Baden Baden

Hello again!

So Saturday the 24th, the HHK took a trip to Baden Baden, which is a really gorgeous city in Germany that is known for it's natural hot water springs (the name literally means Bath Bath) We woke up and took a train from Horb, somewhere around 9:00am. 

Our guide was 18-year old Leonie, who attends a local high school. That seems fair right? Give a group of thirty-five foreigners who are all twenty-something to one girl who hasn't finished high school yet. She was pretty stressed, but we all tried to make it as easy as possible for her.

It took two-and-a-half hours to get to Baden Baden. Then we took a bus from the train-station to the downtown area, where we began our "tour".

We walked to a casino that some of us weren't old enough to go in... it was really pretty though!

Then we walked to a pretty famous Bier Halle, more accurately, a Halle, because it had nothing to do with Bier.

(A couple of Putti on the wall)

And finally to the bath-house

Then we were given a couple of hours to do as we pleased. Sight-seeing, shopping, or...

you can be like Adam, Kimmy and Brian, and buy a beer at like 11:30

I decided to do a combo of sight-seeing and shopping.  Everything was pretty expensive there, and we were told that for a very long time, only exceedingly wealthy people could live there. Which explains why we saw HUNDREDS of old women in fur coats. I have never seen so many different kinds of fur in one place! Some were just traditional, others were fancy with lots of little details. There were fur vests, fur hats, fur mittens. Basically the last place on earth anyone from PETA should ever go. 

Most everything was far too expensive for me to go shopping, so I ended up just taking lots of pictures of cool things and places.

(We could hear the water from the hot springs behind this door)

(Some cute little slippers, an owl, and a strawberry)

(There was this little girl who would come to the window and dance and wave, but as soon as we looked, she would run away. So I had to be ultra-stealthy to snag a photo. She's basically the definition of adorable)

(Like Horb, there were tons of hills, and so, lots of stairs)

(Kelsey with her new husband, the hunter)

(I'm not exactly sure what this means, something about not kicking circles if you're under a flying car, next to a house in a bubble. Must happen more than I thought it did)

(Brian having a deep, intellectual conversation with someone who might actually understand him)

We spent a few hours in Baden Baden and then headed back to the train-station, to ride for another 2.5 hour ride. 

All in all, a pretty good trip.

Rain, Rain, go away.

Rain in Germany doesn't mess around. When it rains here, it's not like in Michigan when rain thinks "oh.. well, I'll rain really hard for a while, but then not so hard. Maybe I'll rain hard again in a little bit..." German rain is persistent. It says "I am now raining, und you are now vett. Und I vill kip raining all day."

Needless to say, it rained today. It was the second day of classes at the Hermann-Hesse Kolleg, which, for those of you who don't know, is an intensive language school for foreigners that want to live/work/study in Germany. My class has two teachers, Susan and Anjelika, who switch off with Susan teaching Monday and Wed-Fri, and Anjelika only on Tuesdays. Yesterday Susan said something that I thought was really interesting, which is that once you have the basics of grammar down, it's not important any more. She said "Wir sprechen jetzt und Grammatik kommt später!" meaning "We speak first and grammar comes later" which makes a weird kind of sense. The best way to learn is to do. And trust me, we're doing. 

My days at Der Goldener-Adler Hotel follow a pretty regular schedule;

-Wake up at 8:00am and shower

-Breakfast at 8:30am. I really like German breakfast, we have a variety of rolls with butter, or marmalade, cheese, meat (for the omnivores). There's also yogurt, soft-boiled eggs, coffee, tea, orange juice. It's really quite tasty.

-9:00am I leave for classes. The HHK is maybe 20 feet from where I live. 

-From 9:00am to 10:30am we have class

-From 10:30am to 11:00am is a break

-More class from 11:00am to 12:30pm. And on Wednesday and Friday, that's when we finish school, but on Mon, Tues, Thurs we have an hour break for lunch and then

-Class from 1:00pm to 3:00pm when school ends.

-After school, I usually hang out with the Americans for a while until I head back home.

-Dinner is usually around 5:30 or 6:00, except on Wednesday, when the restaurant on the first floor isn't open, then we eat a little later and with all of the host-family present.

-After dinner we sit and talk for an hour or so, which is really interesting, because it isn't something I'm used to, and also, there are several

 other students staying at the hotel to study in or around Horb.

-Then Bed. at like... 9:30pm or 10:00pm. I feel like my mother! I haven't been to bed this early in a VERY long time!!

Before I forget, I took some pictures of the view from my window, that I thought would be nice to show.

(Horb to the left of me)

(And Horb to the Right)

(Here I am, with Horb in the middle too)

So. Also living in the Hotel is Wu from China and Nuriko from Japan. Wu is studying German at HHK, and Nuriko studied there a while ago, then she did a Praktikum in Düsseldorf, and is now back in Horb but studying English in Tübingen.

Basically we always have a lot to talk about at dinner.

It sounds like Peter and Eva host students pretty much year round, mostly from China, Michigan, California and occasionally Japan.

It's pretty cool.

Tomorrow, we're taking a group excursion to Baden Baden with the HHK, which should be pretty exciting, and picture-worthy. Hopefully it won't rain again, (Haltet ihr die Daumen drück!)

I will try to post again soon!

////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\

FOREIGNER ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:

So, this morning at breakfast, I'm pretty sure Wu from China had a soft-boiled egg, for the simple purpose of showing me that I was eating them wrong.

The first morning I grabbed one, thinking it was a hard-boiled egg. So I peeled it like it were a hard-boiled egg. It worked fine the first morning, but today when I tried it, it was a giant mess. Yoke all over my plate, shells in my hair, I looked pretty savage. So Wu, helpful as he is, went and got one, used his knife to cut off just the top of the egg, and proceeded to eat the rest with a teeny spoon that, up until this point, I'd been using to stir my coffee. 

Fantastic.

Eloise at the Plaza

I HAVE ARRIVED.

So the plane was delayed by an hour and forty-five

 minutes, leaving plenty of bonding time for most of our group. We boarded the significantly-less-than-full plane, and prepared for the six hour flight. We weren't sure at which point it was no longer 11:00pm and was suddenly 5:00am, or when 12:00 became 6:00, so we all tried to get as much sleep as possible, except for Brian and Adam who were too enthralled with the on-board flight, "Nights in Rodanthe," to even consider closing their eyes. 

We finally arrived in Frankfurt at 8:00am local time, where we bought train tickets to Stuttgart and then finally to Horb.

(Brian and me on the train)

(Brian, Kelsey, Joe and Michael in the back)

(We're pretty sure this means:

 Step 1: Get down rectangle

Step 2: Hit red button on window with wooden mallet

Step 3: Massage window.)

We got more than one dirty look from locals, because of the sheer bulk of our luggage.

Needless to say, when our already-delayed train pulled into Stuttgart, it was against the laws of physics for our group of nine to make it from platform 15 (which by the way is the longest platform known to man) down to platform 7, with all of our luggage, in under six minutes. So we missed our train to Horb.

We caught the next train which left an hour later, meaning that we would arrive in Horb an hour later. Or so we thought.

Up until this point we had been so wired for our next stop that we would get ready about twenty minutes before we got there. But Horb was our last stop, we didn't need to get on any more trains, we just had to get off the train. An easy enough task.

Unless the train decides to stop for about thirty seconds and then keep going.

In that case, only Kelsey and Joe can get off, leaving seven of us on the train.

The next stop was Sulz, where fun goes to die. It was this teeny little barren wasteland, where we got off and waited for a train to head in the other direction. Which was fortunately only five minutes.

We finally got to Horb and met up with our host families. Peter drove me back to his... HOTEL ... which is GORGEOUS. Back in America I had joked with my mom that I would be living in a hotel room. Turns out, I AM!!! It is wonderful, on the third floor with a great view.

(My sink)

(My bed)

(My table)

Classes started today, and it seems like this is going to be a pretty amazing stay in Horb. Well I will keep you all posted about what's coming up next! Auf Wiedersehen!

Leavin' on a jet plane.

Thus begins the tale of Andrew abroad. 

I'm leaving at 6:10 p.m. on Monday evening to spend six months studying and living in Germany. This blog is for all those people I'm leaving here in Michigan, so you can keep tabs on all of the adventures I am bound to get into. 

I'll post as often as I can, and as always I will check my U of M email regularly so feel free to send me messages.

Auf Wiedersehen for now!