Random Thoughts about Germany/Europe

As I walk around Munich, a lot of random thoughts have popped into my head. I started recording them and now I will share them with you here.

Germany is sort of annoying with how they do not like to break rules. For example, you are not allowed to turn on red, and you cannot cross the street if the little sign is red. Even if, in both situations, there are no cars coming for miles, you are fully expected to wait there for several minutes for the light to change. Why? It is so annoying

Buses are confusing. Why are their two buses with the same number is they run different routes? They should have different numbers


YOU'LL WANT TO READ THIS, IT'S GOOD

Totally forgot to talk about this on my other blog, but sometime last week we did a "Munich at Night Tour" which was awesome. The tour guide had a ton of energy and he knew a ton about the history of Munich and was interactive and it sounds lame but you had to be there. It was a ton of fun and he showed us some cool places. The highlight of this was we were standing in the exact spot, where in 1923 Hitler and his Nazis got in a firefight with the police during their march on the Munich city center after their infamous Beer Hall Putsch. When we were standing in the very spot where this firefight happened, a bird flew down out of this palace and landed on my head. It was just small bird, and at first I thought a flag was hitting my head because I was in a doorway and there are flags everywhere in Munich. So I tilted my head, but something was still hitting my head, so I brushed my hair, and a bird flew away. I was standing at the back of the group, and only one other kid saw it, so we started telling people and they could believe it and couldn't stop laughing. Now people tell me not to have any aspirations in life because this guy was telling us about Hitler and his march on the city center while we were standing where it all happened, so they think I am cursed now. But it was funny. What are the chances. Anyways, back to random thoughts.

Munich is so old that it doesn't feel like a huge modern industrial city like we have in America, such as Boston. I do not see very many sky scrapers, and it just has a really cool historical feel. But you know there is wealth around you because the buildings are nice and you see really nice cars (such as Ferraris)

I have seen an absurd number of people making out on the escalators going to the subways. What is with that? Is that the new thing to do?

A ton of people in Germany smoke. Especially younger people my age. Just sort of funny since Europe always bashes America for being so unhealthy.

I tell my mom how much money I spend on groceries and she thinks I am starving myself. So i had to show her a picture of my fridge. I have a lot of food, I just shop smart and the place I go is wicked cheap compared to back home, so I am happy about that.

Also, its weird how in America we grow up thinking that coins are worthless, yet when I get to Europe I have to start keeping track of my coins because they are worth a lot. They have 2 Euro and 1 Euro coins. I hate carrying coins around so I have been putting them on my shelf. Well I have been keeping track of my expenditures and I was off by quite a but (almost 20 Euros). I then realized that it was here.

That's right, these coins are worth almost 20 Euros. 2 Euros, 1 Euro, 50 cent, 20, 10, 5, 2, 1. Kind of crazy how fast it adds up

Completely unrelated: I started watching White Collar on Netflix and it is really good. It is about this felon who helps the FBI catch people doing similar crimes that he did and was wicked good at. Just thought I would let you all know that.

Long Time No See

It has been a week since I have written one of these. Has much happened? No. Am I sorry? Yes. Here is a quick rundown of what has happened this past week.

Forewarning, you can actually click on the pictures to make them big. I did not know this

Tuesday I just had an academic info session. They told us about homework, papers, assignments, types of the classes. Boring stuff like that. Wednesday was more of the same, only this time a tour of the Bayern State Library was included. German libraries are kind of weird, because there are very few books in the library. You have to search them online and request them and they come in a few days. So that is annoying because I feel like the description of books online are often terrible/not very helpful, so having to request a ton of books and wait for them to come in is sort of inconvenient. Besides that its like any other library.

I love being able to walk through Munich and see the remnants of the war. For example, here is the ceiling of the Bayern State Library

You're probably saying wow Jake why are you showing us this plain Jane ceiling, where is the remnants of the war. Well Ahah! I'm glad you asked, because before the war this plain Jane ceiling was intricately painted, but the allies bombed Munich of course and the ceiling collapsed down onto the stairs, and when they rebuilt it they did not repaint it. Also, they had a case showing examples of damaged books, and one of them was a book that was burned in the fire caused by the bombing, during which a lot of books were lost. Pretty neat stuff.

Another example of the bombing of this art museum called the Alte Pinakothek. It was also hit by bombs, and you can see where in this picture

I think I talked about this in an earlier blog, but now you can see it. Where the light bricks are in the middle is where they had to rebuild it from the bombs hitting. (P.S. those things in the foreground are not, as Jess suspected, Jelly Rolls. They are big hay bail type things, only made out of a plastic straw that you can lay on.)

On Thursday we had our language placement test. The test consisted of listening, reading, writing, and grammar. It was brutal. I described the feeling of anticipation for the test as "waiting for my own execution" because if you do well on the test its as if you are fluent/a native German speaker, and of course I am neither. The test was really hard. I found out my results today and I did bad. The good news was that I was on par with someone who has 2 year of college level language education, which I do, so at least I am on track for that.

Then Friday came, and this is where the excitement began. They decided that after crushing us emotionally with that impossibly hard test, that they would take us to hike in the foothills of the Alps in a city called Mittenwald, basically in Austria. It was really nice because JYM bought our train ticket for us (about an hour and a half ride), so we just had to take care of our lunch. We left the Munich Central Station at 9:30 am headed towards Garmish-Partenkirchen, the site of the 1936 winter Olympic Games. Even if you did not know that this was where the games were held then, you probably could have guessed by the giant ski slope emblazoned with the Olympic Rings, shown here

*Not visible due to my poor camera skills: the olympic rings*

Here are some more shots of the train ride in

We then arrived in Mittenwald where we would begin out hike. Mittenwald is supposed to be a legendary violin and Cello making place. Here are some more pictures of it

Mittenwald from a little up the mountain

We also found yet another beautiful German church. Here are those pictures

The Ceiling

But this picture is my favorite, because these people look like they are posing for the photo I am taking, even though they aren't

The hike up the mountain was good. The weather was ideal for hiking because it was not too hot and was not too cold. There were clouds with a slight breeze so it felt good. It was pretty steep but wasn't too bad. It was enough that you could do it without feeling terrible but still made you feel like you accomplished something. This was the view from the top 

And this is only on one side

This is the other side

On top of the mountain was a little restaurant which is operated by one guy who must make a fortune off of the people hiking the mountain. I ordered currywurst, which naturally came with french fries, and it was delicious. Cost me 7.50 but it was totally worth it. The best part of the trip through, was that instead of having to do the dreaded walk back down the mountain, you can just take a 20 minutes ski lift ride back down. It was awesome. Turns out you can also take this thing up, so not sure why we did not do that. Here are some shots from that.

We had some time to kill when we got down before our train for Munich left, so some of decided to stop at this is little ice cream shop and get some ice cream. Cost me 2 Euros for 2 scoops of this chocolate ice cream with chocolate covered cashews in it. It was so good. Here is the ice cream

This is the one I got

This is some other flavors/the general set up

Overall it was an awesome trip. I would love to go back and do it all again, so I may do that during our semester break. I thought it was so cool that we could board a train in Munich at 9:30, hike some of the Alps practically in Austria, and be back in Munich by 6:30. Gotta love Europe

Saturday I just did paperwork. So fun. 

IF YOU ARE JUST SCROLLING THROUGH THE BLOG MAYBE THIS BOLD, LARGE, UNDERLINED, ITALIC, RED TEXT WILL STOP YOU AND YOU WILL READ THE FOLLOWING NEWS

I found out that I got accepted to this long weekend academic trip to Krakow and Auschwitz. Basically I arrive in Krakow Thursday night and we meet up, Friday we tour Krakow, where there was a Ghetto in WWII, and Saturday we head to Auschwitz and get a tour of Auschwitz, and Sunday we get  a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau and head back to look at Krakow some more, have a closing ceremony, and head back to where ever we came from on Monday morning. Here is a link to the program's website

http://www.mjhnyc.org/a_affiliates_ajc.html#.VCmKv_mSwlK

I am doing the program for students abroad, so look under that category. There is a $375 program fee which covers all food and local travel and the hotel, so I am anxious to see if I received the program fee waiver, because if I did I only have to pay for my travel to Krakow, which would be awesome. Either way its a great opportunity and I am wicked excited. The dates are OCtober 23-27. Here is a copy of last year's syllabus to give you an idea of what I will be doing

http://www.mjhnyc.org/documents/AJCPSASampleSyllabus.pdf

More stuff to follow on this of course.

Yesterday (Sunday) I went back to BMW World/Museum to look at their special exhibit on Rolls-Royce, titled "The Strive for Perfection." I gotta say, they were pretty close to reaching perfection. Here are some photos from that

Just kidding, that was all of my photos from that. It was just easier.

Today (Monday) I had my academic meeting with the program director here in Munich. Basically, I take my language course 3 times a week from 11:30-1, and have 4 other courses 1 time a week in 2.5 hour sessions. My other courses, are Germany Today (politics), intro the German literature, Goethe's Italian Journey, and Munich and National-socialism. Of course I am most excited for Munich and National-socialism, since we go to Dachau. I am excited to for the classes, and most should transfer to Bates fine, so that is awesome.

I then went to Oktoberfest for the first time with a few other kids from the program.I have to be honest here, if you know me you know I do not care for alcohol or crowds, so you can see how Oktoberfest is the perfect place for me. However, I am only going to be in Munich once (probably), and it is one of those things that you have to do when you are here. So i went to Oktoberfest with the other kids and we entered the Hofbrauhaus beer tent

Shown Here

We then looked for about 10 minutes for a place to sit. We finally found one, and I ordered my first German beer, for 10 Euros. Here it is, its called a Mass, only with the German double S thing. Its a Liter.

Who, you may ask, needs a liter of beer? Answer: These people

Anyways, here is some of the people I went with

I also bought a huge pretzel, for 5 Euros, so all in all it cost me 15 Euros, and to be honest I hated it. As I expected, I did not like the beer, and there were a ton of people, but at least I did it and I can say I went. That is good enough for me.

That is all for now, sorry for the super long post, and thank you if you actually read the whole thing. It was definitely a lot to take in. I will try to write more often so that I do not have to write so much at once, and you do not have to read so much.