Fast Silvester

So, Christmas turned out much better after I posted my last blog entry. Around 3, Kara (friend on my program who lives on the floor above) came by and invited Matt and me out with some other AYFers to go for a walk around the Seepark (the big lake park behind StuSie). It was the first sunny, beautiful day in a really long time, so the park was just lovely. Plus, it turns out there's a little Japanese garden with a waterfall back there, and we went up in the watch tower and got a decent view of the Seepark and the surroundings.

After that excursion, Matt and I headed to Vauban to have dinner with Becca and her family. She and her sister made some delicious chicken and veggies and such things. Becca got me two jars of Jif peanut butter and a big pack of mechanical pencils for Christmas, which may not sound good to you but is an absolutely wonderful gift for a poor international student like me. After dinner we uhh, went to the Irish pub in town and proceeded to rack up a 100+ Euro tab between 5 people. Then we came back and I called my family. New Christmas tradition, perhaps?

This past weekend Matt, Kara, her friend Noah and I made an impromptu visit to Köln (Cologne). We took a Schönes Wochenende ticket, which allows up to 5 people to travel on regional trains anywhere in Germany on either Saturday or Sunday for only 37 Euro... unfortunately, it took us 7.5 hours to get there. Saturday we checked in at our hostel, the hallway of which smelled like something indescribable (not in a good way) and then met up with my German friend Alex, who studies in Freiburg but is from Köln, and he showed us around a bit. On our way to the bridge over the Rhein we ran into an outdoor ice rink, so we went ice skating (turns out, Matt Hallock is an ice skating pro) and made fools of ourselves and banged up our ankles. For dinner we ate at a brewery that serves Kolsch, a type of beer brewed exclusively in Köln and talked politics and such while the crazy German waiter continuously brought us fresh beers (they are served in .2 liter glasses so they just keep bringing you new ones unless you ask them to stop). We finished off the night by walking way too far to a trendy little bar, where we all almost fell asleep because we had been up for 18+ hours at that point.


The next morning (if you can still call it morning) we were roused from sleep by one of the hostel workers entering our room to change the sheets. Turns out it was 11:40 and we were supposed to check out by noon... so we got dressed quickly and got out of there in time. We then headed to the Kölner Dom, which Alex had informed us the day before is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world... if you've ever seen it, you would believe it. Enormous, majestic and overwhelming. Since mass was still going on at the time we couldn't explore the inside much, but we did climb the 500 something stairs up the tower to get a pretty fantastic (and freezing) view of Köln (and quite the workout).

By the time we got down it was almost 1 and we had a train at 1:30ish, so we ate quickly, pretty much ran to the train station and took our 7 regional trains back to Freiburg. It's such a wonderful feeling to come back home after being on an exhausting trip somewhere.

Matt's train to Frankfurt leaves in about 2 hours. I'm really, really glad he came out here for the holidays and hope he had an enjoyable visit. And now I have a mattress for any future visitors... the offer is still open for anyone to come sleep on my floor...!

Silvester (New Years Eve) is on Wednesday. I'm having the few AYFers who are still in town over for a small party, during which we will climb up the Schlossberg and see the fireworks. I'm hoping it won't be too cold/rainy to do so, but the forecast says 40s and clear, so I'm pretty positive. It's kind of unbelievable to me that it's almost 2009 and that I've already been here for four months. Where does the time go?

Christmas and the last few months of my life

I realize that I haven't written in here in close to three months. I realize that the large majority of the time I've spent here so far has been undocumented in this blog, the blog I made specifically to document my year in Deutschland. But I'm horrible at these types of things, and by "these types of things" I don't just mean keeping up a blog, but also keeping in touch with people in general... as anyone who actually cares enough to follow this has already realized.

Part of the reason why I haven't written here for so long is because I began keeping a personal journal to write things that I couldn't (or rather, didn't want to) post online. But some of the things I talked about in there - such as my trip to Prague in October - certainly could've, and maybe should've, ended up here, I just didn't feel like posting them. That's another part of the reason - the time I do get to myself, I usually don't feel like posting in here. And, in all honesty, since the semester started, I have been much busier. It doesn't matter why I haven't written though, because I'm writing now, and hopefully will be writing in the future. No promises.

I could recap how my last few months have been, but it's kind of useless at this point. I've had classes, which have been hard (there's that whole thing about them being completely in German). I had a few minorly large bouts of homesickness in November, just as the program directors told us we would. I've gone out. I've gotten hopelessly lost in the Black Forest. I've continued to make friends, including a German or two. I've seen some really beautiful places - Prague, Munich, Zurich, Strasbourg. I've been really enjoying myself for the most part. But my life has fallen into a routine, and things have become normal, so that I no longer notice all of the time how beautiful Freiburg is, or how lucky I am to be here. Life is life.

And today is Christmas, or Weihnachten as the Germans call it, and it's almost 2:30 pm (note: I woke up at 1; I've been getting a lot of sleep lately), and I'm here, alone aside from Matt Hallock, my visitor of the last few weeks, in a 6 x 10 box, the sun shining in from my window. Only one of my nine floormates has been around for the last few days, and even she is gone at the moment. It's my first Christmas away from home, and while Christmas itself has never really meant much to me, the time with my family has, and I've never felt more disconnected from everyone I know than I do now.

Most of the time I forget that it's strange that I'm here, and everything just seems completely normal, and I don't think about the fact that I've left a life back home. But sometimes it comes back to me and I think, I haven't seen my mom or dad or brothers or friends for four months, I haven't been in East Lansing or Royal Oak or anywhere I'm used to for four months, I haven't driven a car or watched a TV (with the exception of the election) or gone shopping on a Sunday or played beer pong or been in someone's house or gotten a free refill at a restaurant or done anything with any of the people I love at home or any of those seemingly normal things for four months, and I'm not going to do any of those things for seven more months. And it's weird and sad and hard to think about and be okay with, but that's what I signed myself up for when I decided to come here, and I will and do live with it because I have to.

I don't want to make it sound like I'm not enjoying myself here, or that I regret the decision to come here, because that's completely untrue. But it's Christmas, and instead of being cuddled up in my living room with my mom and family, I'm sitting in my little room more than 4000 miles away from everyone.

Later Matt and I are going to head to Vauban (the other side of town, where Becca lives) to have dinner with her and her family, so my Christmas won't be completely void of activity. AND it turns out that the Irish pub is open at 6, so I may just end up sloshed and merry later tonight. I hope to get back in time to call my family around 11 (it'll be 5 pm there). See, it's not so bad.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I miss you and love you a lot.