Catching You Up to Speed

My apologies to my faithful readers, I have been rather lax about keeping up the flow of stories in the past week. I’ll pick up where I left off, and tell you that we did not have class last Thursday because it was Ascension Day, so Ulrike was determined that we should go out and do something on Wednesday night! We met her at “Domburg” which, I guess was a bar, though it wasn’t exactly like a bar, there were raised platforms covered with mattresses and cushions, with a flush table in the center of each little cushion grouping. It was a little strange, but comfortable. I decided to try a cocktail since it was happy hour and drinks were half-priced. I chose one that I figured would taste the least like alcohol since the taste of alcohol is rather disgusting and ordered a drink with Vodka, Banana syrup, pineapple juice, and grenadine. It wasn’t too bad, but I drank only about 1/5 of it before getting a headache and passing it off. No more cocktails for me, even if it is legal here. After Domburg we went to another place whose name I forget and I didn’t get anything here, but we met some more people there and we had fun talking for several hours.
The next day was Ascension Day, but also “Herrentag” or, literally, “Man-day”, which I find just absolutely hilarious. Walking around downtown that day we discovered what that entails. There were several dozen groups of men walking around and drinking; some wearing strange hats and a variety of both normal and odd clothing. The most entertaining groups pulled carts around with them that held beer and played loud music. They were all laughing and gesturing for women to join them in their awkward and drunken dancing at eleven o’clock in the morning. What an entertaining sort of holiday!
Ulrike came over and we watched Slumdog Millionaire and ordered pizza from Smiley’s Pizza. All of their pizzas are named after places in America, which I found strange, but entertaining; I’m not sure what shrimp & asparagus has to do with Florida, or what artichokes, mushrooms and salami have to do with San Diego, but the pizza we got was delicious!
That night we joined Ulrike at Jenny’s house and several of their friends to watch Germany’s Next Top Model, which, I assure you, is still entertaining to watch even if you don’t understand what they’re saying. The cheesy music and facial expressions convey everything that one really needs to know about such a shallow show. After the show was over, we all played cards and spent a lot of time laughing.
Friday I had my Introducing Canada class, which is always very informative, and I enjoy it. That class was the only one I had that day, so after lunch, Susan and I went to the “MediaMarkt” (like a Best-Buy) and got the extra Ethernet cord we needed. It was quite a process, changing buses at one stop. Oh yeah – we’re that good. There was supposed to be a bus at 14 past the hour at our bus stop according to our schedule, but one did not appear until the next time of 40 past the hour, so Susan and I hung out at the stop for that amount of time, which was rather boring, but hey, we had time to kill. The ride back ran smoothly and we can now both be on the internet at the same time! Success.
Ulrike came over and we watched Casablanca and pigged out on candy Friday night, which was a night well spent. Ian and Susan joined us and we all talked for a few hours after. That was my kind of night; I’ll take that over drinking at a bar any day.
Sunday we were set to go to Berlin on the 6:34 am train, so Saturday we decided was best spent at the apartment puttering around and going to sleep early. The cold, windy, and rainy weather seemed to agree with us. I watched about five episodes of Eureka, two episodes of Glee, and a movie about Martin Luther. I was so lazy that day, I expect that I bordered on the sin of sloth. Ian felt cooped up, and so he went out to have drinks with Ulrike and got back after Susan and I were long asleep. Though he made quite a bit of noise coming in, banging dishes – we’re still not really sure why he felt the urge to do dishes then and there, but oh well.
Sunday morning dawned rainy and cold – what else? I woke up Ian about ten minutes before we were set to leave (ten till 6). We walked into town, and I knew that there was a shortcut because we were already running about ten minutes late, unfortunately, I took us right when we should have gone left, and we had no idea where we were going. Ian was basically unresponsive, and Susan acquiescent, while I was getting more and more anxious by the minute. I made a beeline for the direction I was fairly certain that the train station was in and started with that awkward sort of sometimes running, sometimes walking really fast pace. The other two had given up making it there in time, and so, naturally, I lost sight of them quite quickly. I made it to the train station with about 60 seconds to spare – meeting Dr. Serembus, as we were supposed to do. The train came, but the other two still we’re there and I seriously considered getting my sweating/drenched self on that train without them. Dr. Serembus insisted we wait for them, and Ian showed up as the train pulled away with Susan showing up about 30 seconds after the train had left.
The next train to Berlin was in two hours, so the four of us sat ourselves down in the train-station and waited it out. Dr. Serembus, Ian, and Susan each went to get coffee and breakfast, but I had been up so early I’d already eaten, and remained stubbornly in my seat. My good mood improved as we successfully got onto the next train and the rain stopped. The scenery on the ride was enough to lift anyone’s mood. Gently rolling hills of green, deer, fields of yellow flowers, and deep forests made the three-hour journey actually enjoyable. I also discussed a project I’m hoping to work on in the next, decade or so, with Dr. Serembus, which is always helpful. I’m determined to make a difference in the public school system in America. Going abroad really puts our inadequacies under a harsh lamp, and I’ve been working on ideas about the situation for the past two weeks. Dr. Serembus figured that if I got in contact with the education department and probably a grad student, I could get lots of help getting statistics and interviews with teachers and putting together publish-able material. But that’s for another discussion.
Because Dr. Serembus has been to Berlin so many times, he acted as tour-guide and we saw lots of cool things around Berlin including the government buildings, the Berlin wall, and Checkpoint Charlie. It was really cool, and by the afternoon when we got onto a river-boat tour, the sun had come out! The tour was not very good as it was mostly in German with scant and hard to hear English translations. We saw several beautiful buildings, we just don’t know what they are….oh well. We grabbed dinner at the train-station cafeteria, and yes, I gave in and had Burger King, I’m such an American! Susan and I got ice cream after; I got a chocolate kind with tiny bits of orange peel in it, it was quite good.
Our train back was late by about twenty minutes, and it was ridiculous crowded, I stood, but not for long. There were a lot of army guys in their fatigues on the train, also lots of loud teenage boys who were drinking beer, as well as a compartment of skin-heads – yikes! Oh well, as we came to stop after stop the crowd thinned out. The man sitting across from me had a cleft lip and a purple birthmark over half of his face, so I was determined not to look at him too much, because I imagine he gets people staring at him all the time, and I didn’t want it to be awkward, but he started at me the whole time! As I looked out the window at the gorgeous, glowing landscape in the sunset, I could tell out of the corner of my eye that we was watching me, and every time I looked over, he smiled at me. Awkward, especially since he was probably in his late 30s or early 40s.
Well, the train finally pulled into Greifswald around 10:30, and the three of us walked wearily back to our apartment and passed out.
Monday I have no classes, so I slept late, and when I woke up I realized that it was sunny out! I showered and walked into town to get lunch at a bakery and I ate outside! I didn’t even need a jacket. It was glorious. I wandering in and out of several stores in search of another pair of pants since I feel like my current selection of 2 pairs is getting old quickly. I finally settled on a pair from H&M that, at 40 Euros, were the cheapest pair I could find. Oh well, I kept myself from buying the ten different tops that I salivated over, so I consider the whole situation a success. I walked back to the apartment and read outside for a little while, and then walked over to Ulrike’s house to pick up a bike that a friend of hers offered to lend us while we’re here! Since Ulrike also had the afternoon off from classes, we went into town and got some lollipops and chocolate and laid a blanket by the river with many other people to spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out and talking. It was a nice afternoon. The only problem was the intense wind that picked up as the day waned, so we headed inside.
Ulrike and I had ran into Mareen while getting our candy (Mareen came to Widener with Ulrike in the fall; she usually lives in Berlin but was visiting Greifswald for a few days because she’s already graduated), and Mareen invited us over for dinner Monday night. So Susan and Ian and I headed over to Casper-David-Freidrich Straβe and spent the evening with Mareen and four of her friends eating spaghetti and cookies and talking politics. It was a good time! Even more impressive watching the other seven people there go through about five bottles of wine I think it was. I got mocked slightly for not drinking/liking alcohol, and Mareen said she was determined to find a type of alcohol I like, but, she was hung over this morning anyway, so she’s probably forgotten it.
Today was back to cloudy, windy, cold Greifswald that we all know and love. Ulrike helped us find the office where we have to pay rent for our apartment (yes, we had had not done it yet), but now we’re all squared away for the months of May and June. The ordeal took about two hours, between waiting, talking to a lady, waiting some more, talking to another lady, going to another office and paying yet another lady, and then finally returning to the second lady and filling out paperwork. The four of us stopped in at a bakery afterwards to kill the hour before our next class and we each had our own delicious afternoon cakes! I feel like I will definitely gain weight here.
And I shall try harder to make the entries more frequent so you don’t have to read through something to dense again! If you’ve read all the way down here, you deserve my thanks.
Gute Nacht!