Sunday, November 26, 2006

a few musings...

i guess i didn't talk much about the christmastime stuff here, even though that was the title of the last post. basically they've set up a really crazy huge tree in marienplatz along with little wooden storefronts which will be opening in december i think? i'm excited for it to be cold, i really want snow. everybody was blabbering about how cold it was going to be here etc etc and so far its not cold. at all.

i didn't end up going to the kafe kult show on saturday, but i went to one in erding at a youth center. the music was kinda amusing, but not really all that good. the slovenian band put on a good show but i didn't like the recorded versions of their songs on their website at all. friday was fun too, the party in klinikum definitely was a good thing, as well as finishing a bottle of whiskey between like 5 or 6 people in a hour...most of them already drunk. so classy. the german guy that followed us back to nikki's, not classy. reallllly glad we didnt have to bar him entry or something and that he just kept walking...

club on saturday after the show was fun, kinda got a little tired, and then the really long trip back kinda woke me back up. i talked for a while to a girl named geddy or getty? i dont know, she walked up to me wanting to split a taxi, i told her we could take the bus, and she ended up living one stop before me. she had lived and studied in the states too, so her english was just about perfect...like everybody else here.

this isn't really directly related to germany or anything, more like me blabbering...so if you don't want to hear it you can stop reading here. there was this big fat nerdy dude at the club. he was there alone. he was at the bar alone. he was drinking alone, dancing by himself, and singing by himself to shitty pop/rap music from the 90's. the whole thing depressed me so much. before i think i would have just laughed at him and not thought about it, but i like genuinely felt bad for some reason. he was out there alone! like who goes to a club and drinks around a bunch of people, but really you're alone because you dont know anyone there? somebody who doesn't have any friends i guess? but like the poor dude, that is his life! not having people...having no one to call when you go out to a bar/social sort of gathering. i kinda felt like that when i first moved here and it was just so terrible, but then after the first few days i had dylan and then lisa and then just ballooned out from there. living my whole life like that would be so terrible...

i hope he finds some sort of resemblance of a friend he can ask to go to a bar with next time...or maybe he just liked the atmosphere? i dont know, drinking alone in that kind of environment was just saddening to see...

Friday, November 24, 2006

christmastime

the days and weeks are really starting to fly by here. i can't believe i've been here for this long now, but i still have such a long time ahead of me. with mondays off i have a 3-day weekend every single weekend, which i think contributes to time flying. i don't even really remember what i have done in the past 2 weeks, nothing super exciting i don't think. i've started to try harder in my classes because i'm not just an outsider watching them, i actually do need to participate. i read the entire book for this friday (okay admittedly in english, but it was Frankenstein - originally written in english!). i tried to join the discussion...wasn't really capable of keeping up when the girl next to me speaks faster than anybody ive ever heard. valley-girl style fast, without all the 'likes' and 'oh mah gods!'. so yea trying to keep up with that, not something that is going to happen this early.


i've made some friends in my classes now, i'm definitely a curiousity because i'm an american, which i try to use to my advantage. i'm really scared to do my 'referats' but they are both after winter break...the actual presentation wont be that bad, but the discussion stuff i can't really keep up with the whole time. about the friends - Markus is in my friday sci-fi style class, he works/volunteers at a place called Kafe Kult (akimbo played there kyle on their euro-tour, lol. lightning bolt too!) which is hella small and hard to find but has ridiculous super-indie stuff, which is fun to discover. there is a german local hardcore band playing there tomorrow night, he estimated a turnout of 20-30 people, haha, so i may go check it out, cause these are the kind of things that really help you to get to know a city i think.


i bought the first season of deadwood for my birthday, my mom told me i wasn't allowed to just save the money like i usually do, so i got it in a german department store, where it was 29 euros. i then kinda had buyers remorse and figured it would have been cheaper online, etc, and NO. the fucking MSRP is NINETY NINE US DOLLARS (this is for you andrew). even on amazon it was still around 55 bucks for just the first season. wewt, got a deal.


the people on my floor are cool, we watch the oc together...in english. im really trying hard to improve my german but i feel like it has kinda hit a stalemate. i try to speak german to everybody i meet, but they ALL speak english and want to improve (all educated people here speak english is what ive been told), so they always end up just kinda sneaking into english.


thats enough rambling for now i guess. if anybody is curious what else there is to germany i'd love to talk to you guys, i got skype now so i can call you when its like 6 am on a saturday morning for you. LAWLZ.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Munich with Mackenzie

Sounds like some sort of weird sitcom name. Munich with Mackenzie! But yeah, it was a really great time.

Mac flew in on friday at around 11:10 or so, i had class until 1, so we met at 1:10 in Marienplatz, the main square downtown. she wandered around before we met and took some sweet pictures of the downtown area. it was a beautiful crisp cold day, with really blue skies. perfect for wintertime sightseeing. i wandered with her into the main church here in munich (frauenkirche), but having lived in paris for the past 2 months, most churches/cathedrals aren't that impressive i guess.

We then walked down to Karlsplatz, generally absorbing the nice sun, even though it was fucking cold. aka 28 degrees or something ridiculous. she got to wander through some nice leaves, and we then decided it was time to eat. i took her to Augustiner beerhall, they used to brew beer on the site from like 1328 or something ridiculous, then stopped sometime in 1600 and turned it into a restaurant/beerhall. she got two Weißwurst (white veal sausages, which she described as looking like "dead fetuses floating in this hot water") with sweet bavarian mustard and a preztel, as well as a Weißbier to drink. really really traditional bavarian brunch or "zweites frühstuck". as gross as it sounds to have to peel the sausages out of their skins, it's actually really really good.

we then got to take a nice walk through odeonsplatz, the residenz garden, and the english garden. we stopped at a starbucks to get the christmas mix fix for mac, then she took a nap in her floor-bed, wearing all her clothes because she was cold and exhausted. it was pretty amusing. for dinner it was a cool cafe near the city museum.

saturday was dachau. i didn't really want to go, but mac really really wanted to see it, it was important to her, so i agreed. i'm glad i went. i warned her that i would probably start sobbing, which i came through on, though she did an alright job herself. "Arbeit Macht Frei" on the entrance to the camp was what did it for me. (the original gate that the prisoners used to enter the camp, 'work makes you free'). i think thats all that needs to be said. the memorials there were very tastefully done, and it was good to see a german schoolgroup there early on a saturday morning. they were probably freshman in highschool, but i didn't feel quite like they took the seriousness of the camp to heart. the weather was appropriately miserable.

we took the train barely into the city enough to change trains and get on the one to Andechs, a monks monestary. it was good fun, really hearty traditional german food and good beer. mac got a little tipsy after her liter (good job, you finished it all by yourself) and proclaimed her love for the internet. I showed her my favorite bar in münich when we got back into the city, and then we headed to bed.

museums on sunday were at first really lame, because the impressionism was closed at the neue pinakothek, but we wandered down to the pretty gardens at the Lenbachhaus, then walked to the Residenz and took the tour of the palace and the treasury. ps - WTF is the matter with catholic people. there was all sorts of really fucked up shit in the 'relics' room. like three DEAD MUMMIFIED BABIES inside a glass case, supposedly from the cleansing of Sodom or something. then all sorts of bones in ridiculously ornate gold and jeweled cases. like a fucking hand of some saint, a HAND...inside this gold case. not to mention the weird skulls on pillows covered in jewels. god it was weird. i did some research on wikipedia afterwards, there is apparently a relic (or was) of the "Holy Foreskin". Jesus's foreskin...and it was kept someplace in france...but it couldn't be validified that it was really his foreskin (duh). WHAT THE FUCK.

we ended her trip with some nice food from a stand in marienplatz, and then a really nice walk next to the Isar, the main river in Munich. her visit was really nice, and im glad i got to show off my tour guide/german speaking abilities.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

sketchy trip to Ikea

So today was my trip to Ikea...finally. I've been meaning to go for quite a while, and i know i'm going to end up going again, because stuff there is so cheap, and i can't carry everything i want back with me.

it was really a shitty adventure. I had class today until 5 pm, and then took the U6, my subway line, all the way to the end, where i could catch a bus that ran out into this middle of nowhere shopping center. so it took about 20 or so minutes to get all the way to the end of my subway line, then i waited for about 10 minutes for the bus. not bad. it was then about 5:40. took til about 6:05 to get to Ikea on these dark sketchy narrow roads...but the store was literally right across the street from the bus stop. unfortunately, the last bus back to Garching-Forschungszentrum (the last stop on U6) was at 6:40, so i planned on hurrying.

now i don't know how many of you have been to an Ikea, but you definitely can't "hurry" through it. you walk through all the displayed rooms with all the furniture prettily set up, and mark down what things you want. i was really there to get a matratzeauflage (like a mattress pad), and nothing else. i had considered getting a futon, but trying to get that back to my apartment without a car would have been quite a task. so after eventually finding what i wanted, i scurried down through to pick it up underneath, where they have all the stuff packed up in boxes. again, unfortunately it was in the "back room" or something, so i paid for it at the cash register and had to go around the side to pick it up.

by this time it was 6:35, and i was worried about making the bus
. i knew there was one that would come at 7:20 to get me to the Eching train center, but that would mean a gigantic roundabout trip down through the city center to get eventually back up to where my aparment was. after waiting for literally a half hour, the guy comes out and says sorry, we dont have this anymore, you have to go back inside and get a refund. i waited for a full THIRTY MINUTES! come on! that's enough time to look in the fucking computer and see that you don't have it anymore! the shittiest thing is the poster next to where he was standing advertising "7 minute delivery or we buy you a drink!"

i chewed him out as best i could in german, asking him why he was just standing around instead of looking in the computer to tell me they had no more (he was seriously just standing around, im not being a dick...). but unfortunately i didn't know the words for "incompetent piece of shit, you made me miss my bus."

i got my money back inside, knew i was going to miss the 7:20 bus to the Eching train center (the last one), and asked how to get there by foot. "oh, 15-20 minute walk...straight and then left."

i quickly bought another pad, cheaper and i could actually just go pick it up myself, and set off on my journey.

think about the sketchiest unlit road next to train tracks you can, and that was this road. i walked in the dark carrying my bookbag and all this shit from ikea, the pad, a frying pan and a blanket for about 20 minutes. the trains would like whizz past me, and sketchy dudes on bikes would ride by every 5 minutes or so.

quite an adventure.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Halloween/My Birthday

oh man...talk about ridiculousness.

The germans have just started importing Halloween from the states, basically as another excuse to party, as if there weren't enough of those already...

in my building there are floor parties just about every other week, sometimes twice in one week. so on halloween our floor threw a little one just for everybody who lived on the floor, and there was a huge one on the 12th floor. it was 5 euro all you can drink for everybody on my floor (you know that's gotta end up hurting). it was nice to just hang out with people - though i was dressed up as a freaking goth. wewt/disgusting. it was quite fun, chris, my fulbright scholar friend who lives on the floor above me came down to our floor and hung out with us and watched the really drunk german guys sing some traditional folk song...and then when everyone was sufficiently shitfaced we wandered down to the 12th floor. people didn't quite get the concept though that at a halloween party its totally lame if you aren't dressed up.

oh well, they've just started with halloween apparently within the last 2-3 years. they've got some time to catch on.

and then...there was my birthday.

dear god. i make it sound in these entries like all i do over here is drink, which is really not true (okay germans do like to drink, but i swear i go to school and do other stuff too)...but when you turn 21, you need to drink.

we went out to a swanky bar in schawbing, which is kinda like a mix between capitol hill and the udistrict in seattle. i had 5 delicious drinks, all paid for by my wonderful friends (thank you all), and after about 3 hours of chilling and talking and drinking we decided it was time to move on to a club.

this club is called Nachtgalerie, i had been there once before and it was packed...a little bit of an expensive entry, but then drinks are about .50-3.00. you can probably guess how that ended up for me. people love to buy you drinks when they're only 50 cents a shot. my irish friend Gemma led me around to do the irish birthday tradition of 21 kisses(?) which was amusing, and pretty much my last coherent memory of the night. also there was a german guy who shared my birthday, he was 21 and at the same club...completely random and weird, but i guess we were buddies.

overall, a fun birthday. thanks to everyone who came!