Strange New World!

So this is really long... I apologize... But it will catch you up on my first week in Europe :)

Wow! Where even to begin?! Finally in Salzburg and feeling like I can relax a bit and process everything that has happened so far… Alright. There is so much that has happened- this is going to be a long post! But I’m going to try and remember back to the things that stand out the most!

1/14 First day in Munich!

            Woke up leisurely, there were some French Asians that were also staying in our room so I woke up when they started getting and laid in bed trying to surreptitiously watch them… I also was mentally going through French phrases in my head because I wanted to try to talk to them! I even spoke a soft “bonjour,” but I think they didn’t hear me :P. After enjoying a nice breakfast at the hostel, we waited around for the rest of the group to meet us! When they got there I introduced myself to a line of girls and then promptly forgot all of their names! Had a brief orientation meeting, and I immediately like Phoebe and Konrad, the two faculty that were supervising the field trip/Administration and Academic advisor of the college. We went on a short walk around Munich, had lunch at the famous brewer Hofbrau house maybe? I had spaetzle… which was basically like mac and cheese J. During our city walk I stayed with Melody, the girl I had facebook chatted a couple days before we left, and I asked her many many questions about how to say things in German, because she had had it in high school. She was very gracious and answered all of my questions! And, she said I was picking it up fast! That’s encouraging! That afternoon during our free time we explored some department stores (one of the outdoor stores had a bouldering wall and a slack line in it! So naturally I attempted the slack line… success!)

1/15 Our second day included a guided tour of the city with a very knowledgeable tour guide as well as a fantastic tour of the Deutches Museum of science and technology! Some interesting things I learned:

-       Before WWI Hitler tried to be accepted in a school as a painter but was rejected. He became a German soldier during WWI, and after the war, during a revolution of sorts (the end of kingdoms and the republic was in chaos) he was able to speak to people, persuade and convince them. He gained popularity, built a power structure, and whenever the people realized how much power he had it was too late. But, interestingly enough, he loved art!

-       Beer: “liquid bread” in old times it basically sustained monks during their fasts. It was safer to drink than water. When refrigerators came, large quantities of beer were able to be brewed which contributed to the formation of beer halls with long tables and benches where everyone was equal. The other contributing factor was industrialization, which standardized work hours so people had time to socialize. Hitler used these “beer palaces” as sights for his speeches.

-       (From the Deutches museum) a very very high current of electricity won’t kill you, it stays on your skin because your nerve cells can’t transmit the signal, it’s too fast!

-       There is an experimental cancer treatment for brain tumors that deals with a liquid nanoparticle substance. A hole is drilled into a person’s skull and a substance inserted into the brain area. The substance has two components. One part nanoparticles and one part receptor fluid that guides the liquid to specific cells. Once the particles reach the cells, a magnet heats up the liquid and destroys the tumor. Then the magnet sucks the remaining liquid out.

1/16 Couple more high points from Munich trip:

            - Got to see the castle that Disneyland was based off of! We took a train for a couple hours south west, and the castle was in some spectacular mountains! (photo) It was quite ornate, couldn’t take pictures inside, but it seemed like every surface was carved or painted or gilded or something, and the furniture was quite impressive too! The castle has an interesting history: Ludwig the II I believe had it commissioned, but he actually only ended up living in the castle a couple months before he was mysteriously found dead in a nearby lake… No one knows what happened… The castle was built in the late 1800s, but modeled after medieval castles. Pretty neat! Oh and our tour guide was an added bonus… She spoke English with a VERY heavy accent, and her voice was about as high-pitched as one can imagine… (Dr. Curlin anyone?) I almost busted up laughing because it seemed so fake! Afterwards we did a little sightseeing in the quaint little (Medieval?) town of Fussen. My big success was ordering a hot chocolate in german J. Heisse shoko! (insert some german letters that aren’t found on my keyboard- I’ll try to include legitimate words once I’m caught up!!) Talking to Konrad (young prof from the college who was also guiding the field trip) about how verb conjugation works in German made me even more excited for school to begin! It helps me to think of how to conjugate French verbs, with far fewer irregular verbs! I’m excited to begin J When we got back in town, a group of us decided to go to a restaurant together… unfortunately it turned out to be quite pricey, and the (at the moment) delicious ceasar salad that I had ended up contributing to a bout of sickness afterwards :/. Oh and the water was almost $6. Regular water. Ridiculous! Definitely something that I miss about the US! The best part of the night though was skyping fellow study abroaders… Jacob Tinklenberg, Johanna Casey, Bethany Peevy, and my sister J So great to see familiar faces and share experiences… Can’t wait to see some of the friends in Venice, Italy in a couple weeks!!! I experienced a slight twinge of homesickness that night (I think it was related to talking to people from home) which became more acute as the night wore on and I kept waking up being sick :/. And especially when I threw up. Not fun, needless to say I was quite tired the next morning, which held our last group of field trips!

1/17 First we got to walk around the Olympic Park (mostly outside trails which were covered in a dense layer of powdery snow!) Fun to see the huge swimming pool and go up into a huge tower! With a view that would have been incredible if it hadn’t been dimmed by the weather. Also, I especially enjoyed the BMW museum- complete with a very knowledgeable tour guide who was very interesting! Heard a lot about the history of the company, and ideas, and details about different aspects of the designs on the cars… etc etc. Also found my dream car. (photos J) Finally we made a quick stop at a museum of Roman art for a school assignment, and quickly analyzed a couple sculptures to compare for a later homework assignment. Melody knows quite a bit about art! I would have stayed longer except that I was starving (hadn’t had lunch yet or breakfast and had unfortunately lost my dinner from the night before.) and I was very very tired. So we toured quickly and then hit up a pizza place on the way back to the hostel and chilled before we had to get on the train to Salzburg!!!!

1/17 cont. Getting to Salzburg.

Upon our arrival at the train station Victoria and I were greeted by our host family and whisked off to their house, which is about 20 minutes away from the college by car/bus. Actually it was the son-in-law of the host family, (still not exactly sure how to write his name? um it sounded like “Yohken” which I’m guessing would be spelled something like Jochen) He was with an adorable two-year-old boy, Noah, who I mistakenly took for his grandson! (in my defense Jochen looked older… maybe they have kids a little later here? At least more so than in the South!) Seeing Noah’s cuteness made me really want to be able to speak German to communicate!!! When we arrived at the house, we were greeted by Franzisca- our host mom, and her youngest son, Gabriel, his girl friend, Anna, and their daughter, Mia, who is I think around one. Tori and I are living in the attic, which is the second floor in Austria, (it was very confusing for awhile until I realized that the first floor in America is the ground floor in Austria… after that it made more sense J) Hanz and Franzisca live on the first floor, and Gabriel, Anna and Mia live on the ground floor. Me and Tori’s “attic apartment” is quite lovely! _____insert several pictures of the bedroom and bathroom) Everything is quite quaint, I remember when I stayed in Germany for a couple weeks I really liked the houses! We have a heater in the room which keeps it warm, but we have to keep the bedroom doors shut because the hallway is quite chilly! Looking forward to maybe getting to take a couple baths, love the skylight with the early morning sun streaming into the bathroom, and most of all some tea candles and a lighter! It was quite fun to make several discoveries of both notes and various items that have been left behind by past host students! They provided lots of helpful information as well as left school supplies, Germany vocabulary study cards, shampoo, and best of all, a European hairdryer and a phone with a sim card!!! So it looks like I may not have to purchase any of those things! Thank you Lord for providing in such a cool way! I felt quite taken care of J. Definitely appreciate my own room. It’s amazing how a physical space can allow my introvert self to breathe, expand, have room to recharge and process! I was definitely feeling the need for a retreat after several consecutive days constantly being surrounded by people! (side note: sometimes using the rest room is the only time I’d really have to myself… it’s amazing how much those moments are anxiously anticipated!) After bringing up all our luggage, Franzisca ushered us to the dining room where she served us a delicious stew of what seemed like hamburger meat, corn, kidney beans, and I’m not really sure what else. I think it was the best meal I’ve eaten so far! During dinner Noah played cars with me, and Anna asked us a lot of questions as well as offered lots of helpful advice regarding making travel plans! Apparently there are lots of cheap airline tickets for flying around Europe, as long as you plan ahead! Definitely going to look into that! I really like her a lot, she was super nice and friendly, and she told us if we ever needed anything we could call her or text her or whatever J. For dessert, we were treated with a homemade (and I’m assuming, made from scratch with apples from Franzisca’s garden) apfelstreudle (apple streudel!) I felt like the luckiest host student ever! After the rest of the family left, Franzisca told us a bunch of things about living here. One thing that she stressed a lot was not wasting any food. She said she wanted us to only put on our plate the amount of food that we would eat. She didn’t want to throw away stuff because there are people all over the world who don’t get enough to eat. Definitely food for thought! It is impolite to keep your shoes on in the house here, you’re expected to leave them off until you are leaving. A couple other practical things we were told: water is precious, so it’s important to conserve it. This translates into when showering, you get in, get wet, turn the water off, soap up, turn the water back on and rinse really quick. Also, we were reminded to turn the lights off unless we are in the room, both of these will require me to pay a little more attention to being responsible, but who knows, maybe I’ll turn out to be a little more green when I get back to the states J. Another helpful habit I’m developing is the art of being early! This is a very new thing, as I am almost always exactly on time, a minute late, or quite late to everything (except recreational soccer games… don’t ask me why #iknowmyprioritiesaremessedup) Here, it is important to be early to Salzburg college events (SC), as well as bus stops, or run the risk of being left behind. So far so good, hopefully this will be adopted in the States too! After dinner, I ended up getting ready for bed pretty quickly, decided to save the unpacking for later as I was very tired.

1/18

Next morning, woke up feeling quite refreshed and dressed cutely for our orientation to SC. Tori and I were downstairs for breakfast promptly at 8:45, and I enjoyed another piece of apfelstreudle for breakfast! (no ice cream with it this time!) Then Franzisca took us to the bus stop about five minutes away from the house to catch bus number seven, which we take to get to school in town, approximately 20 minutes away. Totally looking forward to this public transportation experience, Franzisca advised us to purchase a bus pass that would be good for a month, as weather conditions are quite harsh! But, as they start improving, we should be able to use bikes that our family has! The bike path for the most part follows the river that flows through Salzburg, so it’s almost a direct route to the college! This little college is a sweet little building! I think it is about 5 stories and it’s built against the “Monk’s mountain” um… still not sure on all of the german spelling as yet. Going up the flights of stairs was quite the workout! I was surprised at how happy I was to see our little group! Even though we had only been together for less than a week I was thrilled to see all of the familiar faces, and I believe this group is already starting to feel like a family J (complete with our uncle Konrad :P) Thankful to finally get a picture of what our semester will look like! Wow, I’m excited to start school! I really really want to learn to speak German, and quickly! I know that the majority of people hear speak English so it’s not hard to get around, however I just feel very ignorant when someone says something in German and I literally have no clue what they are saying. :/ Also, our schedule is freakin amazing. We have multiple field trips that are pretty much field trips on steroids. Like we have a day trip to this really skiing competition that is only held every couple years. Dank! So yeah. You guys will be hearing about those in time! After orientation we got a brief introduction to the city, which would have been great except I was a bit cold. I’m not positive what the temperature has been exactly the past couple days, but I think it was in the 20s. Still learning how to dress for the weather haha. After our tour we had a couple hours to kill before the Welcome Party. So Me, Tori, Molly Anne, and Megan went to run a couple errands. First we went to a small store and got a school notebook, then me and Tori went and purchased our bus passes! Finally we had to retrace our tour steps to find the book store to buy our german book! After successfully navigating all over the city I was feeling pretty confident in my directional ability. Tori and I decided to catch our bus back to our house so we could chill a bit before heading to the party (I still had to unpack). We made it to our stop just fine and I confidently headed back towards the house… or so I thought. Pretty quickly all the surroundings began to look completely unfamiliar. We were quite perplexed for a few minutes, and stood in the side walk puzzling over our dilemma. We were sure that we had headed the right direction from the bus stop! After a couple more minutes I realized our error. We had forgotten to cross the street and retrace our steps from the “to town” bus stop that we had been at in the morning! Instead we had tried to retrace our steps from the “from town” bus stop! The situation was quickly resolved and feeling relieved, we headed home. But there was yet another obstacle to face! Which house was ours?! We made it to the neighborhood, but quickly became confused about where we had come from. Franzisca had commanded our full attention that morning… After a couple minutes of deliberating we struck out for a path and it turned out to be right! The final sigh of relief was breathed only after we tried the key in the lock and it worked! Whew! Our crazy misadventures were over for the day! (Or so we thought ;P) So we ended up not having that much time at home. I didn’t unpack. Actually I don’t really know what I did haha. (Welcome Party to be cont...)