More pics for my other blog.

Just some pics.

Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Vienna, Belgrade

So I don’t even think there is a point to me making another resolution to update my blog more frequently, because chances are I won’t follow through and I will just let down anyone who still checks this thing.

Since my last post, I spent about ten days in Romania, a few days in Budapest, a week in Prague, a few days in Vienna (where I had to pay an unexpected visit to the hospital), a day in Bratislava (which officially takes the cake as my least favorite city in Europe so far), and three days in Belgrade. I just crossed the border into Macedonia, and am on a train headed for Skopje, where I will spend a couple of days before continuing south into Greece.

I have had a ton of positive experiences (and some not-so-wonderful experiences) during my eastern Europe tour over the past month. Romania was almost all-around one giant positive experience. I loved Timisoara, made great friends there, and even ended up stopping back there before leaving Romania at the end of my trip. Bucharest was also nice, although I was ready to leave after spending one night and one day there. Sighisoara was deserted and beautiful, and I had a hostel room almost entirely to myself. Brasov was an excellent gateway for exploration of the Rasnov Fortress, Bran Castle, and Poiana Brasov, where I had the opportunity to spend a day snowboarding for dirt cheap. I stayed with a nice couple in Brasov who is doing education development work with Roma (gypsy) children in a neighboring community to Brasov. After three days in Brasov I set off for Sibiu, where I met up with a friend from my intensive language course that I took in September in Germany. She showed me around the city, which was a European cultural capital in 2007 or 2008 and has a lot of German influence (it is called Hermannstadt in German). On my second day in Brasov, Cornelia invited me to eat lunch at her place and I had one of the most touching experiences I have ever had in my life. After trudging through snow to get to the village museum and spending the morning there, I had a lot of hunger. We bused back into the city and then walked to her apartment. We walked by am abandoned orphanage and a Catholic church, then turned a corner, walked through a gate, ascended a flight of stairs, and we were there. I felt like it was connected to the church, but I figured that I was just disoriented. Before inviting me into her home, Cornelia had apologized profusely for not being able to offer to host me while I was in Sibiu. I told her not to worry about it, but she kept apologizing. When we entered her place, I immediately knew why she couldn’t host me. Her place is not terribly small for three people, but for the nine that once lived there it is insanely small. The apartment is made up of a bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, which doubles as Cornelia’s mother’s room, and a living room, which is also Cornelia’s and her brother’s bedroom. After giving me the grand tour, Cornelia asked her brother where her mom is and he said in the church. Just then she walked through the door into the dining room. I was a bit confused, but I didn’t say anything. Cornelia asked if I would like to see her church and I said sure. I followed Cornelia back through her room, and she opened a wooden door and beckoned me through. Her apartment was a small portion of the church! We walked to the church balcony, where Cornelia told me her touching life story. Her father walked out on the family when Cornelia was 8 years old, at which time her mother took all eight of her children, ranging in age from five to seventeen, away from their home in Moldavia and moved them to Sibiu. She sought aid from a church, and a priest created this apartment for them in the church. They have lived there ever since, although now most of the children are full-grown adults and have moved out. At one time they all shared this small two-room apartment. All of the children have turned out very well, and after hearing this story and meeting Cornelia’s mother, she instantly became a hero of mine. I was also well fed, having some dumpling soup, sausages, bread, pickled vegetables, and a Romanian liquor (sounds like “pah-link-oh”). It was a great meal, and I left feeling full and grateful. Cornelia walked me to t he train station, and waited with me until my train left, even though it was almost an hour delayed. I headed back to Timisoara for two days before saying sayonara to Romania. I shared a train compartment with a Romania actress named Cristina, who I had some of the most incredibly genuine conversation with. We had such a good time talking together that she invited Patri and me to go out to eat with her friend and her oncewe arrived in Timisoara. We went, but the dinner ended up being kind of an awkward experience. I stayed with my host, Patri, again, and had a great time with her and Julia. I also had the chance to go to her parents’ house (which is REALLY nice) and eat a home-cooked meal that her mother made, which consisted of a soup, bread, a salad, and homemade chicken cordon bleu, which was delicious.

After leaving Romania I headed back to Budapest where I stayed for a couple of days, ate a ton of hummus, met some great people, and spent two days at a Turkish bath. It was a really relaxing experience, and was followed by a night of couchsurfing in Bratislava, which was beautiful but boring. I did have some delicious halusky, and my host was a nice guy, but I was ready to leave Bratislava far before my train pulled out for Prague.

Next comes a week in Prague, spent staying with my good friend Shannon from Semester at Sea. This was a great time, filled with an excessive amount of partying and storytelling. I took a day trip with her program to the Budweiser brewery and a small castle town in lower Bohemia. This was a blast. Aside from that, I sampled many Czech beers and ate a lot of food. I got the chance to meet her friends there, who are all great, had a really interesting laundry experience, and reminisced A LOT about Semester at Sea. By the time I left Prague, I was feeling pretty sick, but I had an incredible time there.

My plan was then to stop back in Vienna for one night, but that one night turned into three nights, one of which was spent primarily at the hospital. I was feeling extraordinarily light-headed, and was worried I was going to faint and that it would not end well, since I was traveling alone. At the hospital I found out that I had bronchitis and a viral infection. I was prescribed some medication and given an inhaler, and I tried to spend the rest of my time in Vienna resting up. Unfortunately this was pretty unsuccessful…I maybe slept 8 hours in three days.

I finally left Vienna, feeling sick as a dog, spent one more night in Budapest, where I ate some more hummus, met more nice people, and spent another unsuccessful right hours in bed (not really sleeping at all).

I left Budapest for Belgrade, where I rented a single room at the urging of my mom. This gave me the chance to rest up, and now I am feeling almost completely better. Belgrade was beautiful, but the weather was terrible (it has been almost this entire trip actually), and the food was very salty/greasy.

Now I am in Macedonia, and it is snowing outside…I was just thinking earlier on this train ride that I might have seen snow for the last time this season, and I certainly didn’t expect to experience any down here. The sun is setting, but it is a fairly dreary day so I can’t really tell. I don’t have special plans for Skopje, I will mainly just explore the city, eat some Macedonian cuisine, and try to rest up a bit more. My hostel claims to have a hot tub (but so did the one I stayed at in Sibiu), and I am pretty excited to hit that up. I am also excited about continuing onward and meeting up with a friend from high school at Meteora in a couple of days!

Eastern Europe Tour

Hey guys!

Finally getting around to giving you all another update. Right now I am on a train from Timisoara, Romania to Bucharest, and there is about 4 feet of snow covering the landscape around me. Since I last wrote, I had my final exams, which were certainly not easy, then I left Freiburg at 7 AM the morning after my last test and had a 17-hour travel day to Vienna, which really should have been about an eight-hour trip. My first train left from Freiburg and arrived in Basel on time. My second train, from Basel to Zurich, was just a few minutes late. Then I boarded my third train of the morning, which was to take me from Zurich to Innsbruck, and then it was announced that there was a problem with the breaks. They ended up just getting a new engine to pull the train, but it took about two hours, so I arrived in Innsbruck about two hours after expected. I had about an hour to walk around, and it was a beautiful day…clear blue sky meeting snow-capped mountains, etc. The city seemed pretty nice. Anyway, I then boarded the train that was supposed to take me to Vienna, and they told us that the train would not be going any further than Innsbruck that day, but to stay on the train until they gave us more information. I think there was a problem on the tracks somewhere between Innsbruck and Vienna. They had all passengers get off the train and wait at the bus station for about an hour, then packed buses (standing room only) carried us to a small village called Jenbach, where we had to wait an hour and a half before we could finally leave for Vienna. I arrived in Vienna at around midnight, checked into my hostel, and found out that one of the girls in my hostel room and I have a good mutual friend. This is the second time this has happened to me this year (also happened in Madrid). On the way to Vienna I shared an apartment with a nice group of people from all over Austria. They all had strong accents, but once I spoke with them for a little while I had no problem understanding them. We discussed the economic crisis, Obama, etc. (frequent topics of discussion that Europeans like to have with Americans). This one guy worked for a financial firm in Switzerland, and he seemed very confident in his prediction that by the end of the year 2010 the US Dollar and the Euro will have the same value, and that shortly thereafter the US Dollar will become stronger.

It was snowing in Vienna.

I crashed at my hostel once I arrived, and got about six hours of much needed sleep before taking a train to Budapest in the morning. I arrived in Budapest around noon, checked into my hostel (which was great), and then gave myself a Budapest-in-one-day city tour. I also ate some of the best hummus I have ever had in my life.

It was snowing in Budapest.

I left Budapest at 7 AM yesterday for Timisoara, a beautiful city which is where the Romanian revolution began in 1989 and which is considered to be the country’s most cosmopolitan city. There was a one-hour time change, so my host picked me up at the train station at 1. We walked around the city for five hours (yet another beautiful city), and then we went to the supermarket and purchased vegetables and meat and made a traditional Romanian vegetable and pork soup, which was delicious. Julia, a good friend of my host Patri, joined us for dinner and then they took me out to a couple of their favorite bars. We didn’t stay out too late (only until about 1), and while I was out a received a text from my friend Valerie that she would no longer be meeting up with me in Romania. She said that a friend who lived on her floor (she studies in Lille, France) was stabbed in the hand about 10 feet away from Valerie and that, although her friend is thankfully okay, now is not the time for her to be globetrotting. She was pretty shaken up. I am glad that her friend is alright, and have no problem traveling around Romania by myself, but I would have preferred to couch surf the whole time, but booked hostels because Valerie wanted to stay in them and I hurriedly sent out e-mails last night, hoping to cancel my hostels in some cities, and cutting all the reservations to one. Hopefully I won’t have to pay for two people at any of them. After Bucharest, I plan to visit a couple of cities in Transylvania before finishing up my Romanian tour in Sibiu, where a friend from my German language course in September lives. After this, I will either head to the Low Tatras Mountains in Slovakia or to Lviv, Ukraine, I think…although Patri and her friend told me I could stop back in Timisoara and that we could take a day trip to Belgrade, Serbia, which I think would be really neat and was hoping to visit sometime in mid-March anyway.

It was snowing in Timisoara.

So far I have spent much of this break on trains, but it has been a great experience thus far. The couchsurfing experience I had with Patri was arguably my best one yet, and I have been extremely pleasantly surprised by Romania. I think there is much more money here than many Americans and western Europeans would believe, the landscape is beautiful, and the people are friendly and hospitable. English is definitely not widely spoken, but I taught myself some Romanian on my train ride over and yesterday Patri was with me everywhere and could help me with anything I needed. We spoke to each other in German, her and Julia spoke to each other in Romanian, and Julia and I spoke to one another in English, so it was a really interesting little language triangle.

There is an update for now. I am being cautious, but really feel quite safe here. I am very much looking forward to exploring the Balkans a bit more. Will write again soon.

Oh, and it’s snowing now.

Two and a half months later...

I am finally getting the chance to write my first blog entry pertaining to my time here in Germany. I am sorry it has taken so long, but because I was without internet for my first seven weeks here, am keeping another blog for a foundation while I am here (http://www.daad.org/page/bloggers/), have started keeping a personal handwritten journal for the first time ever, and have nearly morphed into a sloth since my arrival, I have kept those of you who avidly keep up with my blog in suspense. Instead of backtracking and writing a separate blog entry for each segment of my life in Freiburg, as well as for each of the trips I have made outside of the aforementioned city, which already feels like home to me, I will try my hardest to update you on what I have done over the last 75 days in one concise (by my standards) entry.

As I sat in my parents’ L-Z-Boy Chair at 11 PM August 31^st, furiously scribbling all of the verbs that I was unfamiliar with from 501 German Verbs onto note cards, the familiar chatter of the detectives from Without a Trace filling what would have otherwise been complete and utter silence, my cell phone vibrated. A good friend of mine, Aliya (who spent last spring in France and I had not seen since December 2007), was on the other line calling to find out when I left for Germany. I told her I was leaving in six hours…she told me she would see me in two and a half. She drove up from Tucson and we desperately tried to catch each other up on what was happening in our lives while I packed last-minute and she helped me stuff way more clothes than should ever be able to fit in two suitcases into vacuum bags. I left Phoenix at the crack of dawn on September 1st, after having just spent a much needed week at home and getting the chance to see all of my family except for my brother and sister-in-law, as well as some of my closest friends. While my mom drove me to the airport, I tried to take in as much of the southwest desert landscape as I could, thinking that a year away from it all might actually make me miss the red rock and saguaro cacti for once in my life. I was fortunate enough to watch what will probably turn out to have been the most beautiful sunrise I will have seen all year by the time I leave here. I tried to acknowledge the fact that I was about to leave home for an entire year, but just sat there telling my mom it was not sinking in. When I hugged her goodbye, realizing that I had never before gone more than 4 months without seeing either of my parents, some semblance of what was to set in on my later flight from Atlanta started to sink in…

My plane touched down in Frankfurt-am-Main at roughly 7 AM on the morning of September 2^nd, and while I had not fallen asleep since I last awoke on the morning of August 31^st, I was giddy from the anticipation of the opening of a new chapter of my life, one which promised to be one of the most eventful yet. The train that was supposed to carry me and my 100 pounds of luggage to Freiburg had been canceled (the Deutsche Bahn has a reputation for being the most timely and efficient rail network in all of Europe, and canceled trains are nearly unheard of), and I headed to the Reise Zentrum (travel center) to figure out a new way to get to Freiburg. My entire conversation with the Deutsche Bahn clerk was in German, and I was so excited that he didn’t even try to switch to English once he undoubtedly heard my accent. This was promising, but boarding a train to Freiburg with no available seats was not. I spent the ensuing two hours sitting atop my backpack, moving all of my luggage from side to side as the platforms we stopped at switched from left to right, staring at the extraordinarily green landscape out the window, and trying to capture my impressions in my journal. After arriving in Freiburg, I took a taxi to the Sprachlerinstitut, where I was given the keys to my room for the next month, and given directions on how to get to my student apartment via Strassenbahn (streetcar).

When I opened the door to what would be my room for the next month, I for the first time wondered what I had gotten myself into. There were dust bunnies everywhere, at least 15 living spiders and two dozen dead insects spread throughout the room, bread crumbs behind the part of the bed where a headboard would normally be, and the room smelled like it had been abandoned fourteen years ago, although I was nearly certain someone had moved out just days before. Further exploration of my WG only made me more uncertain of the living situation I had gotten myself into: fruit flies harbored themselves in every nook and cranny that exists in the kitchen, and the kitchen itself had realistically not been cleaned for at least six months, and the bathrooms were in an equal state of disrepair. I had been warned against living in StuSie (Studentensiedlung am Seepark) by someone who had studied in Freiburg the year before, and tried desperately to land a room in a different building (Haendelstrasse) over the summer, but I never could have imagined StuSie would turn out to be as bad as it was. My feelings toward StuSie (while I am still not altogether sure I would choose it over a couple of the other Studentenwerk [residence life, sort of] options or a shared apartment in the city center) could not be more different today…

Two and a half months have passed since I opened the door to my first room in StuSie, gaping in horror and, although I unwillingly had to relocate to another room, I have come to love Studentensiedlung am Seepark, as well as the city of Freiburg and almost everyone I have met here. My first month was spent primarily on improving my German, as I took an intensive language course and spoke to my roommates almost exclusively in German. I didn’t leave Freiburg the entire time (with the exception of two day trips to Basel and the Alsace region of France), as I wanted to really familiarize myself with the city and establish relationships with Germans that I hoped would last through the year. My German did get much better, and I got so close to two of my roommates that I was actually sad to leave my filthy apartment when the time came for me to move. My language course went well, and we all got to know each other so well that we would go out some nights for a beer and invite our professor (he joined us on one occasion). I still see many of my Sprachkurs friends, who hail from five different continents and are some of the most fascinating individuals I have ever met. We had a ridiculously difficult final examination, but I did alright in the course and met people I hope to remain in contact with for years to come.

Since my first month in Freiburg I feel like I have done nothing but travel. I had pre-purchased a fifteen day in two months Eurail pass and wanted to get my money’s worth, so I went to Hamburg one weekend, Munich and Salzburg the next, followed by a conference in Bonn and a week in Portugal in Spain, then two weekends in Freiburg before spending a long weekend in Berlin. My most recent outing was to Brussels to visit a friend studying there. I will be traveling the next two weekends, and then I hope to spend an entire month in Freiburg before spending Christmas in Rheinland-Pfalz with my old host family, the Schmitts.

Each of my trips has been great, but my favorite three destinations so far were Hamburg, Portugal, and Berlin.

I would describe Hamburg as being the perfect mix between old and new, with Gothic facades meeting Art Nouveaux architecture high in the air. It has a thriving artistic community, surprisingly beautiful beaches, delicious food, and a nightlife like none I have encountered before or after. All of the people I met in Hamburg, including both of my couchsurfing hosts, were extremely friendly and helpful, and despite being a bit sick while I was there I had an incredible time.

Munich was great, and it wasn’t a coincidence that I hit it up during Oktoberfest. I couchsurfed there as well, and had the chance to meet up with two friends from Semester at Sea and a number of my friends from Freiburg. But when the time came to head off to Salzburg, I welcomed the opportunity to escape the pool of Mass (one-liter Steins of beer) I had been drowning myself in for four days. I had a completely dry experience in Salzburg, which accompanied by the fresh mountain air left me feeling healthy once more as I headed back to Freiburg. My couchsurfing experience in Salzburg was another positive one, and although an Australian was staying there as well (with his former German host sister), we managed to speak only in German the entire time.

I had a day to do laundry and appreciate Freiburg before catching a morning train to Bonn for a conference with a few other students studying here in Freiburg. The conference was great, and we stayed in a hostel that reminded me of the seemingly countless weeks I have spent at various camps in northern Arizona throughout the years. We saw a German history museum with a chilling holocaust exhibit, and ate dinner at a Chinese buffet on a boat on the Rhein (Rhine River). After the conference I met up with my friend Alison from Semester at Sea for three days in Lisbon. We took day trips to Cascais and Sintra, and stayed at the world’s coolest hostel, Travelers’ House Lisbon (one of my favorites, anyway). She flew back to Milan, and I took a train to Porto where I couchsurfed for a night before taking my first night train ever (to Madrid). I had a sketchy two-hour stopover in the middle of nowhere, Portugal (Encontramento), before my ten hour ride to Madrid. In Madrid I met up with my friend Danielle from Semester at Sea, and then got to spend two days with my good friend from school, Arizona. I spent my last day there with a friend who studies with me in Freiburg. While in Madrid, I was contacted by another two people I had no idea were even there, and met someone from Tucson who I have a ton of mutual friends with. I really liked the Prado and the Reine Sofia museums, and was so excited to see Dali’s The Enigma of Hitler and The Great Masturbator. I also encountered a painting I was unfamiliar with, Ponce de Leon’s Accidente, which is now one of my favorite works of art. I went to the “world’s largest nightclub,” a seven story shit show that was fun to experience once, but not a place I would hang out at if I were to move to Madrid. My favorite thing about Madrid was without a doubt the city’s most well known park, El Retiro. I left Madrid at 6 AM on October 18^th, and took five consecutive trains before arriving home in Freiburg at 2 AM on the 19^th. I had one day to rest up before classes began, and suddenly realized at about 10 PM on the 19^th that I had no idea what classes I was going to try to get into. I frantically perused the course catalogue, and settled on ten classes that I was going to visit the first week, before narrowing the number down to five or six I would actually take. The six I decided on are outlined below (sorry, I copied these descriptions from my other blog).

1. “Auschwitz Denken”, which is a look back at the Holocaust from a modern-day German perspective, and so far is one of the two classes that has captured my interest the most.
2. “Theorien der Internationale Politik,” which is an overview of different political theories as well as an introduction to international political relations. This course is pretty interesting so far, and the professor is great, although it is the toughest yet for me to follow.
3. “Green Business and Environmental Policy in Freiburg,” the other of my two favorite classes thus far. It is taught by the International Programs Director for the Department of Economics here and is designed specifically for exchange students. We have the chance to learn about the interrelation between economics and the environment in a city which has on several occasions been dubbed the “greenest city in the world.” The resources available here for this course is outstanding and we have three hands-on field trips planned already. I don’t think there is even the slightest chance I won’t follow through with this course. This course is taught in English
4. Grundlagen fuer Wirtschaftpolitik (Foundations of Economic Policy), one of two lectures I am enrolled in. It is a large class with a much more impersonal feel than most of my other courses have, but I have deemed it a great choice for my “Applied Political Economy” concentration at home.
5. Economics of Social Justice (also taught in English), a course in which the focus is on determining costs and benefits of promoting social justice in the different national economies today. As an active proponent of social justice and a budding economist, I think this class will give me some great insight on the settling of my political leanings with my natural economic instincts.
6. Lastly, but only because it is my last class of the week (on Thursdays at noon J), I am enrolled in a course titled “Deutsche Literaturgeschichte im Ueberblick,” and overview of German literary history, with a reading list containing works by Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, and Kleist. I do not think there is a better way for me to integrate myself into the German literary world than by taking this course. This is my other lecture, but it is smaller than the Economics course and feels more intimate.

I am not sure if I will keep all six of these or drop down to five, as I am seriously struggling with a couple of them already and not sure I want to spend as much time focusing on my academic workload here as I do at home.

The first weekend after I started school Alison (the friend from SAS who is studying in Milan) came to visit me. I had such a great time showing Freiburg off to someone else for the first time, and Alison was so taken with Freiburg that it made me appreciate the city more than I already do. I did pretty much everything touristy Freiburg has to offer with her, most of which I had not done before myself, and I was duly impressed with the Schauinsland and Freiburg’s signature cathedral, the Muenster. I also showed Alison my favorite streets in Freiburg, took her to my favorite restaurants, etc.

The following weekend was Halloween, and Halloween in Freiburg isn’t too different from Halloween in the States, although the costumes here usually utilize more textile materials than costumes at home do. They also tend to be a bit darker than most of the costumes one would find at most US college campuses. I went to one Halloween party with mostly Germans, as well as one that was mostly Americans. They were both fun, and I was pretty impressed by some of the costumes that exchange students managed to put together in spite of their tight budgets and seriously condensed wardrobes.

Last weekend I went to Berlin. Oh, Berlin. The city had been talked up to me quite a bit, as a number of people I know who have backpacked Europe rank Berlin as one of their favorite cities, if not their favorite. I couldn’t help but have high expectations, and I will have to say that they were met but not exceeded. I loved everything about Berlin, from its excessive street art to the architectural differences one finds crossing from one borough into the next. When I first stepped off my train into Berlin’s mammoth new Hauptbahnhof (main strain station), I knew I was not going to leave the city disappointed. The four days that followed were filled with fantastic food (including the best doener I have found to date), non-stop sightseeing, and bitterness toward the sun for setting so early. I only used public transportation in Berlin twice, once to get from the Hauptbahnhof to my hostel (Wombats City Hostel, another really good one!) and once because it was required as part of a “free” city tour. I have never walked so much before in my life, and have also never enjoyed walking so much. I think I saw everything most tourists go to Berlin to see (from the outside, at least) and I had a chance to take an alternative tour of Berlin, which introduced me to a few of the successful squats that have been operating in Berlin since the wall fell down. I only had the chance to explore three of the museums in Berlin (Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jewish Museum, and one art museum), but plan to go back to Berlin one or two more times this year to see more. I spent the first two days exploring alone, and then my friend Jake met up with me and we saw everything I didn’t see the first two days (With some repeats), and participated in a pub crawl, on which we met a really nice Australian couple living and working in London. When Sunday evening came, I was far from ready to leave the tasty Thai, Indian, and Turkish food I had been feasting on for four days straight, but my legs were more than ready for the six-hour rest they received on the train ride home. Berlin is a place I would recommend to anyone and everyone. It’s like the Washington D.C. of Germany in the sense that there is a memorial of some sort every four footsteps, and also similar to D.C. when the political views of its inhabitants are taken into consideration, but Berlin is bigger than D.C. and its tumultuous history in recent years gives it a much different feel. I expected to like it a lot and I did.

This past week has been a dip in the rollercoaster that is a year abroad, not in the sense that I am depressed or doubting why I am over here or anything like that, but because I realized that I am going to have to put in quite a bit more effort into my classes than I have been and am kicking myself for not focusing from the get-go. I submitted an awful Protokoll (an analysis of the presentation given by another student the previous week of class, in which the Protokoller must address any points he or she believes were missed by the other student and present some questions on the topic), which was definitely a wake-up call for me. On Monday I had a paper due in my first class, the Protokoll to give in my second class, and a test to take in my third—it kind of felt like a typical Tuesday for me second semester of freshman year. The week ended well, however, with a field trip to my city’s recycling center for my Green Business class, which my instructor turned into an environmentally friendly excursion by offering to lead those of us with bikes on a bike ride to.

After the field trip I headed home and stuffed my backpack to head off to Brussels to see my friend Brittney and explore the city a bit more than I had the chance to do so when I was there this summer (I was only there for four hours, and the majority of that time was spent in presentations at the European Commission and the US Embassy). Unfortunately I was only able to stay one night, but in less than twenty-four hours I managed to have four Liege waffles, devour a sizeable portion of Frites with Curry-Ketchup, and sample a couple of beers that I didn’t get to try this past summer.

This brings me to now (breathing a big sigh of relief for having caught you up in far less space than I thought it would take). I finally have a relatively stable internet connection and have settled in enough that I think I should manage to post on here somewhat more regularly (I will try for twice a month but don’t want to make any promises). I moved from my first-story WG of 12 people to another building, where I live on the 7^th floor (8^th floor by American building terminology) and have seven roommates, five Germans and two Bulgarians (although a Russian and Ukrainian lived there when I first moved in). I get along pretty well with all of them, but still miss living with Gent and Jonathan, the two roommates I had grown close to in my first apartment. I now cook almost all of my meals, and am getting used to the German way of grocery shopping (almost daily and with total grocery bills averaging five Euros). I have a ghetto fabulous bike that I ride often, but not as much as I did when I first bought it. I recently joined a gym that is about ten minutes walking from my WG, and I am pretty happy with it although its fitness technology pales in comparison to that of CampusRec at home. I have a great group of friends from all over the world (although the majority of my close friends are from America), and am still meeting new people almost every day. I have fallen head over heels in love with Freiburg, its weather (starkly contrastive to Tucson’s or Phoenix’s), its cobblestone streets, its smiling inhabitants, and all it has to offer that unfortunately distracts me from my schoolwork. I spend way too much money on gummy candy, and probably consume roughly a kilogram of gummies a week (from my favorite shop, Gummi-Baeren Treff). I have discovered that I like dark chocolate more than I thought I did, and eat a bar after nearly every lunch and dinner. I had the opportunity to celebrate Obama’s victory with hundreds of German in my university’s cafeteria, where applause erupted every time the color blue filled the CNN screen. I have also come to really like my apartment, and laugh when I think back to the disastrous state my first room was in when I first saw it. My new WG is quite a bit cleaner than my last one, and we have a good cleaning schedule. I miss my family and friends, as well as the MV Explorer, but I am incredibly happy and feel very fortunate to be where I am right now. Also, as mentioned before, I have internet and my Skype is set up, so search for me or send me an e-mail if you want my Skype name.

I will try to post pictures as soon as I can, but my computer is unfortunately on its last leg, and its dysfunctionality combined with my weak internet connection make it pretty tough to upload pics.