Servus! (hello and goodbye)

Hobo Sandwiches with Scott, Chase, Chris, and Leslie

(play this music as you read)

The last month has been jam-packed.  Every week involved adventures and trips within the state of Niedersachsen, where we were able to travel within free of charge with our student passes.  The first trip was a random excursion to the town of Goslar, a UNESCO World Heritage Sight and one of the southernmost parts of Niedersachsen.  Little does anyone know, this town is actually where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs took place.  The dwarfs mine for silver and coal in the depths of the Harz Mountains.  Really?! Of course not!!  But, this small, timeless town actually does host a May Day celebration in which "Witches" come to celebrate the coming of spring.  Since we all were broke at this point in the semester, hobo sandwiches were in order--our favorite meal: cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, salami, lochs, baguettes, cheese, and wine.  Plopped ourselves down in a parking lot--the most scenic place in town--and had ourselves a time.  I was insisting we get to one of these mountains, and like always I led us in a few wrong directions.  The others were tired and gave up...little did they know only two minutes ahead was a beautiful clearing overlooking the entire town.  Finally, the hills were alive with the sound of music.  We just had a great time yelling Jethro Tull songs and enjoying each others' wacky company.  Chase, Chris and I planned to return again the next weekend with a crazy idea (that we surprisingly pulled off): to sleep the night on the mountain!

A Good Night's Rest

It just so happened that the next weekend, a renaissance fair was going on in Goslar celebrating its history as one of the Hanseatic Cities.  These were those of a trade route that spanned all the way North to Norway and was composed of different guilds and merchants.  Since the town's mountains were rich in mineral resources, it was very rich in the middle ages.  It's so funny seeing each town's building's unique look and feel.  In Hamburg, it's all stone.  Lüneburg's buildings are all brick.  The town of Goslar, everything's either half-timbered or made of scales of slate.  Anyway, we brought some others along for the daytime part of our trip.  We hung out around the festival.  Kids on the street also were selling molds of their own teeth that they were painting on the side of the road for 50 cents.  Great deal!  They made a lot of money off of us Americans who thought that was downright creative...and weird.  I'll never forget the group finally leaving us for the night on the mountain.  No tent.  No sleeping bags.  No flashlights.  Just our blankets, 7 layers of clothes...and hobo sandwiches.  It turned out to be a really pleasant night.  I definitely was not too cold.  Took a walk in the woods and definitely heard someone yipping or cawing several times--I can't explain it, but it creeped me out.  Damn witches...I woke up to the sound of a dog barking (people always walk their dogs out there) as it had "found us" and was very excited to notify its master.  She wasn't surprised by us, we were sleeping in a big clearing, and just told the dog to shut up and let us sleep.  Chris went off on his own that morning and found some hostels and cabins higher up the mountain.  One day, I'm coming back.  It was such a fun place to discover.

I also made trips to Bremen, Hanover, and Lübeck--all of which were very rewarding as well.  In Bremen we ate duck, which I always am strangely averted by due to the fact that I sit there and watch them at the pond every day.  It's one of the only animals that I really would prefer not to eat--such nice animals when alive, strange texture, but delicious.  I have the same dilemma with veal.  Hanover is really modern and is totally multicultural.  There are a lot of Italian mob bosses that sit in coffee shops and some really strange characters wandering the streets.  An anti-fascism protest was going on right next to a big tent promoting Lego's new Ninja playset.  I loved people-watching there, and the miles of gardens were also great in this particularly warm spring.  Lübeck is also nice.  It's an island, and going there in spring proved to be much more rewarding than in winter.  We had some hobo sandwiches, and since most places close by seven, just kind of wandered around again.  A big shopping center called Karstadt was open.  It was some kind of special entertainment night, so there were musicians playing throughout the store, a chef that sang while he cooked (so stupid) and a woman painted/dressed as an avatar who just stood there.  What a great time that was.  I went to the bathroom in a kind of port-a-potty that came complete with relaxing music and even cleaned itself after use.  The floorsdrop down and it sprays water from the ceiling...ingenious.

Lauenburg

We also went to a very small town called Lauenburg that was absolutely beautiful.  Our final crazy stunt was a dip in the Elbe River...in April.  Chris, Chase, and I found a dock and just jumped in.  You really can't think about it--just run and dive.  It was so cold that the only thing you could really do was yell.  It was very hard to breathe, but totally satisfying.  Usually it's cold when you get out of a body of water and stand in the wind, but my experience with this was quite the opposite.  That cold air off the river was warm as could be.  After ten minutes, our mission was complete.  Time to get a beer.  The same weekend we visited our friend in Hamburg for the evening.  It was May 1.  Every year in Hamburg and Berlin, the people fight the government in a big riot.  It was mild this year, but apparently many cars were lit on fire, bottles and glasses were hurled by St. Pauli punks at the swarms of policemen.  It's a sign of solidarity, although I feel what once was an opportunity for workers to retain their rights and be heard has now just become a party and a chance for the police to show off their new tanks in the streets.  People were making free margaritas!  Some fireworks went off and some people got pelted with water cannons.  I have about an hour of footage from this spectacle and was very happy to have gotten to see such an event...there is no such thing in our country.  It seems like protests and the like are much more commonplace in Germany.  I believe this use of freedom of speech is very important for the country.  May 1 is a celebration of this freedom, even if its meaning has been lost by some.  The political discussions I had with people on the streets may indicate that people in fact have not lost touch, but are very much aware of the situation that exists in the world today as a whole.

The Elbe

With the coming of spring, as always, I started really wanting to be out of school.  The days went by, and pretty soon the end of the semester crept up on us.  I was very busy as I ended up putting together a presentation for the international USAC study abroad conference in Washington DC that the director of the German program attended.  I also was of course learning a lot of German and taking a lot of pictures, which I'm now including in my entries.

Felix, Ich und Tina Reunited

During Easter Break, I went down to Pfaffenhofen to meet my host family from when I was on an exchange program in high school.  After five years, it was like a dream coming back.  I saw so many friends, some of whom just saw me in a restaurant and couldn't believe it.  "Hey!  Where did you come from?!"  We visited the beer garden, took some time near a lake, and just relaxed enjoying each other.  I also met many of their neighbors, one of which is the manager of the hospital there.  It just so happened that they had an opening for international people.  It just so happened I was in Germany and was almost finished with my studies.  It just so happened that I ran into the opportunity of a lifetime.  I was planning on going with Chase to work on an organic farm in Uppsala, Sweden for some weeks, visit my cousins there, and then come home.  I had to change my plans though, because the position offered to me would not come around again.  After returning to Lüneburg to take my finals, I came back to Pfaffenhofen to go to an interview for a position as a nurse's assistant.  It doesn't sound glamorous--and it really isn't, but it gives me an opportunity to stay in Germany, improve my German language skills, and meet more people, perhaps in my area of study with communication and media.  I also get to help and interact with people.  After a year of work in all areas of the hospital, I will have a certification as well.  I believe it will be a life experience and a totally worthwhile enrichment furthering my communicative reach, my contacts, and my travels.  The interview went extremely well.  I was really nervous because everything was in German and the southern accent is hard to understand.  Luckily I had been over at the manager's house several times, played volleyball with his family, and even was invited over to play Wii one evening.  They want me to do a documentary film for their clinic and are even going to supply me with a good camera.  One of the other directors invited me into his office after the interview, watched YouTube clips with me, and showed me all the fish he's caught on the Pfaffenhofen's fishing club website.  It now depends on the immigrant office and labor agency's decision to give me a yearlong visa to live and work in Germany.  I have all the paperwork in for the time being and have the job if all works out.  My host family here has helped me make a strong resume in Germany and provide me with support as I get on my feet in this foreign country--even more foreign now without having any Americans around!  Homesickness comes and goes depending on the day.  At times, I find myself asking, "What am I doing?  It's all going so fast.  Should I just go to America where I'm familiar and at home?  It's so exhausting speaking German all the time.  I wish I was in Sweden right now...etc, etc..."  Other times I'm one-hundred percent certain this is the best possible thing that could have happened to me and an ideal situation I only dreamed about months before.  I think this is true, and I am now old enough and prepared to meet this life challenge head-on, only to become stronger, more knowledgeable, and self-reliant.  Doors open every second.  Hello, life.  Here I am.

Servus is the best title for this chapter.  It's Bavarian for Hello and Goodbye.  I've said goodbye to so many good friends I've made, goodbye to my undergraduate studies.  I say hello to Bavaria and friends made five years prior.  New beginnings perhaps are on the horizon.  If the visa does not work out, another door will open back in the States.  Who knows what will happen in these next weeks.

The adventure continues...