Monopoly is stupid

I got PWNED at Monopoly. We played last week and it was a fairly lengthy game and we all were at one point doing pretty well. The game lasted a good couple hours and much fun was had. Thursday night rolls around and we decide to all play again at Mike's place and I got steamrolled. I had only 3 property, no money, and landed on every hotel I could find. This may seem silly, but when you've recently played the game, suddenly it becomes a lot more serious. Just had to vent.

Back to Europe stuff. Germany is the razzmatazz. The weather has been awesome. Only one day of rain in the last two weeks (and it was barely drizzling) and it has been between the mid 40s and high 60s. WOOOOO. I guess after 4 and a half years of enjoying Pittsburgh's never-ending winters and Houston's sauna-esque humidity in the summers, it was about time I got to experience a nice moderate climate. Running here is amazing. I suppose it helps that the scenery is pretty nice too.

Last week was pretty uneventful (save for the Monopoly, but lets forget about that). Friday was the big night out for the weekend. My entire class along with two of Mike's Tunisian flatmates went out to a German brewery. Heres a picture of most of us:

Quite an international bunch with 4 continents and 8 countries represented.

Much fun was had as we all spoke in German only. This was interesting at times since some of us are at varying levels of speak ability. Either was fun was had. Several of us topped off the night with a Doner Kebab. What is that you ask? Probably one of the most amazing things ever created. I had heard of it before but I never experienced it until now. It is perfect. It is sliced spit rotated/cooked lamb meat inside of a pita with lettuce tomato onions cabbage and a yogurt sauce. It is everything you want and more. This is what it looks like

It is huge in Europe but even more so in Germany due to the large population of Turks living here. I simply can't get enough of this stuff and neither can the locals. It is easier to find a Doner Kebab vendor here than to find a Starbucks in Manhattan. It it the Tacos al Pastor of this continent. I would move here for it.

Saturday Nelsen, Yoorina (a Korean girl in our class), Mike, and I decide to go to Dilsberg. It's a tiny town situated on top of a mountain and about a 30 minute drive away. We stop at a local grocery, assemble picnic supplies and go on our way. The entire way there we listen to a band called Vitralic (some form of techno). The scenery on the way was pretty. We drove along the Neckar River and saw all the small picturesque towns along the way. Heres a picture from above:

Tiny tiny village.

It was quite a vertical climb up but we finally got there and were able to see the entire Rhine-Neckar valley from the top of the castle. It was pretty cool.

We picnic'd out and then an older gentleman with a big playful dog joined us and we got to play with it. He was nice and we were able to speak enough broken German to make small talk. Right now is kind of the off-season for tourism and Dilsberg isn't a huge attraction so we were the only people there. We ended up just chilling there for about two hours before walking around and exploring the castle. Yoorina took this picture of me without me knowing:

Weee

All of us were fairly exhausted afterwards and called it a night. Sunday was a normal relaxing day of doing homework and walking around in the sun. I learned a German nursery rhyme today and was pretty proud of myself. Will try to update with pictures soon.

Monday

I think I'm starting to realize why I like Heidelberg so much. Before I explain, let me just show you this:

This is Heidelberg's flag. Which is not unlike this flag:

Pittsburgh's flag.

While the stripes might be different and Pittsburgh doesn't have some crown-wearing lion on its flag, the color scheme is enough for me to like it. Black and Yellow! Which brings me to my next point/short story.

As I mentioned in my last post, Thursday was St. Patrick's Day and of course we had to go to the Irish bar at the very least to just see the craziness. Sure enough it was packed with people wearing green hats and green shirts drinking green beer with green shamrocks etc. I look around and I notice some familiar memorabilia. A Terrible Towel. A "Steeler's Nation" street sign replica. A Steelers helmet. I realized that this bar was in fact a Steeler's bar! Black and yellow stuff everywhere. It made me so happy. I ended up only staying for a little while, but it was still pretty fun and I got to experience the German take on an Irish holiday.

Last point about the whole Pittsburgh thing, I promise. Anyone from Pittsburgh, when asked to explain the geography, will tell you that it is a medium sized city placed on three rivers with a mountain to the south of the rivers. Heidelberg is a German medium sized city with a river running through it and has a mountain on the southern side of the river. CRAZY!!!

Anyways! This weekend was fun. Friday we all took it easy. Played some German Monopoly and had a beer or two. In addition to being German, it was also a "classic" version so it was double awesome. I was destroying but then paid way too much for a property and ended up losing to Mike. Pics below of board:

Huge pics.

Someone pointed out that I seem to never post any pictures with me in them (or anyone else for that matter). So heres the thing. I have a camera but it requires some outdated USB cord to connect to my laptop and it don't work. Fortunately, Mike has the exact same camera cord that I need and so I will soon be uploading the pictures I done taken. So for all the haters who be saying PICS OR GTFO!!! I will have them soon.

John F. Kennedy once said "Ich bin ein Berliner." The common myth is that this means I am a jelly doughnut. Indeed there is a common German breakfast pastry called a Berliner. And it is delicious. You can get 3 of them for about a Euro and a half and they're everywhere. I had one Saturday and it was pretty tubular. Also on the list of delicious German breads is something I had today called an "Amerikaner". This is what it looks like

It looks and tastes better in real life. I promise.

If you think the name is unusually similar to "American", it is because it actually means American. I don't think I've seen this type of pastry in many coffee shops in America and it tastes nothing like an American so I have no idea why it is called that. So today I ate an American. This adds to the list of other German food/drink items with random countries name. For example when you mix wine with sparkling water, it is called a Korean. Or adding beer with certain types of soda is called a Russian. It all seems arbitrary but I'm sure there is some kind of reason (racist? probably not) for all of this.

Lastly, last night we had a new homestay guest move in. Her name is Yuka and she comes from Tokyo. She is extremely polite and will almost always respond to anything you say by smiling and/or giggling. She speaks about 3 words of German which is probably why she is here learning it. Although she says she understands some English, I am fairly certain she doesn't but thats okay because I speak probably just as much Japanese.

This weekend is Mike's last one here so we're probably going to take a day trip to one of the nearby small-town-with-picturesque-scenery-and-gigantic-castle places.

Hope all is well in the states!!!

-Smabs

Weekend, Ghetto Jager Bombs, and of course the Castle

So first things first, lets do a quick review of two basic concepts. The first and easier concept is that Europeans like electronic music. And when I say like, I mean love. Way more than we do in the states. It all sounds the same to me, but between house, techno, elektronica, drum and bass, and the other hundred names for the same thing, they can't get enough of it. I'll elaborate on this later.

Second, a Jagerbomb is when you mix Jager:

Delicious.

With RedBull:

Also delicious.

Most anyone who has been in college/has watched the "My New Haircut" video knows this, but I figured I'd explain for anyone who may not be familiar (Mom <3).>

Anyways, its Friday evening and I'm with Nelsen, Anton, and good ole Mike. We're planning our evening and Nelsen mentions a techno dance party over in the University area. Mike and Anton are very excited about the idea and I'm curious to go to my first techno party so everyone's happy. We decide to have a few beers before going over in Mike's room and go to the local Supermarkt to purchase said materials. While there we see Jagermeister (see above) and we think "Oh cool thats right. Jagermeister is German." Then we look next to the bottles and see this:

Jager's Cheap 2nd cousin

Its basically the same thing, but about half the price. We think it's funny, but continue to make our way to the beverage section. We pass the cokes and juice but then find an energy drink that none of us had ever heard of before. The wonderful, shameless, Redbull copycat, Rhino's energy drink:

Look familiar?

We find this hilarious and decide that we are doing Jagerbombs. Of course, instead of the normal ingredients, we spend about $20 (14 Euros :-/) less and decide to have what we call "Rhino Missiles". It tastes exactly the same and has just as awesome, if not better, of a name.

We have a few and walk over to the other side of the main street in Heidelberg where the Techo dance party concert bananza is. (I honestly don't know what you call it). It was pretty fun, but it definitely took a little bit for me to figure out how it works. In American clubs, it is basically just a bunch of people in nice clothes grinding on each other and you can't hear anything. This was nice though because people just wear t-shirts or normal clothes and theres a little bit more space (still can't hear anything though besides this :40 in). Mike and Nelsen were there til 6am while Anton and I were "lame" and went home at 4am. Overall, I would say techno concert dance things are pretty cool and I would do it again.

The next day we decided to go see the infamous castle. It was the bomb dot com for me. For Anton, he didn't seem to be as excited since I guess castles are as common as grocery stores or something. Either way, all four of us went but were taken off guard when we learned that Heidelberg castle is home to one of the worlds largest wine barrels:

A picture I drew/didn't steal from google. (To scale)

The friggin thing is gigantic. We had a great time taking stupid pictures that I'm sure 1 in 3 tourists take. Regardless, it was cool. Being higher up on the mountain, it allowed us to take some sweet scenic shots and walk around the gardens in the surrounding area. See the background image for this blog? Basically we saw that.

I feel like this post has a lot of booze related topics, but I swear that I'm doing more here than just "sampling the local wares". Speaking of which! Saturday evening we found a brew pub that made their own beers and I must say they were tasty. We each got a liter of beer which are the ones you always see pictures of when people show you pictures from Germany:

Go Germany.

We chilled there for awhile, grabbed a drink at some mega trendy cocktail joint and then just practiced German for a good 4 hours. Woo!

So the weekend was pretty fun and so far this week has gone by pretty fast. Been pretty good at sticking to my routine of morning classes, afternoon homework/speaking practice with Nelsen and Mike, working out and sleep. Today is St. Patricks day so who knows what to expect for celebrations in Germany. Hopefully a lot of green.

Lastly, food. Food is good. Germans love carbs. I think they have bakeries here like we have Starbucks back home. Literally, you can't walk more than 2 minutes in any direction without finding a bakery. And not only are there tons of bakeries, but more importantly, they have some beautiful looking pastries.

Awww yeaaahh.

It has been really hard not to gorge myself on pounds of this stuff. Luckily I've been too busy eating my weight in pork products.

Thats whats new. Will try to update again soon. I leave you with the German version of coke. It has the same volume as normal coke cans but it taller and skinnier.

Shoop da woop

Schmeidelberg

Hallo!

So it's been about a week since I last posted on this and a lot has happened. To start off, I arrived in Heidelberg Sunday afternoon. I was somewhat lost at first, but the city is actually pretty small (about 140,000 people), and easy to figure out. Here is a map of where I live/go to school/CASTLE!!!11one!!:

My parents, Frau and Herr Schwarzer, are the typical cliche German old couple. Honestly, if I was making a cartoon with German stereotypical people, it would be this family. They are extremely happy, polite, and organized people. Everything has a label/directions on it. I was kind of nervous at first since Germans aren't known for being warm loving people, but so far it has been great. They don't speak English with me, which is perfect since I'm trying to learn German, and they are always talking and helping me practice. I also live with a guy from Belgian named Anton. He is really cool and speaks pretty good German (and Flemish, French, and English). He goes to a different language school than me, but we leave at the same time in the mornings.

Mein Haus:

"Heidelberg is a pretty city. It was untouched during the wars that dominated the first half of the century and has retained much of its charm making it quite picturesque." The Old Bridge and Castle (Schloss) overlook much of the scenery that I see when I go to school. I take a 10 minute tram ride (see below), from my house to the Aldstadt (Old City) where my school is located.

About 1 in 5 people in Heidelberg are students and it has a lot of international students, including myself I guess. My class at the school is one of the beginner classes and has 9 students. There is a girl from Israel, two Korean girls, a lady from Poland, a Bulgarian dude, a Spanish girl, a British boy, and a Portuguese/Swiss man. The last two are my friends Mike and Nelsen. We have class from nine til a little bit after noon and then the three of us grab a beer or coffee and practice speaking German for about 2 hours and the nearby Heidelberg University student union. We all started this week and both of them just moved to Germany to eventually live with their German girlfriends. Mike only has 4 weeks before he goes up to Hamburg to try and find a job while living with his girlfriend so he has a pretty big incentive to learn. The same pretty much goes for Nelsen. I felt like the odd one out on this one, but I'll just pretend that Ashtyn only speaks German and I need to learn it to prove my love (Hemendinger Ja?).

Food :D I like food. That being said, German cuisine is definitely not Mexican food. I was lucky in Mexico in that I ate some of the best stuff produced on this planet with a huge variety of flavors. German food doesn't quite fill out the spectrum, but that doesn't mean that it isn't good. A lot of potato based stuff (pancakes, fries, etc.) and of course, sausage. I've already eaten several different versions of Wurst and the stuff is actually pretty tasty. It is all good, but what I've really fallen in love with, are the desserts. There are like 800 bakeries per square mile (1.6 km?) here and they make everything look amazing and fresh. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyways), I've had my share of strudel. Its friggin amazing.

Also, BEER. Germany has invented so many of the beers that we enjoy to this day. They excel particularly in making Weizens. Also, they don't use the shorter squattier glasses like in the US, but instead Pilsner glasses which make it look even more beautiful. :

I love Germany.

So basically, I got a pretty good schedule going on of class, speaking practice, working out, dinner, and the occasional beer. I've been absorbing the language like a sponge at every chance I have. Tomorrow my friends and I are going to tour the Schloss and see all the great sites that Heidelberg has to offer. Hopefully I'll be able to put up more pictures soon. Until then, Tschuss!

Frankfurt part II

I don't plan on updating this thing everyday, but right now I have time and energy so I figured I might as well.

Jet lag sucks. A lot. I wandered around the old part of Frankfurt yesterday for a couple hours. Its a pretty cool city and since the weather was sunny, there were plenty of places to sit and have a Kaffee. I walked back to my room and passed out at 5pm. Woke up at midnight wide awake. Watched Freakazoid! for an hour (left the DVD in my laptop apparently):

This is the best show ever made.

Anyways, so I managed to fall back to sleep, but only for a few hours. At about 5am, my body finally declared that it was done sleeping. Of course to me it felt like 10pm at night so I'm still all kinds of confused. I got up and saw that the sun was soon to be creeping up so I went running. Surrounding the old part of town "Altstadt" is a strip of pedestrian park space. Its really nice considering its in the middle of a city as a nice little 5 mile loop if you connect on the bridges that cross the rivers. Its really pretty in the morning.

I ran on this :)

Of course the loop is best traversed if you know your way around...which I do not. I was lost for what felt like an eternity. Ended up at the zoo. Yay for adventures. Here is a map of the route I did (in red) with the extra part I did while panicked and lost (in green).

Additionally, since it was so early and right now is not the tourist season, much of the run seemed as though I was running through the set of the film 28 Days Later. Literally went through entire plazas and stuff without seeing a soul.

Got back to the hostel at around 8 in the morning when the all you can eat breakfast tends to pick up. Ended up meeting three guys from Ecuador who were passing through on their way to Mainz for the German version of Mardi Gras. I had no idea that it even existed. I won't be seeing too much of it unfortunately since it begins the day after I get into Heidelberg (tomorrow?).

In other news, I am once again exhausted (damn you messed up sleep schedule). With my room now empty (my roommates peaced out), I am gonna take an awesome nap on the bottom bunk. AWWWw YEEEAAAHHH. Seriously though, when you're a full-sized man getting on top of one of these tiny beds, you gotta hope the person below is cool with their potential impending doom.

Lastly, I just found out that Salvador Dali's lobster phone (and other art) is here in Frankfurt. Nearly lost it. What a great day and it isn't even half over. Tomorrow I head out to Heidelberg to meet Frau and Heir Schwarzer. With that, I leave you with this lovely art courtesy of Dali.

Frankfurt!

To start things off, here is a picture of Frankfurt:

I'm pretty confused right now with regard to time. I slept about 3 hours on the flight. Arrived here at 11:45 am local time, but it felt like 4:45am for me. It is super sunny yet still about 30 degrees (Fahrenheit :/)

Not knowing German is hard. I wandered aimlessly around the airport looking for signs for the regional train. Paid for a ticket and ended up never using it during my ride to the city. How is it that when you live somewhere, public transit seems so easy, but when you go somewhere else it's like reading hieroglyphics. Either way, I made it to the main train station and found a pretty chill hostel not too far from the center of of the city. Also, it's in the red light district. You don't really feel it though.

I share a room with 5 other people who are all Chinese. I don't speak mandarin and they don't speak English and none of us know German. I think charades will be our common means of communication. They seem very nice. There is a pretty diverse group of young people living here. I've already met a Swedish girl, a Chilean guy, and a group of Russians. The hostel is really cool and has a big lounge with a cafe/bar in it. The reception desk is really more of a bar with a computer. They also host social activities and tours every day so I think I got more than my money's worth. Tonight is trivia night and since I'm a new visitor, they said I'll get a free drink if I attend. If I have one drop I'll probably pass out so we'll see how that goes. I wanna go run around town now. I'll try to post more pictures in the future. Tschuss!