Beautiful Days in Greifswald

So, since we’ve gotten back from Munich, we’ve just been going back to classes and hanging around like we did before. Yesterday was a gorgeous day though! It was warm and sunny, albeit extremely windy. I took the bike and followed the a beautiful path along the river about Ryck (Rick) 3 miles to the town of Wiek (Veek), where there are the ruins of a monastery that was built in 1199.
I lay in the grass for a few hours and read, it was very nice, and then I got a scoop of ice cream around noon and decided to go exploring a little more. So I headed back towards the town, where the pier is into the sea, and I wandered up and down the river and into the harbor, where I finally settled down on a bench pretty far out. The wind here was very intense (in power and temperature), but it was a nice enough place to sit for a while. I had my sweater on, but I was wearing shorts. As a matter of fact, an old man stopped and looked at me and said something to me incredulously, and I just smiled and said: “Sorry?” And then he switched to English and said: “Aren’t you very cold?!” So I told him: “Oh, it’s not too bad!” He got a look of surprise on his face, but he walked away.
Around 1 I was getting hungry again, so I wandered over to a stand where they had fresh fish, but I had no idea how to read the menu, so I observed those around me eating, and one man had a sandwich that looked rather good, so I went up the woman and asked her if she spoke English. She shook her head slowly, but the man eating the sandwich piped in that he did a little. So I asked him what he was eating, and he told me backfisch (bock-fish) and that it was very good, so I poited at him and said backfisch! The woman looked very confused, so he told her in German what I wanted. It was kind of embarrassing, but he was very nice, and I chatted with him while I waited. Apparently his daughter studied abroad in Oregon, and that “the last time I went to the states, I went to New York, Old England (oh, it’s New England) – thank you – and then to Quebec and Toronto.” I told him that was a very impressive tour and that I was from New England. Then he left, and I got sandwich and it was in fact very good. And when I told Dr. Serembus about the place, he told me that they catch all that fish in the morning to serve in the afternoon!
After I finished my absolutely delicious fish sandwich, I read for a while longer by the river, and headed back to the apartment. I decided that Wiek reminded me of Massachusetts on the water, and it made me think of the movie Practical Magic (which is one of my favorite movies!) because it takes place in Massachusetts. So when I got back the apartment, I watched that movie, and at 6, the three of us joined Dr. Serembus for a spargel (sh-pargle) dinner. Spargle is white asparagus, and it is in season while we are here, which means that almost every restaurant and every road-side stand has spargle. The Germans are crazy about spargle. So I ordered schnitzel (breaded pork) und spargle mit potatoes (I don’t know what the word for potatoes is in German…). They gave me 6 whole stalks of spargle with hollandaise sauce on it! Not to mention a full pork chop and about 5 small potatoes (boiled and cut in half). The spargle I found to be rather taste-less, so I ate two stalks, and all the meat and potatoes, but sadly had to send 4 whole stalks of white asparagus back with a full stomach.
Once dinner was over, the three of us moved on to Jenny’s house for Germany’s Next Top Model, and gorged ourselves on chocolate and chips for the next two and a half hours (the length of the show). And while all of this was going on, we could hear music coming from down by the river (Jenny lives quite close to the river), so after the show we went to check it out. It was a pirate festival! There were people dressed up and sword fight games, and places to take your pictures with your face on a wench’s body, and there was a bonfire and for some strange reason, two people fighting each other with pool noodles, attempting to knock the other one off the “plank”. There was even a band playing on a sailboat docked at the edge of the river. So we sat around there and danced to the music until about midnight (the sun doesn’t fully set here until after 11 at night!). It was a really great day.
This morning I went to my Introducing Canada class, and then ate another good fish sandwich outside at a café for lunch, biked to the botanical gardens and hung out there for a while, and then read the afternoon away on a towel outside our apartment building. I am now quite red. Summer has come at last to Greifswald! So I’ll leave you now with a Gute Nacht!