recap of a life unterwegs

As promised, my fifteen favorite photos I haven't posted yet and:


a map of all the places I went (excluding the US). In dark green are the countries I went to over the semester, in red are the specific cities, and in brown are the countries I've been to before.


Constance, March
gravestone of a Jewish soldier from WWI who died fürs Vaterland (for the fatherland)
ironic, seeing as what would happen a few years later


Berlin, April
Jewish memorial


Berlin, April
Berlin Wall, East Side Gallery


Moscow, April
That disgusting statue of Peter the Great towers over Christ the Savior, one of the most beautiful churches ever.


Cairo, May
An odd statue stands in front of skyscrapers. No one knows what the statue means anymore, tho, as the lettering at its base was rubbed off.


Cairo, May
Red sails on the Nile stand out in the smoggy evening.


Luxor, May
statue of a pharaoh towards sunset


Radolfzell, May
Birds fly over the Naturschutzgebiet on Lake Constance.


Augsburg, June
sea green and yellow light


Augsburg, June
near the entrance to an art museum


Montreux (Switzerland), June
A cruise boat crosses Lake Geneva in front of the Alps.


Zurich, June
The captains of Europe's EM 2008 teams dwarf visitors in the Hauptbahnhof.


Oslo, June
Vigeland


Dubrovnik (Croatia), July
Where's the Cheshire cat?


Constance, July
I pose for the first and only time with those weird blue statues in front of the university.

So in closing, thank you for reading, thank you for all of your comments, and I hope you enjoyed. I know I did ;)

ein Ende für die Klausurzeit, Gott sei Dank

Hello Leute! I haven't done much the last week other than write papers and study for exams. Luckily, however, the weather up until yesterday was also has been kind of dreary. Most of last week it rained and was in the low 70s, so I didn't have to look out the window and say to myself, "Why aren't I at the beach?"


rainy day in the natural lands

Over the weekend I went to a play on Friday (which was really bad) and to this music festival thing in Neuwerk with a bunch of German friends on Saturday. On Sunday I literally worked on a paper all day.

Then today I got my first grade back. I got a 2.3 in Russian, which is probably equivalent to a B+, but it was actually the highest grade in the class, so I'm thinking I did really well anyway. Plus that class was insanely hard, and I was one of the few (about 40% of the class) who didn't speak Russian at home with their family (most of my fellow students have Russian parents, you know).

Well, that's truthfully about all I have to say. Hope everyone's having fun at the family reunion, and for those of you who aren't at the reunion (like me), I hope you're having fun, too.

Oh, and Cody's coming in less than 3 days!

Fourth of July and Intestine City

Sorry I haven't written in a while - my internet's been especially worthless recently. (I haven't had any connection for about the last four days now in Sonnenbühl Ost.)


A few days ago Chrissy, Denis and I used another coupon of ours to eat at a restaurant on the Rhine. We sat outside, and this was our view.


Then we took a walk along the Rhine and Lake Constance.


palm trees on Seestraße

Then for the Fourth most of us Americans (as well as Canadians, Brits, Azerbaijanis, etc.) met at Europahaus to have a "Grillfest" (the German term for a barbecue).


Yes, that's a Target bag - Kirsten brought it from the US!


friends from around the world

Then yesterday Chrissy, Kirsten and I went to Darmstadt, which is near Frankfurt. I chose the city for two reasons: for its interesting architecture and for its museum of world-famous specimens from the Messel Pit, a fossil bed nearby that is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.


The first thing we did was go to the Hessische Landesmuseum (well, actually, first we grabbed some crepes). Unfortunately the museum is closed until 2011. To imagine what I wanted to see there, you can check out these videos on YouTube of what life in Messel would have looked like (here, here, here).


After that disappointment we went to the Künstlerkolonie (Artists' colony), which was really cool. It's known for its unique architecture.


This is the Wedding Tower (Hochzeitsturm).


We took an elevator to the top, and we got this view. In the bottom right corner you can see the Russian Orthodox chapel that was given to the city by Tsar Nicholas II in honor of his wife, Alexandra, who was from Darmstadt.


Next up, we went to the Hundertwasserhaus (or Waldspirale), which is one of the oddest looking buildings ever. It is currently an appartment complex. It was built in 2000 by hippy/architect Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser ("Kingdom-of-Peace Rainy-Day Dark-and-Colorful Hundred-Waters") and was supposedly partly inspired by Russian Orthodox architecture (look at the onion domes).

At the Hundertwasserhaus we met this really nice man who drove us to the museum that supposedly had the displays from the Hessische Landesmuseum while that building was being redone.


It didn't. But it did have tons and tons of these old printing presses and stuff.

So that's a very brief update on my life until now. Last week I had my first final (German), this week I have my next two (Arabic and Russian), and then next week I have two papers due and my final in linguistics. Hopefully I'll have internet again soon so I'll be able to do research at home instead of here in the library - and so I'll be able to post to my blog more frequently!

Deutschland mit der Familie

I'm writing from Geneva! We spent the last few days with the Egenbergers in Augsburg, but first family photos from Constance, as promised:


To our left would have been the Alps if it hadn't been so cloudy…

After checking out my "sweet pad" as I call it, we decided to see something of a different kind of beauty: Insel Mainau.


my mom and my sister on the bridge to Mainau


on Mainau


My mom kept saying how much Teri would love Insel Mainau.

We went to Mainau in the evening, which turned out to be a stroke luck - there was hardly anyone on the island. And in the butterfly house, which is normally jam-packed, we were literally the only visitors.


Another cool thing about going in the evening was that a lot of animals were out and about. (I assume the normal crowds tend to scare them away.)

So sorry for that anachronistic tangent, but I promised photos. For recap: first off was Constance, then Colmar, and then Augsburg to visit the relatives. The second day we were in Augsburg, Hermann, Anita and Rolf gave us an amazing tour of the city.


cathedral


more Augsburg: Sts. Ulrich and Afra


Jesus vs Whore of Babylon at 10pm only on FOX!


near the city wall


Egenberger reunion! (Though not in the photo, we also visited Walter, who will be 90 in August!)

In summary, the visit in Augsburg was amazing! Anita, Hermann and Rolf are wonderful people and spectacular hosts - thank you so much yet again for the great time!

Glückspilz/kostenloses Wochenende!

So I really lucked out this weekend: I paid for just about nothing and still did tons of stuff!

My weekend started on Thursday (I don't have any real class on Friday - just tandem team). That night my March language course group got together at a beer garden on the harbor.


Here's my half of the table. (The guy next to me is Denis, my tandem partner.)


Our professor came, too. She is great. I gave her this drawing I did of her as a gift, and she loved it and kissed me on the cheek and kept thanking me. That was sweet. (I purposefully did it on notebook paper, because she always teased me about my doodling during class. She said once that she wanted me to make a booklet of all of my best doodles from class.)

On Saturday we Oles went to Sea Life Center (yes, that's its German name), which is an aquarium mainly for little kids – screaming little kids with microscopic attention spans. We got in for free with a coupon from the booklet that we got when we became residents.


What's a blog post without a photo of Chrissy doing something weird?


There was a cool tank with baby sharks and rays and the real mermaid's purses from which they "hatch."


And they had one of those tunnels you walk through with sharks and sea turtles and eels on all sides. I'm a sucker for those tunnels.

At the end there was this wall where kids stuck post-its answering the posed question "What do you wish for the future of the lake?" Here's my favorite response:

DAS GANS FILE DELFi NE GiBT. [sic]
(dass [es] ganz viele Delfine gibt. that [there] are lots of dolphins.)

After that we went to a free museum above Sea Life with taxidermied animals, which was also cool.


I love Constance.


Then we split up, and Kirsten and I went to Osiander Café to use another coupon (Gutschein) for free hot chocolate (heiße Schocki), which was perfect on a somewhat chilly day. (Don't worry, parents, it's already back to beautiful today!)

After that the two of us went to the Archäologisches Museum, which is free Saturdays. It has artifacts from all over Baden-Württemberg from the prehistoric up through about the 14th century.


Here are some trepanned skulls.


And here's a Carnival (Faschnacht) mask and part of a window from an old Gothic church.

Then yesterday six of us (one German and five foreigners) went to Kreuzlingen, our Swiss neighbor city, to watch Germany wallop Poland in the European Football Championships. While we were standing in line, some extremely nice woman offered us her tickets for free (they had cost her 11 franks, or about $11, a piece)! We lucked out so much! Plus she said there were only four tickets, but it turned out there were six (perfect)!


Deutschland schalala!

Tonight I'm going Shamrocks for their Monday special: delicious half-price hamburgers and €1 off a pitcher of beer! And better yet, my family is coming from the US to visit on Wednesday!

zurück durch Zürich - في ألمانيا ثانيةً

Yesterday I left Egypt :( But on the bright side, the internet is working in Ost (knock on wood)!

After the massive train ride back from Luxor, we had the whole day free in Cairo, so we went to the big souk/market (Khan el-Khalili) in town. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos, but it was enormous. And Brady, Sara and I picked you up a hookah (and it survived the flight)!

After that we had a dinner cruise on the Nile.


A friend (Akhmed) of one of the young guys from the hostel (also Akhmed) accompanied us on the ship. I had a lot of fun, even tho parts of it were really weird.


Entertainment included not only an S&M belly-dancer (complete with cane and black lingerie), but also this whirling dwarf/small person/midget/insert correct PC-term here.

Dinner was buffet style, and it rocked. Over dinner we talked with Akhmed, but his English wasn't good, so for the first and only time the entire trip in Egypt MY ARABIC CAME IN HANDY! Now if that isn't incentive enough to learn what the US Dep't of Defense ranks as one of the most difficult languages in the world!

After dinner Akhmed was supposed to drive us back to the hostel, but we decided instead to say we were "taking photos of the Nile," and Akhmed cruised us around downtown Cairo while blasting a mixture of American and Egyptian music, including the original Aicha (or watch my favorite verison)! - this made my night!

The next day (yesterday) all we had time to do was wander a bit more around our part of Cairo. Then we said our good-byes (Alex and Vera get to stay in Egypt for a while longer), and Sara and I headed to the airport. Three hours and fifty minutes after boarding our plane, we were in Zurich, where the two of us separated, and the quartet was down to one.

Back in Constance I was immediately confronted by the stark contrasts: It had apparently just rained, and everything was shiny, cool and fresh, compared to Cairo's dry, hot and dusty It was absolutely silent on my walk home except for the random chirping frog or songbird, the exact opposite of the insane level of noise near our hostel (honking, yelling, muezzins' calling to prayer).


snail on the sidewalk in Constance - Another difference is the pace of life ;)

While Egypt was quite possibly my favorite trip ever, it is good to be "home" …for now!