Well, crap

It's about 3:30 in the morning on a Wednesday night/ Thursday morning. Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day, because I'm flying to Madrid to see my friend Annie. It is also going to be a full day because I have classes and such, so I have to leave my room a little before 8:30 in the morning and go directly to the airport when my class ends at 4:30.

I thought that I would get up a bit early to pack (already have a list), do a little homework, and shower so I went to bed around 10:30. I'm most productive in the morning, so it makes sense to do this instead of just staying up really late.

I was sleeping peacefully until 1 in the morning when I bolted up with the urge to do laundry. There were a few articles of clothing that I was planning on bringing with this weekend that were used but definitely still wearable, along with some other clothes that I wasn't planning to bring with but were nevertheless in need of a wash. I figured that it would be a good time, since I was awake and all, and since I figured no one would be doing laundry in the middle of a weekday night. I was right. I put my clothes in, puttered around, took a shower, and then took them out of the washer to bring them up to the dryer room.

I put my clothes in one of the 3 dryers (there were four, but one of them is broken) , chose the settings I wanted, and put in my dryer coin. It didn't start. Tried to get the coin back so I could try another dryer (had only brought one up with me and didn't want to go back down to my room to get another) but I couldn't do that, either. So I went to my room, grabbed a few coins, and headed back up to try again. I put my clothes in the dryer next to the one I had tried a few minutes ago, chose my settings, and put in a coin. It didn't start. I couldn't get this coin back, either, but I wasn't expecting to. 

Ever the optimist, I opened the third and last dryer, only to see a funny piece of machinery (part of the engine, maybe? It was fairly large) just sitting inside of it.

Hence the title of this post. Not only were the clothes I was planning to wear this weekend wet, I was also stuck with a pile of clothes that would mildew if I didn't find a means to dry them.

I tried to call a friend in a different building, but she didn't answer, which is understandable since it was almost 2:30 in the morning. Luckily for me, my buddy three floors above me was still logged into Skype, and I asked if I could borrow her drying rack. Not only did she say yes, she let me use her heater space so that more important clothes could dry faster! What a lifesaver.

So I guess that things are going to be okay. The clothes I was going to wear should be dry tomorrow, and the remaining ones are hanging safely on a drying rack. I just hope that I don't get the runs; a rumored side-effect of overdosing on vitamin C, which I have been taking like crazy since developing a sore throat Monday night (almost better!).

I really shouldn't joke, though. Someone want to knock on wood for me?

Good night!

Ingrid

A Day of Hurrying

The thing about having your blog posts linked to facebook is that people actually read them. Which is good in that your family can keep up with you without having to go through the trouble of actually going to the blog page and checking periodically, but bad in that people that you didn't necessarily expect to read your blog, do (read your blog).

Like this post. Anyone here in Germany knows that I actually went to Neuschwanstein a week and a half ago, and that it's pretty sad that it's taken me this long to post about it. If it wasn't exciting enough to post immediately, why even write about it?

If my blog were not linked to facebook, I wouldn't have this problem. On the other hand, if my blog were not linked to facebook, my own mother probably would not read it.

Annie would, though, because she's too cool for facebook.

Another embarrassing thing about facebook is all those ridiculously addicting farm games. As much as you tell yourself you're not going to get addicted, you always do. And since everyone else is addicted, you all become neighbors. This should make me feel better about it-- after all, I'm obviously not the only one who partakes. But it gets bad when other people who play the game start commenting about how nice my farm looks and how fast I'm leveling up. Like, "Not only does Ingrid play stupid farm games on Facebook, she plays them so much that she levels up faster than other people; furthermore, she obviously spends time rearranging her farm."

It's terrible. Especially when orphaned animals wander on to my farm. I want my other farm friends to be able to adopt them, so I let Farmville post the announcement on my wall. And then the second the poor wild turkey, black sheep, or ugly duckling gets adopted, I erase the post and pretend that it never happened.

There is far too much self-deception in my life. I wish I believed it.

On to my post:

The Saturday before last, a few friends and I went to Neuschwanstein, the famous fairytale castle built by the crazy King Ludwig that was supposedly the model for Disney's Cinderella Castle. The town that it is in is absolutely beautiful; surrounded by mountains and containing at least two picturesque lakes. I can see why King Ludwig and the royal family decided to build their castles there.

The day started with me being late to the meeting point. I hurried out of the elevator and ran into my friend Liz, who informed me that two of the group had just taken the other elevator up to my room to find me. Very nerve wracking, since I had cut things close and if they didn't come down from my room soon we would all miss the train. They came down with two minutes to spare, and because we ran, we made it. 

The train ride to the town of Füßen lasted almost three hours. I don't know why, since the train ride back only lasted two hours, but it was fun. I read most of a play and talked to my delightful travel buddies. The only problem is that the train conductor kept telling us to take our feet off the seats. Whenever we heard anyone coming, everyone would jump a bit and rearrange themselves. There's just no comfortable way to sit on trains without putting your feet up. 

We got to Füßen and took the bus to the village where the castles are. Basically, it's a valley surrounded by crystal clear lakes and forested mountains with castles on them.

The first castle was nice, and we had a little over an hour before the next castle tour, so we decided to get lunch. We knew we were going to be cutting it close, but were hungry. The map said it would take a half hour to get there (it's an uphill hike), but we figured that we were young and all, and that it would really take fifteen minutes. . . (here I am again, lying to myself)

Well, it took us a while to find a restaurant. We didn't want to eat at the closest one (mistake #1) so we wandered down the hill, farther from Neuschwanstein (mistake #2). When we found a restaurant that suited us, we decided to eat there, even though it was busy (mistake #3).

Unfortunately, there was only one waitress. So even though we ordered relatively quickly, by the time the food got there, we only had about 25 minutes until our tour. We ate so fast. Even though the pizza was burning our tongues. We ate a meal in about 5 minutes. While I helped Ana chug her Radler, Elizabeth went up with the two others to pay. We rushed out the door, and then found that in the hurry and cultural confusion, we had only tipped the waitress a little less than one euro ("I thought we were just supposed to round up to the nearest euro!" "For small bills-- for large ones it's supposed to be about 10 percent" "Well, shit")

I was pumped full of adrenaline: "Okay guys, we have 20 minutes. If it takes normal people 30 minutes to get there, we can definitely make it!" And we started charging up the hill. There was a horse carriage in the distance that I eventually caught up to and passed. After about 10 minutes I noticed that I could only see Emir (one of the group) and that we had lost the others. I back tracked a little to try to give them words of encouragement, but was met by frustration ("INGRID WE'RE GOING AS FAST AS WE CAN").

Unfazed, I kept going up the hill. It took Emir and I 18 minutes. "Damn," I said, "that would not take a normal person 30 minutes." It turns out that we had misread the map, and that it actually recommended allotting 40-45 minutes to hike up the path to Neuschwanstein, so we did pretty well.

We missed our tour. A man who worked there took us to a room to check when the next tour we could join was. The next English tour was in half an hour. Or, we could just join the German tour starting now. Excited, I said, "Können wir?" and a worker sort of chuckled at me and complimented my German. In English. I guess that's life.

It was pretty cold out but we were all stripped down to our t-shirts and tank tops because of the work-out we just had. The Germans stared at us. Germans stare at everything, but especially humans that they think might be cold. You have no idea what it's like to be me on the train every morning. I almost exclusively wear flip-flops, and the Germans just stare at my feet. Occasionally one (usually male) will ask if I'm cold. Come on, people, it's still over 50 degrees outside. If it's not raining, why bother with shoes?

 

The rest of the day was very slow and relaxing. All in all, I had a very good experience.

 

Unfortunately, now my friends are afraid to hike with me.

I tried, I really did

So Sunday evening, I went up to my friend Elizabeth's room. The plan was to do yoga for 30-45 minutes and then go back down to my room for a few minutes to freshen up real quick before meeting a friend for church. I had skipped church the previous two weeks, but had enjoyed it the first time I went, and wanted to return.

I knew something wasn't quite right when I got to Liz's door and there were two cute pairs of shoes sitting peacefully outside her door. As far as I knew, Liz kept her shoes in her room, and besides, they were like no shoes that I had seen her wear. I knocked on the door and found it already open. I walked inside, and there were two young Korean women talking to Liz. Liz explained that they were Erasmus students and motioned for me to sit down.

They introduced themselves and the woman I sat next to said she was studying Theology. They said they were from South Korea, and I was like, "Is that the one with Kim Jong Il?" (Yes, I can be a bit ignorant. But asking questions is the way to fix that.) They looked horrified, said he was from North Korea, and started talking about how his atomic tests were terrible and that it was likely he would bomb the whole world in the "Plague by Fire" predicted in the Bible.

It started to get really weird-- they had a book full of things that looked like middle school science hand-outs that they took out and would point at. They turned to a page with an Atom bomb that said, "Plague by Fire". They then turned to a page with a picture of the Sun and the Earth with lots of scary lines coming out of the Sun that said, "Solar Winds." There was also one that had a picture of a catastrophic possible meteor collision with Earth.

But, they made it clear that if we celebrated Passover with them, we would live on because of God's promise. All of this we (Liz and I) understood. However, they kept on bringing up some vocab that we didn't understand over and over. I looked it up using Liz's computer and found that they wanted us to get baptized.

Liz tried to tell them that she was already baptized, but they made a bunch of sad faces and told her that she really wasn't (because she was baptized in the Catholic church) and that she needed to get baptized again. After a while, they asked her if she needed time to think about it and agreed to come back next week.

When I looked at the time, I saw that I had missed church.

Ironic?

I wish I had a better immune system

On Tuesday I caught my second cold of the season (the first one being almost exactly two weeks before), which is ridiculous. I mean, Monday, I wake up, I'm happy, go to class, contribute, yadda yadda; Tuesday, I wake up, I'm fine, and then. . . Tuesday night. . . one side of my throat is swollen, I have a fever, and I end up coughing all night. No fun. At least it only really lasted two days. And it is sort of funny how diseased my study abroad program is. On Wednesday morning, half the people in class were sick, and it was just ridiculous trying to get anything done. The Professor would say something, and only half the people would do it. The others either wouldn't be listening, wouldn't hear, or would forget within seconds what they were supposed to be doing. Our brains were muddled and our motivation was low. The room was a symphony of sniffles.

Other than that the week was pretty cool. It was the first week of classes, which is always very exciting for me. It was different than usual, though, because here almost all the classes only meet once a week for an extended period of time instead of for 3 one hour sessions. I'm not always rushing from one place to another. Something I'll have to get used to.

At this point in time I am class shopping. Meaning, I am taking way too many classes until I start to do badly in some or decide that I don't really care enough to try. I've already decided to give up on the French class, but otherwise I'm taking 1 German grammar class, a mini class about communicating better in German (working on essay writing and speech giving), 'An intro to German Literature', 'Germany: 1945 to the Present', 'Modern Munich Literature; 1900-1950', and 'Goethe's Italian Journey'. All through my program and all in German. I'm also sitting in on two University Physics classes until I decide whether or not I am going to take them: Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I really want to take them, and think I understand enough German, but sitting through them this week reminded me that Physics is hard work. I really hope that I give them my all and don't slack off. It would be really wonderful to succeed.

I considered taking a French class, but am now thinking maybe not. I was really embarrassed because I took the French placement test and appeared to have tested into a really low level. But then, I went to the class that I tested into, and was a bit overwhelmed by the rapid French and the intensive grammar review. So confusing! The class was titled 'Cours Elementaire' (translation: 'Elementary course') but maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, seems to be a bit more trouble than it's worth at the moment, and I would rather concentrate on my other classes.

As I said before, I'm on the third day of a cold. I feel fine except for residual congestion, which puts me in a lame situation-- I can't go out, because I want to get completely better; I can't sleep, because of my stuffy nose; and I'm well enough that just sitting around is boring. Ah well, such is life. I'm sure I'll be better by tomorrow and back to enjoying my year in Germany.

Oktoberfest! Another Try

My old room-mate wasn't the only one to visit that weekend; on thursday night, I had to go to the airport to meet an old friend from high school. By the time we got back to my "apartment", it was really late, so we just went to sleep in preparation for the big day.

Sometime in the early morning, we woke up and got ready to go to Oktoberfest. We got there shortly after 9, walked into a beer tent, and asked three german guys around our age if it was okay to sit at their table (at nine in the morning on a weekday, Oktoberfest is already packed and there's no getting a table of one's own-- besides, sitting by germans gives me an excuse to practice). We talked a bit-- they were from northern germany, one of them was working (internship or apprenticeship, can't remember what german word he used and wouldn't know the difference if I did) and two of them were studying mechanical engineering. I think. Might have been the other way around. Luckily, I was sitting closest to them out of everyone at the table, so I got to practice my german quite a bit. I would say something in grammatically incorrect german, and they would reply in english. At ten, the waitresses came by with beers, and the drinking started.

I kept telling them that they could speak german, and as they started to drink a little they spoke more and more. I don't remember everything we talked about, but it involved a lot of pointing at Annie (friend from high school) and saying that she was the only one at our table that didn't understand german. Over and over again. I don't know why I did it so many times, but it was sort of funny because she didn't understand what I was saying.

Inside the tent was so cool. There were so many people from so many places, all brought together by alcohol. There were drinking songs, people chugging maßs (a liter of Oktoberfest beer), and lots of standing on benches and tables. Also, beer was everywhere, making everything quite slippery.

Sometime in the afternoon some guys from our program came over and convinced me and Annie to go to the funhouse with them. The funhouse wasn't that great, but there was a room that spun around so fast that everyone got stuck to the wall. I don't know who's idea it was to have so many rides at a festival full of drunk people.

We went back to a friend's room and she made us pasta. After that, everyone passed out except for me. Around nine Annie and I got back together with two other girls to hang out, but I left early in order to meet two people from my college who were also visiting me that weekend.

I went to the Hauptbanhof, and Annie went to a club. I met who I was supposed to, a friend from college (Katie) and a guy who I hadn't met yet (Daniel), but who also goes to Wooster and is in the same study abroad in France program as Katie. We got back to my room around 12:30, grabbed a beer each, and went downstairs to see if anything was going on. We talked with a few guys until 2 and then went back up and went to sleep.

We woke up around 7:30 to find that Annie had never come back. I went and knocked on a friend's door to see if she was there, and when she wasn't, figured she was a big girl who could take care of herself.

I left a note saying that I would be back in time to take her to the airport with a few hours to spare, and then left with my college buddies to have a second day at Oktoberfest.

Alpenexkursion

On Wednesday night, the 30th of November, my room-mate from last year came for a visit. Well, kind of. She wanted to visit me, but it was more for Oktoberfest, which is a good thing because I was busy most of the time she was here.

So the next day she went to Oktoberfest and I went on a day trip to the Alps. When we got to the Alps, our professor showed us a map and explained to us that we were not actually hiking in the mountains today, but taking a leisurely stroll up a hill. We then proceeded to walk up into the mountains for an hour and a half.

Most of it wasn't too bad, but there were about three ten minute sections that were very tough mountainous treks-- straight uphill, no breaks, very steep. I like hiking and walking up hills, but many group members felt deceived by our professor's earlier description.

The Alps were beautiful beyond description, so I won't try. When we got to our destination, we ate a hearty lunch-- we were supposed to take a lift down to where we started, so it didn't matter whether or not we ate ourselves into a stupor. Or so we thought. The train was broken that day.

Our professor thought it would be boring to simply retrace our steps and wanted to find an alternate route down. There wasn't really another way back, so we made our own. At one point the hill (there was no trail, by the way) became so steep that we couldn't continue walking-- we sat down on our butts and slid.

At the end of the day, we were sweaty, grass-stained, and thoroughly content.

I'm back!

Sorry I haven't kept up with my blog (if anybody's following it. . .)! This past week and a half was quite busy: Oktoberfest, 4 visitors out-of-city visitors in 3 days, a sickness, a new refrigerator, and a search for a seemingly non-existent bank account. You see, constantly having guests, drinking too much, coughing and worrying when the next meal will be are all activities that can distract one from one's duties. A lot of (hopefully) interesting things happened, and I will describe them in installments. I hope I finish, as I am going to Salzburg tomorrow and have quite a busy weekend.

Tuesday the 29th of September: A Strange Prelude to an Amazing Week

As you may or may not know, my classes for the semester have not yet started and I'm still in Orientation. Orientation is a combination of things: German, learning what's important in Munich, a very brief course in German politics, etc. On Tuesday, our homework was to go out and find a German person that we did not know and interview them. We were divided into groups and instructed to go to either a bar or cafe.

Our group wasn't too exciting; we found a nice young woman downtown who was currently involved in a hotel internship. When we got back to our student housing, we noticed another group sitting at the student bar talking to someone, and a few of us decided to join. The man offered me a place to sit next to him, and I did.

Now, what I didn't know when I sat down was that this man was a) not German, but in fact Romanian, and b) extremely perverse. I did not feel threatened by him in any way (he didn't try to touch me and didn't even really give me any looks that made me uncomfortable), but he would randomly insert sexual things into conversation. Example: I was talking to the girl across from me about how excited I was to go to the Alps that Thursday. "I love hiking!", I exclaimed. He turned his head and said, "What? You love f***ing?". (That was the tamest example I could think of-- didn't want to offend anyone). He also (recognizing that I was too young for him, I guess) tried to set me up with every guy my age that was at the table with us. When I first sat down, he asked me if I liked nice, young American guys and motioned to someone I knew sitting across from me. I was like, "I already know him," and he dropped the subject.

A guy I knew sat down with us, and when he got up to go use the bathroom, Heraldo (the Romanian) turned to me and said, "Ingrid, I could tell he was devoring you". I was like, "What?". A second later, I figured out that he meant to say 'devouring'.

Well, this Romanian did have a little crush on me so when I got up to leave he ordered the table a round of beers so that I would stay. "Ingrid," he said, "give me two months and I will be falling in love with you." I laughed nervously.

The group that interviewed him made up fictional answers for their presentation the next day. All the ones he gave were too vulgar for mixed company.