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?