Typische Tourismus

I'm just going to say that taking time out of the day to write this blog is not as easy as I thought it would be.  Hopefully since classes start tomorrow, things will begin to die down a bit and I will actually feel like updating on a more frequent basis.  However, I dedicated myself to this... so I will continue!

I believe I left off on Wednesday, bringing us to Thursday morning... the first official day of the 2012 Dresden Study Abroad program (woohoo)!  Thankfully, the tour did not start until 11, so I was able to get some much needed rest before hand.  The entire group met at the tram stop (public transportation here is amazing!) after walking by the Russian Orthodox church which is located near the dorms.

After riding the train we got off by the City hall, which, unfortunately is under construction this year.  Dr. Spencer, who knows everything (his own words) told us that the most famous picture of the Dresden bombing was taken from on top of this building.

The statue is called "Goodness", which really, when shown in this picture is, for lack of better words, haunting!

Dr. Spencer pointed out a statue that is located on a traffic island in the middle of a busy road way.  "Why would someone build a statue, that is meant to be looked at, in a place where a person would have to take their life into their own hands to see it" (dr. Spencer).  The answer is, that when it was built, it was in the middle of the industrialized city.  "Don't trust the empty spaces."

Throughout this tour, it was chilling to think about how all of this, the entire city was rebuilt, fairly recently.  It is sad to think that none of the building are actually "the real thing"

Next we stopped at the Kreuzkirche (church of the cross) which was so named because it, apparently, houses a splinter of the original cross.  In Dr. Spencer's words "if you piece together all of the supposed splinters of the cross, you will have one damn big cross!"

When the church was rebuilt, it was chosen to remain fairly plain on the inside, as a memorial to the bombing.  

There are no actual ruins in Dresden, and no actual memorial.  The memorial is by rebuilding the buildings in a way that reminds the people of what happened here.

Next we stopped at the Altmarkt, where in a few months one of the most famous Christmas markets in Germany takes place.  It was also the sight where bodies were burnt after the bombing (cheery, I know).

Across from the Altmarkt is one of the only GDR style buildings that remains in the city.  Some want it to be torn down, but others want it to remain as a historic reminder.  The fate of the building, and famous mural on it's side is still in the air.

The next stop was the Zwinger, which was an open place (at the time, another wall was later built by Semper, who also built the opera house) where Augustus the strong held parties.  The bells that ring every hour are actually made of porcelain, which was discovered in Dresden and is still made here (European porcelain that is).

the porcelain bells

NExt we went to the Hofkirche (catholic church.)  Augustus the strong converted to catholicism in order to become king of Poland.  The majority of the population remained protestant, so when he built the Hofkirche, he also built the Frauenkirche for the protestant population.  Many people think that catholic churches are outlandishly decorated, etc.  However, this church is surprisingly elegantly plain, while the Frauenkirche is "teeth-cringinly outlandish"  This is because Augustus didn't want to make the protestant community upset with the church, and when the protestants decorated their church the decided to "go all out" with it!

famous Silberman oregon.

Sorry that I don't have any pics (yet) of the inside of the Frauenkirche.

The outside of the Frauenkirche is another building memorial to the bombing.  It wasn't actually destroyed by a bomb... rather it collapsed 2 days later because of the intense 1,500 degree heat.  The black bricks on the outside are stones from the original that they were able to save and they are placed in the exact spot they were on the original.

That afternoon we went to the City museum and learned more about the history of Dresden and the area.

That night, we went to the grocery store and just relaxed and hung out.

Friday morning we all met up and walked along the Elbe River 7ish kilometers to another part of the city.  

Along the way we saw the new bridge that is drawing a lot of contriversy...

As well as a 110 year old bridge, that is getting questionable in terms of safety.  This bridge called the Blue Wonder was the first (ever) suspension something or another bridge.  It was also the only bridge in Dresden that was not destroyed by Nazis in World War II, and therefore was the bridge the Soviets came over to Dresden in.

We took a cable train up a hill that provided us with a great view of the city.

Me and a few others had lunch at a Biergarten, where I had the best beer ever (or so far) Berliner Weisse.  It had apple flavoring in it, and was sehr gut!  

We visited an art gallery and then went back to the dorm to get ready for some Fußball (soccer). A group of us went to a South African bar called Capetown in the Altstadt.  It served fried Zebra and raw ostrich, but no one was brave enough to get it.  We all ordered a bit of food and a beer and I watched my first soccer game.  It was pretty easy to understand (after they explained to me that the people in yellow were  the refs and what off sides meant).  Every time Germany scored a goal everyone in the bar would scream jagermeister... and they would proceed to pass out free shots of jager.  Germany won the game 4-2 (but I stopped at one shot).

The next morning a few of us went to a flea market that is by the river.  After that we caught a bus to the section of the city we were at the day before to go to the Elbhangfest festival.  It was here I had my first experience with spaghetteis.  Spaghettieis is ice cream in the shape of noodles, with strawberry sauce and white chocolate crumbles.  It is the best ice cream (and I really don't like ice-cream) that I ever tasted.  After walking around the festival for a few hours (and getting a lot of sunburn) we went back to the dorm to just chill for the night.  A small group of us went to the Neustadt to explore for an hour or two.

Sunday morning a group of us walked again through the tour we took on Wednesday with Dr. Spencer, in order to take some pictures and enjoy the view at a nice leisurely pace (that man walks fast!)  After a nice break at Starbucks, we went back to the dorm and had a nice relaxing day before classes start.

Now it is 15 minutes before I have to leave for my first class.  *sigh* why couldn't this just be 8 weeks of exploring and touring?  Oh well, I guess we have to learn something.  Maybe I will feel more comfortable using my German after this...
or maybe not.

Reisen und Jetlag

I made it to Germany at last! After a full day of travel, my feet are finally firmly planted on the ground; At least for the next eight weeks.  My three flights went fairly well, and my baggage arrived with me (phew!) I believe this trip may have gotten me over my fear of flying, but we will have to see how I am feeling when it comes time to go home.  The flight from Newark to Dusseldorf was a total of 7 hours, but it felt more along the lines of 14 hours.  At least the plane was fairly big, so you were not able to feel every bump that you do in the smaller planes.  The plane had two seats on each end and five in the center.  Each seat had an individual tv with different movies, tv episodes, and music you could watch  I was lucky enough to get a window seat, and a nice german lady sat in the seat next to me.  Eventually, we got to talking and she told me about a lot of different customs that Germany has compared to the United States.  She told me that I should not be afraid to mess up when speaking German, because a good majority of the people are just happy that we are attempting to learn their language at all.  She told me that the bread in America is awful compared to das Brot in Germany, and that everything in America is much more expensive than in Germany.  I did not catch the lady's name, but she told me a lot about German culture and helped me get more comfortable with the fact that I will be a a whole new world for the next two months.  When we landed in Dusseldorf she turned to me and said 'Welcome to Germany, you're going to love it here.'  In total, I probably got less than an hour of sleep on that 7 hour flight.

Once landing, we had less than 45 minutes to go through border control, which actually went surprisingly fast, and find our gate for the next flight to our final destination, Dresden.  We made it in time, and this next flight we had to take a small bus and load the plane from steps outside of the airport. Everyone else on the flight were business professionals and were dressed in suits or dresses... needless to say I felt very under dressed!  After the hour flight, we finally made it to the place where I will call home for the next eight weeks.  Thankfully, when arriving at baggage claim I immediately saw my luggage.  Now I don't have to worry about flying anymore; at least for now.

 This is the plane from Newark to DUsseldorf

 Individual TV

Plane from Dusseldorf to Dresden

From the airport we took a tram to our hostel, Mezcalero.  It was about 7am at this point, and we were not able to get into our room until 2:00 that afternoon. Luckily we were able to drop our luggage off.  So we spent 7 hours walking around the Neustadt area of Dresden, which is a very artistic place.  By 11:00 all we wanted to do was sleep, and we were so tired of walking around aimlessly.  I imagine that we probably looked a bit ridiculous sitting on the edge of a fountain with our head in our hands, but I was so tired I really didn't care.  While wondering around aimlessly, a lady asked us for directions.  We told her that we did not speak any German, but it was kind of nice to know that we didn't look too much like lost Amerikans.  A while later we saw her again and she talked to us in English.  She said she is giving a lecture at some conference about her poetry.  She said she lived in Lexington Kentucky for 6 months to teach a poetry class.  When we got back to our room, we googled her and found she is a pretty well known poet in this area!  Within the first few hours in Dresden we met someone famous!  Finding lunch was difficult because we were so tired that we were getting so annoyed with people talking in German that we didn't want to have to deal with it.  We finally ate at a Bio place that sells organic food.  I got a spinach pizza type thing and it was not good at all!  After a few more hours of aimlessly wondering around, we got to our room and took a much needed nap.  We woke up at about 5:00, took showers and decided to find a place for supper.

 The Room at Mezcalero

  We walked down a street that was crowded with food shops and people watching the England and Ukraine soccer game.  The sidewalks in this area of Dresden are very uneven and I swear I am going to trip and kill myself.  Also, it is legal to drink on the street and the ground is covered with bottle caps and broken bottles.  But, the Neustadt area is where artists, punks, hippies and students tend to live.  We ate at a food stand, and I got mushroom pizza.  The crust was amazing.  I'm starting to believe that the bread is better here!  

On our way back to the dorm we stooped at Kunsthoff passage, a place where there is art everywhere, even on the houses.

I called it a night at about 10:00, I went to sleep fairly easy, but when I woke up to a storm at about 3:00 am, I found it difficult to get back to sleep.  We woke up around 9 and went to breakfast at the hostel.  It consisted of Coffee (delicious and strong, just the way I like it), cold meat cuts, cheese, and bread.  We then took a tram to our dorm.  During the ride I got my first view of historic Dresden, the city view that is in all the pictures.  It is easily one of the most beautiful cities I have ever saw!

Below are the pictures of my room... home for the next eight weeks!

Bathroom

My individual room

shared kitchen

view from My window

My room!

Got to the room, which are much nicer than those at Ohio State, unpacked and just rested.  After a while, Becca and I decided to try to find a grocery store to buy some food.  We eventually met up with our other roommate Erin, and walked to Rewe, a well known grocery store.  Here I bought my first German Beer!

The bottle is much bigger than those in the Us and it cost... 69 cents!  Surprisingly, the beer was very good!  After talking with people for a few hours, I retired to my room where I am blogging now.  I am going to read some of the information for the walking tour of historic Dresden tomorrow and call it a night.

I hope that eventually I will be able to write a more *informed* blog; not just a step by step of what has happened, but at the moment I don't care because I am tired! Gute Nacht!

Eine Woche zu gehen!

In one week I will be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to Dresden, Germany, where I will be spending 8 weeks taking classes to learn the German language and culture. As I begin to get everything ready for my travels, I am beginning to think that when I signed up for this in February I forgot to take a few important things into consideration...p

1) I have a completely irrational fear of flying. I have flown a few times before, and even though I know that logically it is one of the safest modes of transportation, I hate flying with a passion. This trip is going to be the longest flight I have ever been on, and there are 2 layovers (which means taking off and landing 3 times just to get to Dresden). I really should have took into consideration the fact that traveling half-way across the world would reacquire some airplane time before agreeing to this.

2) I have never been away from home for 8 weeks! Since I go to college so close to home, I tend to come home often. I think the longest I've been away from home is 4 or 5 weeks. I know I will miss my family, and more importantly my puppy! I also know that I will not be able to call home as much as I am used to.

3) I feel like I hardly know any German. I am going to a country to learn a language that I knew next to nothing of at the beginning of this year. I know to learn a language efficiently, studying in a country that speaks that language is the best way to pick it up. However, I have only taken 2 quarters of German so far, and even though it is expected for us to make mistakes while speaking, I don't want to look like a complete fool!

4) I am a poor college student: how am I going to go to Germany and not come back completely broke?

Despite these concerns I have, the fact that I am going to Germany, which has been at the top of my travel list for a long time, makes the concerns seem like nothing. I know I will have experiences of a lifetime and will learn much more than I could just sitting in a classroom in Columbus. I hope to make new friends and learn a little more about myself and who I am. Maybe it will take me traveling across the world for me to figure out what direction my life is heading in?

I don't know how often I will be able to update this, seeing as I will have classes to go to and homework to do. Hopefully I will be able to take the time to update at least twice a week. Warning: I tend to take many random pictures! Hopefully I will be able to explain some of the history and stories behind the pictures here so that when looking through my pictures on Facebook you don't see just a picture of a tree (Ecuador!)

One week to go! I am getting a bit nervous, but mostly excited for all the opportunities that lie ahead for me.

See you in a week!

Me and my puppy Maddie!