Burgen, Beer, and Bratwurst

First of all, allow me to apologize to those of you who have been badgering me to update this.  I’ve been slacking, but in my defense, I let you know what to expect in my first post.

Last Saturday, the 18^th, the international office here at WHU was kind enough to plan (and pay for) a day-long regional tour for us.  We started off the day at Marksburg Castle, which is somewhat redundant because Burg means castle.  I digress.  Marksburg was built in the 12^th century and passed through ownership by several families before being purchased and restored by the German Castle Association.  It’s pretty close to me, just down the Rhine a bit.

Bonus: The castle goat.  Sadly, his brother died from people feeding him human food. The sign on his pen said so.

After the castle, we went to Lahnstein Brewery in…Lahnstein.  We got a tour of the brewery and had a beer tasting.  Shockingly, I tasted every single beer that was put in front of me.  There was even one that I didn’t despise.  The baby steps continue.  Part of the brewery was a powder tower from the old city wall, built in the early 1400s.  The tower has somehow managed to survive every war to date, and we got to explore the inside of it and climb to the top.

 Bonus: Steve Jobs guided our beer tasting.

View from the Powder Tower. Another castle lit up to the left.

Our final stop of the trip was a traditional German restaurant, the name of which escapes me because I was ravenous at that point.  We had left for the tour around 1:00pm and walked around with no chance to eat all day.   Shortly before the food came out, the waiters were bringing around what appeared to be loaves of bread to the tables.  My table banded together and tried to flag down every waiter who came out holding one, begging to be the next group.   We finally received ours and encouraged Walt, the other IU student here, to begin divvying it up.  He took his fork and knife and began to saw.  Nothing happened.  We all sat there salivating and watching him fruitlessly trying to cut through for far longer than I would like to admit before all coming to the same realization: It wasn’t bread.

It was a warm brick.  We were trying to slice and eat a brick.  I’d like to think our insane hunger drove us to make the mistake, but in reality, I think we all just had a blonde moment.   The waiters’ looks of bewilderment as we begged them to be the next brick recipients suddenly made much more sense.     When the food finally came out at 7:30, people rejoiced.  Not just in a figurative sense; there was cheering, laughing, hands in the air, the works.  The other patrons thought we had lost our minds, I’m sure, though several had witnessed the brick incident and had probably decided that long before.  The food was served to each table on a large platter like this:

Between the 7 of us at my table, this is what the platter looked like after 17 minutes:

What these pictures do not show is the fact that after demolishing  that platter and astonishing our peers, we proceeded to walk around to other tables and eat off THEIR platters (in our defense, some tables only had 3 or 4 people to a platter and we had 5 guys in our group of 7) and then order desserts.  It was quite the meal and quite the day.

I miss everyone like crazy already, and I hope this post finds you well!

Munich and Neuschwanstein

Hello, everyone!

I went on my first trip this weekend to Munich and Neuschwanstein castle with 5 of my new friends from the University of Illinois.  The journey began at 6:30am on Friday morning after not having slept a wink on Thursday night.  We took a quick bus ride from Vallendar to Koblenz, and then a not so quick bus ride (i.e. 8 hours) from Koblenz to Munich, most of which I slept through.  Luckily the bus to Munich was extremely nice, and the cost was only 44 Euros round trip!

When we arrived to Munich, we checked into our hostel. The 4 You, if you want to check it out!  It only cost 17 Euros per night and was actually extremely nice!  The six of us got our own room with 3 bunk beds and a reading light on each bed.

There was also free WiFi on the main floors, a yummy free breakfast every morning, and a bar with pizza.  Speaking of which... I ate pizza.  Not only did I eat pizza, I enjoyed pizza. And ate 2 slices.  Who am I!?  The only explanation I can offer is the the pizza here is like real Italian pizza, meaning very thin and minimal sauce.

After we got settled in, we went out to dinner at Augustiner-Keller, which was delicious.  I had dumplings with sauerkraut, onions, and bacon.  YUM. 

Once we left the restaurant, we decided to explore Munich for a bit.  We saw a very cute winter market selling things like bratwurst, soup, currywurst (more to come on that another day), Glühwein (hot spiced wine), pretzels, crepes and more.  The stands were beneath a walkway overlooking an ice rink for children, and there was music and sparkling lights everywhere.  

A cool thing about Munich is that it combines a lot of old with new.  There are extremely old buildings, fountains, and statues everywhere with every modern shop and restaurant you could think of in between.  For example, there was a four story Forever21.  No, I did not go in.  Yes, it was painful to walk away.  This is the entrance to the beginning of the main shopping plaza:

      

I've posted several pictures to Facebook and will continue to do so, but there are just too many to put them all in here.  The last thing I'm going to put on here about that night was the church we went into.  I'm sure it is a beautiful church under normal circumstances, but there was a special exhibit going on called Les Colombes that made it truly amazing.

 There were hundreds, if not thousands, of paper birds hanging from the ceiling of the church.  There were pink, blue, and purple lights, heavy fog, and incense burning.  Candles were lit around the perimeter, and people were singing.  It was surreal, to say the least.

The next morning we got up fairly early once again and met up with our tour guide through Radius Tours.  We had a 2 hour train ride south to Füssen, then a short bus ride to Schwangau, which is a cute little town nestled near the very beginning of the Alps.  The first notable stop on our tour was Hohenschwangau Castle.  The original castle was destroyed in previous warring until King Maximilian of Bavaria discovered the ruins and rebuilt it in 1833.

As we began to ascend toward Neuschwanstein, we were rewarded with incredible views.

Our last stop before actually entering the castle was what I like to call the Bridge of Doom.

See that tiny, rickety little strip to which I've pointed with a poorly drawn arrow? I stood on that. I. STOOD. ON. THAT.  It was made of wood planks with thin metal sides, and every time someone moved it would bounce.  As someone who is terrified of heights, I was pretty much convinced I wasn't coming off of there alive.  However, there was one tiny factor that made the anxiety attack worthwhile: The view.

Yeah, it was gorgeous.  I wish the pictures could do it justice.  This is Neuschwanstein (literally translated as New Swan Stone), the castle that served as the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's in Disneyland.  It was built by King Ludwig II as a personal retreat and tribute to Richard Wagner, with whom he was obsessed.  However, the King spent only 172 days in the palace before dying under mysterious circumstances in Munich.  At the time of his death, all construction on his castles ceased, leaving only one-third of Neuschwanstein finished.  I was able to tour the completed third, and it was incredibly beautiful.  Unfortunately no photography was allowed, but I, being the rebel that I am, snapped a couple covert ones anyway.

After the tour we took the train back and then went to dinner at Weisses Bräuhaus in Munich at the recommendation of our tour guide.  It was delicious. A few people in my group started the meal with pretzel soup and were kind enough to share a bite.  Next came my meal, which was beer-braised pork with sauerkraut and potato pancakes (sorry about the picture; I was halfway through it before I realized I forgot to snap a picture).  Finally came dessert.  Not just any dessert, but the mother of all desserts.  Deep fried bread stuffed with plum jam and covered in vanilla sauce.  I'm telling you, German food is going to be the death of me.  It's a good thing I usually cook for myself here.

    

For the final event of the evening, we went to Hofbräuhaus.  I forgot how cool that place is.  I still haven't worked my way up to full on beer yet, but I drank about a liter and a half of Radler, which is basically beer mixed with lemonade.  It's a start.  We ate giant, soft pretzels, and Eric managed to drink 4 full liters of beer in the short time we were there.

Our last stop of the trip was at the Rathaus-Glockenspiel, one of Munich's most famous attractions.  It is a two level display on the clock tower of the town hall and features dancing animatronic-type figures depicting first the wedding of Duke Wilhelm V (founder of Hofbräuhaus) and then a celebratory dance to mark the end of the plague around 1517.

After another 8 hour bus ride, I am back in my apartment and ready to start another week.  Thanks for reading!

Recap

The past few days have been jam-packed.  I went through orientation, experienced my first German nightclub, did team building exercises, and cooked/ate a huge dinner full of traditional German foods (DELICIOUS).  I thought I wasn't jet lagged, but my going to bed at 6:00am and sleeping until 3:00pm for the last two days may suggest otherwise.

Tomorrow I begin classes.  Classes here are…different, to say the least.  For starters, registration isn't on a set day.  Each class has its own registration and drop dates, so I can’t even register for a couple of my classes for another two weeks.  “How is that possible if classes begin tomorrow?” Great question.  Classes here aren't necessarily all semester long, don’t last a set amount of time, and aren't on set days of the week.  This means that I may have a class on Monday one week, Monday and Wednesday the next week, and Thursday the week after that.  I may have a class that only meets for three weeks out of the semester, but each class period will be 4 hours long.  It’s horrible to keep track of, and it is pretty much impossible to schedule classes without having at least a few days of overlap.  This is also a problem, as attendance is crucial here.  My first two classes of the semester happen to occur at the exact same time tomorrow, so I’m already going to be off to a great start.  As of right now I’m planning on taking:

Econometrics

Strategic Management

International Marketing

German Language

Germany in Europe

I still need to figure out a 6^th class.  I was originally going to take social entrepreneurship, but it only meets 6 times and 2 of those interfere with econometrics.  Oy vey.

Making this class search process even more difficult is the fact that the WiFi in my room is atrocious.  If it’s really late and everyone is asleep, it’s mostly tolerable.  However, if everyone is in their rooms (like today, as everything here shuts down on Sundays), it’s borderline unusable.

Anyway, back to my earlier mention of the German club… Ladies and gentlemen, I have sustained my first injury.  It took me a grand total of one day.  Most of the exchange students and our mentors left for the club around midnight the day after I got here (Crazy, right? Germans don’t start the party until around 12 or 1 and go until between 4 and 6.)  At some point in the evening, I stood up off my bar stool for all of 15 seconds.  In that time, someone accidentally knocked it ever so slightly away from where it had stood.  I went to hop back onto it, was only half successful, and pitched over sideways.  In an attempt to shield my head from the foot bar, I raised my arm over my head.  This and a very sore, somewhat immobile shoulder were the results:

I really need to start looking before I leap, but don’t worry too much.  I will proceed with caution from here on out.

Home Sweet Home

I'm going to do another post about the events of the last couple of days tonight, but first I want to show you my apartment!  It's very bare and cold right now, but I plan to make a trip to the IKEA near me and get a few things to spruce it up.  I'll post some "after" pictures when that happens! Here we go...

Heinous green kitchen.  At least there's some color, right?

Entrance and closet/shelves

Teeny tiny bathroom

Crappy panorama

Other half of crappy panorama

Everything from dishes to hangers to linens was provided for me, and I'm pretty comfy in here. I just can't wait to make it cozier!

Murphy's Law

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

As I've learned today, it's best to operate under this assumption.  Pessimistic? Maybe. Necessary? You betcha.  When I arrived at O'Hare, all flights were on schedule.  As soon as I boarded my plane, all hell broke loose.  I sat at the gate for two and a half hours with a screaming baby before we were cleared for take off.  

Once we finally made it to Amsterdam, I had missed my connecting flight.  I went to the transfer gate and asked if I could be put on the next flight to Frankfurt instead of Cologne as it would shorten my journey by a few hours.  The KLM agent I spoke to said no and gave me a voucher for a meal and 50 Euros off a future ticket.  I asked how much it would be to just purchase a new ticket to Frankfurt, and he directed me to take a number and wait in another line to find out.  When I got up to the second KLM transfer desk and explained what had happened, the agent told me that she could switch me onto the Frankfurt flight without a problem.  This is where I started to seriously doubt the competency, and with good reason.

After I got my new boarding pass and made it to my gate, I realized that the gate agent and I had never discussed my luggage.  As a precaution, I trekked back across the airport and asked the agent if my bags would be on the flight to Frankfurt with me.  She assured me that there would be plenty of time for them to get on the plane, so I left feeling slightly better.  When it came time to board, I asked the agent at the gate to check if my luggage had made it.  I watched her type in my name and pull up my file, at which point she told me that my luggage was, indeed, loaded on the plane and ready to go.

I arrive in Frankfurt and go to the baggage claim.  The carousel goes around for a while, everyone gets their luggage and leaves, and the carousel stops.  Where are my bags?  I go to the baggage claim desk and hand the agent my boarding passes.  He looks at them and says, "You're supposed to be in Cologne." No, sir, I assure you I'm supposed to be in Frankfurt, as are my bags.  I try to keep my cool and explain the situation to him, including what the other agents had said.  He looks up my information and suddenly the story has changed.  They have no idea where my suitcases are.

He hands me a receipt with a claim number and sends me on my way.  Despite being exhausted, smelly, panicked, and furious, I hold it together and purchase a train ticket.  The train ride to Koblenz followed the Rhine and was gorgeous, but I unfortunately missed most if it as I was passed out face down into my neck pillow.  Once in Koblenz, my original plan to take a taxi to Vallendar and get a nice dinner was a thing of the past, so I marched into McDonald's and ate a Big Mac and fries.  

I finally got a taxi, moved into my apartment, and got a tour from the house manager.  He's pretty nice but speaks an interesting mix of German and English (Germlish, if you will), so I'm grateful for the German skills I have.  Speaking of which, in my sleep-deprived delirium, I got unnaturally excited about my ability to read the McDonald's packaging and tray paper, which was something about kids' birthday parties.

So now I'm settled into my apartment, or as settled as I can be with nothing in my possession but the contents of my backpack.  I just contacted KLM again and as of now they still have no idea where my luggage is, so I will likely not be receiving it tomorrow either.

One good thing did happen today: I started making friends!  It just so happened that the guy sitting behind me on the flight from Chicago to Amsterdam was from U of I and not only going to WHU, but also living in my apartment building.  He stuck with me for the entire trip, including waiting in all the lines and dealing with my whining.  We also met up with two other girls from U of I (who are also living in my building) by chance in Frankfurt, and the four of us became a traveling group from there to Koblenz to Vallendar.

Despite the series of unfortunate events that transpired over the last 24 hours, I am grateful to have gotten here safely and excited for what's to come.  Tomorrow will be orientation from about 9am to 9pm, so it's time to finally shower and get some sleep.  I'll report back tomorrow with how things are going and maybe some pictures of my apartment.  Goodnight!

I'm a leavin' on a jet plaaane...

Well, here it is.  I've gone through security, said my goodbyes, bought a sleep aid and travel pillow (because I forgot mine at home, true to form), and got screwed over by the airport exchange rate.  All signs point toward Europe.  

That would be the plane I'm boarding in 20 short minutes.  I'm excited, but the sadness is winning at the moment. I'm going to miss everyone terribly, but at least I will still be in communication.  

Thank you for the thoughts and prayers everyone. My next post will be from across the pond!