sure they will keep going that way.

Tschüss,
Marcus