These are all over the city. They’re owned by many of the stores and it’s usually decorated to correspond to each shop. Sometimes they’re kind of cool looking.
Other times…more creepy.
I pass this one on the way to the grocery story and it gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Countries: 4 (5, if you include next week’s flight connection in Ireland for 1.5 hours)
Airports: 15
Train stations: oh good golly, at least 20 to 25.
Missed trains: 1
Times I’ve gotten off at the wrong stop: 4 (way to go, Einstein)
Cities: 18
Churches & cathedrals: 11
Museums: 10
Photographs: 1873 (and Paris and London are yet to come)
Classes: 7…scratch that… 6
Falls off the bike: 1
Weight: classified
Jars of Nutella: 3
Jars of peanut butter: 2 (that must be a world record for me)
Pretzels consumed: too many to count
Scoops of gelato: not enough
Known German words: also not enough
Pairs of shoes on September 13th: 14
Paris of shoes by December 21st: I plead the fifth.
Euros remaining on phone card: 3.50. One week to go. I can do this.
I saw mountains for the first time ever today.
None of my photos do them justice. I kept bouncing from side to side of the train car to get the best view. Like the 8 year old I am.
This was the look on my face the whole time:
My roommates wanted me to have a real authentic German meal, so they cooked tonight. Spaetzle with lentil soup and sausage.
Spaetzle batter. Eggs, flours, water and salt.
It’s poured into a sort of pasta maker that squeezes it through a strainer into boiling water to create the eggy noodles. Kind of like a spritz cookie press. They let me try it a few times. And yes, it IS really satisfying to do. Like pressing toothpaste out of the tube with a rolling pin.
The spaetzle are scooped out of the boiling water and put in warm water to help them set.
I think they referred to these as sausages, but let’s be honest. They’re totally hot dogs.
Spaetzle with lentil soup/stew with bacon bits and a hot dog. Hello German cuisine. Protein and carbs. It was pretty good. Interesting, but good. In general, German food is a bit bland. But it was so nice of my roommates to make this for me and I so appreciated it.
So, in a panic of “oh my gosh there’s still so much I haven’t seen!” I booked tickets to see:
Neuschwanstein Castle on Tuesday. I’ll spend the majority of the day on the train and probably really screw up my finals in the process, but I REGRET NOTHING. And I mustn’t forget my tiara.
Ulm on Wednesday (if my teacher lets me out of class early). It’s the birthplace of Einstein, has the tallest church steeple in the world, and was home to the successor to the Bauhaus school and lots of nerdy design history figures. Yay design.
On Thursday after my last class I’ll return to Cologne (or Köln) to see friends and lug my suitcases that much closer to the final airport. It will be nice to these friends again. We’ll probably visit the Christmas market and hopefully the chocolate museum. My inner fat child is so excited.
On Friday I fly from there to London (again) and Jamie’s coming too! If I knew how to do cartwheels of joy, I would. But I can’t. So I’ll just sit here and smile like an idiot. London! At Christmas time! With my best friend! We are SO going to Platform 9 3/4.
I’ll be abandoning Jamie on Sunday afternoon to spend a whopping 35 hours in Paris. Not gonna lie. I’m a little terrified of the snobby French. But the Louvre is calling my name. Must…answer…
From there it’s back to Cologne early, early, SO early Tuesday morning. And Wednesday I fly out of Duesseldorf to Columbus. Whew…it’s official. I’m nuts.
So it’s sort of my finals week. It’s very strange, because students here are only just beginning to ramp up on their projects. I heard the HfG (that’s the school’s initials) unofficial model is “Relax now, freak out later.” Boy, oh boy is that true. It’s week ten and you can feel the building of that tension in the air and see the anxiety slowly creeping into everyone’s faces.
But they’ve got nothin’ on me. What others have nearly six weeks left to finish, I have five days.
Excuse me. I have to go hyperventilate now.
My professor this week: Yeah, since you’re leaving early, I really should have had you start on this part of the project right away instead of last week.
Me: *arched eyebrow of annoyance/judgment*
Gee…thanks….
Did I ever mention the mascots of sorts of Schwaebisch Gmuend is a unicorn? Welcome to my fairy tale life.
But this is the logo that’s on everything.
Saturday, November 26th. Bari, Day 2
After breakfast, Jamie, Ezio and I drive out to Polignano (Pull-in-nyan-oh — my attempt at describing Italian pronunciation), a town about fifteen minutes outside of Bari.
It is a very quiet place. Full of little old houses and apartments made of jaggedy white stone smoothed from years of being beaten by the wind and water, all stacked and squashed one on top of the other right up to the very edge of the sea. It must be a glorious place to see on a bright, clear day, but the gray, tranquil shade cast from the wind and clouds is just what my soul needs.
Hoping for a good day’s catch.
I play unofficial photographer for Jamie and Ezio.
And Jamie plays unofficial photographer for me. I’m not a huge fan of being photographed, but after traveling alone so long, it’s nice to finally be in some of my scenic pictures.
Even though I’m a terrible model. I keep turning right when Jamie is sneaking a picture. So I try to pose and act all natural. Maybe Tyra Banks is on to something. Modeling is hard! Still working on the whole ‘smiling with your eyes’ thing.
I do love this photo. It’s my ‘American girl in Europe’ shot. And I feel so chic. I think it’s the red gloves.
The town has a cove leading out to the sea. This is taken from the bridge, and behind me are stairs down to the water’s edge. I’m hope there’s buried treasure down there. I could really use the help with school.
Everything is white. Except for this little corner. A surprising pop of color.
Sweethearts buy a lock, carve their initials in it, clap it onto the overlook, then throw the key into the ocean. As long as the key is never found, their love will last forever.
After Polignano, we go back home to rest before leaving for church. It is nice to finally meet a lot of Jamie’s friends and experience this kind of community after being without it for so long, even though my Italian fails me miserably in conversation. But the speaker that evening is from Mexico, and even thought he gives the message in Italian, it is slower than a native speaker. I can’t catch everything he says, but my limited grasp of the language temporarily pulls through and I manage to understand the key points of the message.
We drive out to Torre a Mare, another little town inside Bari, for pizza and gelato with several people from church. Seven of us cram around a little table in a little pizzeria, and while I don’t understand most of what they say (lordy, they talk fast!) I still have a blast. Just being in community where you can tell everyone really knows and cares for each other is so refreshing.
I’m sad to leave the next day. Probably because returning to Germany means back to school and work instead of frolicking around cities perched on the ocean with your best friend with gelato in hand. Oh gelato, how I will miss you. Back to pretzels and schnitzel for me!
…after watching the most recent episode of Once Upon a Time.
Yup. Pretty much sums it up.
(Source: perfectpsychopath)
