Final days in Deutschland

February 2007

On February 10 I rose early and took the train to Karlsruhe airport to pick up Jo and Daniela, my English friends from when I was in Russia, who were visiting for the weekend. After they napped at my place we went into Freiburg and I showed them around, eating Schnitzel and seeing the sights before returning around 8pm. I had to make final preparations for my farewell party. The party was nice and a good chance to say goodbye to quite a few of the friends I'd made there.
The next day the weather was poor and we spent the whole day first in a cafe, then in a restaurant, just talking. After spending a number of hours in the city we went home and continued to talk until 5:30 am when the first bus came and Jo and Daniela had to leave.

The rest of the week I spent going to Uni in amongst packing and making arrangements to leave. On my last night my housemates wanted to farewell me and we had a few drinks together, sang songs and they game me gifts. I decided not to go to bed yet again as I had to rise very early and a few of them then decided to stay up with me and take me to the station. We said our sad goodbyes on the platform and I boarded the train. The lack of sleep helped me to sleep on the plane - something I usually have a lot of difficulty doing - during the 9 hour flight.

January 2007

On December 30 Michelle and I travelled from Krefeld to Hamburg where we spent four nights. We checked out the city on the last day of the year before heading to the Reeperbahn, Hamburgs famous red-light district for the New Years celebrations. We ate dinner next to some elderly German ladies who took a liking to us and bought us each a beer. Then we headed to the port, firecrackers in hand. Midnight struck and I believe there was no official Hamburg fireworks show or, if there was, it wasn't evident in amongst the chaos that was the individual fireworks displays of the entire population of Germany's third largest city.

In the New Year we made a day trip to Schwerin, Wismar and Neubukow. Schwerin is a pretty city on a lake and the capital of the state Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania. We lunched there and poked around the city, checking out the castle before heading on to Wismar. Wismar is a quaint port city which was Swedish for a long time - it still shows in the Scandinavian architecture and canals. Neubukow is a tiny town with nothing more than a post office and a couple of bakeries. I wanted to visit because it's the area where some of my Mum's ancestors are from but the rain, wind, cold and darkness soon turned us around and we headed back to Schwerin for dinner before returning to Hamburg.

After Hamburg we took a marathon (12 hour) overnight bus to Heidelberg where we caught the train back to Freiburg - it was nice to have Michelle back in Freiburg for a couple of days and we relived memories there before I headed back up to Krefeld/Düsseldorf with her for her return flight to the states.

After a weekend in Freiburg for a uni-requirement weekend seminar I took off on the 20th on an excursion into Switzerland to Bern, Lausanne and Neuchâtel. After arriving early and waiting for the bus at 5:30am, I realised I had forgotten my passport and had to borrow a bike and cycle frantically to pick it up from home. Nice way to get the adrenalin pumping just when you were looking forward to a couple of hours of shut-eye on the bus!

Bern, the capital of Switzerland, is a quaint city set in the loop of a river, but I found it a little grey. It's name comes from the German Bären, which mean "bears", and this city symbol exists in the flesh with bear pits on the city edge. Lausanne, on Lake Geneva, is in the French part of Switzerland and much prettier altogether. Both the lakefront and the city centre are beautiful with spectacular views across the lake to the towering Alps. By the time we got to Neuchâtel it was dusk and after a quick tour and some dinner and drinks we boarded the bus tired and ready to return.

Just four days later and I was buckling up in a Ryanair Jet to Pisa. I'd booked cheap flights there and back to visit Maria Giulia "Margie" Rancan and Stefano Maestrelli, my Italian friends from the Summer semester, who study there. The whole weekend was loads of fun including a trip around Tuscany (San Gimignano, Monteriggioni and Siena) with Stefano, a guided tour of Pisa, including the best Italian food I've ever eaten, and a trip to the coast at Viareggio and finally Lucca.
San Gimignano and Monteriggioni are both walled cities set on hilltops in the picturesque Tuscan countryside. Siena, significantly larger, has more of an Italian city feel with scooters, bustling pedestrian traffic and extravagant architecture.
Pisa, apart from the leaning tower and adjacent cathedral, doesn't have too many attractions and although many people find it a dirty city, I was fond of the busy student atmosphere, the university buildings, the cafes and bars and fantastic food.
Viareggio is not the nicest of beaches, and the weather wasn't hot (though the whole time it was much nicer than in Germany), but I really enjoyed walking along the beach, stopping for lunch with Margie and Stefano before heading on to Lucca. Lucca was about my favourite city in Tuscany with its very colourful buildings and narrow streets. We spent a few hours of the afternoon there before heading back to Pisa.
It seemed that my time was over before it started and it was so nice to see Stefano and Margie again - especially on their own turf!

December 2006

The first weekend in December was the KHG's Advent weekend and I went with them to Oberprechtal, about an hour from Freiburg in the Black Forest. It was a good time for reflection, wandering in the mountains and getting to know people of the KHG a little better. In fact it was the first time that I really started to feel like I fit in at the KHG and the awkwardness subsided.

A few days later and I was in Ulm on the way to Augsburg where I visited Karin, a friend of one of my housemates, and saw a little more of Deutschland. I climbed the (161.5m) tallest church tower in the world in Ulm taking in superb views of the city on the Danube. From Augsburg it was just a hop and a step to Munich and so, after a night at an Augsburg bar, Karin and I took the train in for the day. The weather was awful, the first of winter, with sleet and a bitter wind so the visit was quite unpleasant and involved short stints outside followed by long pauses in restaurants, cafes and shops. I didn't really get to see Munich properly. However I did get around Augsburg, one of Germany's oldest cities, before I went home to Freiburg.

From Stuttgart and Augsburg I took Mitfahrgelegenheit (ride-sharing) offers common among students in Germany - I paid a fraction of the train fare to travel with someone who was already heading to my destination - a fantastic resource!

In the middle of the month my floor of my residence threw its semester party which saw loads of people packing what was formerly our living room till the wee hours. Germans know how to party!

A few days later and I was on the train to Trier to take advantage to an offer of free accommodation I arranged through the Hospitality Club ( www.hospitalityclub.org) - a kind of accommodation exchange service for travellers. The result was two nights in Trier, Germany's oldest city, where I visited heaps of Roman ruins, the Porta Nigra, thermal baths, an amphitheatre, as well as other city attractions such as the Karl Marx House before making a half-day trip to Luxemburg, Luxemburg. There I did a flash self-guided tour of city, taking in yet another beautiful Roman city before return to retire a weary traveller.

The next day I travelled to Aachen, near the Dutch border, the historical home of Charlemagne. I checked out the amazing cathedral and the city hall before taking the bus to it's sister town across the border. Finding nothing worth visiting in this tiny village in the Netherlands I turned around and headed back to the train station from where I travelled to Krefeld, where I would spend Christmas.

A week at the Blankenbergs (Michelle's former host family) in Krefeld was a fantastic (and authentic German) way to spend Christmas away from home and I enjoyed the preparations of the tree and other German Christmas traditions (Germans celebrate on Dec 24.), a German Christmas Mass and trumpets played from the church steeple. The Blankenbergs were, for the second time, extremely friendly, hospitable and welcoming (and they fed me very well). The highlight, however, was my visitor from the Texas who arrived on Dec 28.

October-November 2006

In the last week of October I started going to the KHG where I felt awkward and foreign at first. Tamara, a friend from school arrived for a week-long visit on the Friday and we went on an excursions hiking in the Black Forest, visiting the Rhine Falls - the largest waterfall (volume) in Europe - and wine-tasting at a nearby winery.

Towards the end of November I made a trip to Talhausen by Markgröningen, not too far from Stuttgart, where I spent the weekend with Hans, Connie, Denise and Andre Steinmaier, German relatives of the Knolls. They treated me to some wonderful hospitality taking me to the castle in Ludwigsburg, up the TV tower and into the centre of Stuttgart as well as showing me around Markgröning and re-tracing the steps of my Great-great-grandfather. I was also treated to home-made local food specialities and even had a night out in trendy Stuttgart bars with Denise and her friends.

Winter Semester 2006/07

So, again it's been a long time since I've blogged - here's an update

Winter semester in Germany was much more of a taste of reality than the 5 month high that was Summer semester. Unlike first semester the vast majority of my time was spent with Germans. This had its benefits and drawbacks because although my German improved a lot and I now have a number of great contacts in Germany, it was quite difficult and lonely at times - made worse by the long-distance relationship I was having with Michelle in Texas. However, I got to know my housemates and became good friends with a number of them, I started attending the Katholische Hochschulgemeinde (KHG - Freiburg Catholic students group) and made a few friends there and I took only proper German classes (no German as a foreign language classes). I also had Thursdays and Fridays off which meant I travelled a lot more for long weekends and I went on a number of excursions with the students' association.