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.
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.
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment