Hoi! I apologize for having such a large gap between my updates, but until this past weekend nothing to exciting has happened. I started all my classes when I arrived back from the Berlin and Prague trip, and I also ended up getting a pretty bad cold, so it made the time in these new classes more miserable and stressful. I went into the Apotheke, which are the pharmacy things here and apparently the only place licensed to sell cold medicine and I went up to the girl, at which point I was not in a mood to speak german, So I said sprechen Sie English, told her I was sick and asked her to just give me what she would buy if she was sick, because they didn’t have the same medicine as in the US. But, I the cold only lasted a week and I am 100% now.
Let’s see, a quick little run through on my classes, German- is nothing to special, we are split into so many different levels that there are only 8 kids in my class there. Then I have my general EU seminar which is basic European Union history, functions stuff like that and it gears us for each field study trip we take around Europe. My three new ones I started are European Union Foreign Policy analysis, which is going to be a lot of work and the professor is pretty lame. EU-US relations is the one I am interested in most and the prof is better, and a EU Policy areas from (A)griculture to (Z)ero Emissions and I still couldn’t really tell you what that class is about, prof dosent seem to know..much.
I am kind of frustrated of how much work is assigned in my schedule, the classes are at a level which I haven’t had yet and just demand so much. Every single night I have like 50 pages of reading and already wrote some papers and did a presentation in the first two weeks. It must have changed because I heard the program used to be more laid back and they use to even have Fridays off. But..I understand, since we travel for about 30days of the semester when we are in Freiburg and in class we have so much to cram into a short amount of time.
Daily life over the past two weeks hasn’t been to exciting, just get up, take the tram downtown to school at 9 or 10am depending on the day and then classes are an hour and a half, have three a day for the most part. I take my computer with and hangout in the student lounge which is always has a lot of kids studying or relaxin, so we do homework or I just surf the web. Eat lunch downtown, or at the Mensa (university café) with friends. Then I come home, talk to my flatmates for a bit, and then make dinner mostly with friends or flatemates, but also by myself. I am getting better at cooking but I need to look up more recipes to branch away from my various ways of preparing rice and pasta. Then I do my homework, see if anybody from home is online to talk to, check my sites around the web. I always check US sports and news because I feel really out of the loop.
Anyway, we had our first fall “break” this past weekend, which meant we only had Friday off, but still gave everyone enough time to travel. Kids went all over the place, lot of them to Spain. But, Reijer and I decided to go to his home in the Netherlands. Then two of our friends came with to, Nate and Sam. Thursday finally came and we had classes later in the evening, then we came back and I cooked us a good dinner. Fried up some brots in a pan with butter, then cut them up and put into a sauce to go on pasta, with cheese…turned out really good. Then we all packed quick and heading down to the Freiburg Hauptbahnhof where we met Sam and caught our train which left at 9pm. Sam brought some beer for our train ride, Franziskaner Hefeweisse beer..which is my favorite beer over here..well I like the dark one, but either are great. We had to switch trains a few time and had about a 4 hour commute up to Dusseldorf. We got there at about 2:30am where Reijer’s mom was waiting and she drove us into the Netherlands to their house, which was only about an hour away. It was about 3:30am when we got there and just went to sleep, I slept on and off on the train and in the car as well.
Friday morning we woke up to a breakfast laid out on the table. Mostly, just breads with different jams, thick syrup stuff and these chocolate flakes that you sprinkle on the bread..which were amazing. Reijer’s home was so nice, it was little with just two floors with 4 rooms upstair and 5 or so downstairs, but had a very countryside warm feel, hard to describe how I want to. It was older but had a lot of modern features, which I liked a lot. So we ate in the sun room in the back looking into the garden and then watched some television in the living room, which had big windows a little fire place and heated tile floors! Dutch T.V is really good, because its basically everything we have in America just with Dutch subtitles at the bottom, and this is why they all speak such perfect English in the Netherlands. Oh and they did indeed have wooden shoes! But they were practical, your suppose to wear them out in the garden or something because the ground is really wet there. Then we took a walk around his town, called Overloon, it was a small town about 2000 people, 2 schools and one main area with a grocery store. We went in and got some Dutch cookie things that were awesome. The town was pretty, all the streets lined with rows of trees, all the homes looks the same, just little two story brick with a small yard. Everyone rides bikes everywhere in the Netherlands, my kind of place. Overloon only has two attractions, a zoo and the war museum. So we walked through the park where the war museum is, there were tanks and bunkers in the woods still. The town had a really big battle during World War II, actually the only tank battle in the Netherlands, between the British and Germans. Reijer’s neighbors home even has bullet holes in it still, pretty crazy. Then after our walk we came back and had soup with rice which was good. The weather was really nice so after lunch we went out to the shed got four bikes and went on like a 7 mile bike ride through the Dutch countryside. It was awesome, just one of those really good moments where nothing mattered, just living in the moment with the wind in your hair crusin through the farmland. Oh and they have ferries instead of brides in some spots, so we just ride our bikes right onto the ferry, take it across then ride right off the other side. I also said Hoi! (hello) to everyone but no one said it back on our ride. Hahh.
We came back from our ride and Reijer’s mom already had dinner set out for us. We also met reijers dad for the first time, he was really cool and about 6’6” everybody is so tall there! Christian needs to move there later in life. But yeah his mom and dad were so nice, and his younger brother came home, Jolan, and he was a lot like Reijer. Anyway, the dinner was good, we had quiche, and a liche pie kinda thing, which was a bigger quiche with rice and cheese sauce and fruit salad. Then that evening we walked downtown and met up with Reijer’s parents at this full restaurant just for special gourmet ice cream. Then we got some Dutch beer and snacks and went back to the house and a bunch of Reijer’s friends came over. They were all really cool..I love the Dutch, they speak perfect English, have a good sense of humor, ride bikes and like Americans for the most part. We were up pretty late talking, but got to bed eventually because we had to get up early for our trip up to Amsterdam. We left at 8am caught the train which was only the next town over. Its only a 2 hour ride, but we had to switch train lines 4 times. It was also suppose to be a 95% chance of rain there all day, and we got there and the sun came out so it was perfect. Amsterdam was certainly beautiful, really nice architecture and the houses were well preserved. Then there is the famous winding streets of water going through town, with old boats lining the sides and the bridges with flowers going over them. We weren’t there very long so we just saw all the sites, it is certainly the most liberal city in the world. Lots of interesting sites, pretty weird though, but everyone knows whats there so I digress. But good food and lots of good shopping. and Nate got a Cuban cigar! Hah Then Reijer and Jolan’s friends came into town and showed us around, then we all sat down and got some beers. After that it was about dinner time and we headed back to the train station, oh and saw a big time movie big filmed in the main square there to. Had a director, huge cameras on dollys and all the productions, pretty cool. That night we got back and just had a few more beers, sat around and talked.
The next day we wanted to relax, so we slept in late and then had a big Sunday breakfast with the whole family. Then we just laid around, has the doors of the sunroom wide open into the garden, weather was gorgeous, and we got some homework out of the way so we wouldn’t be super stressed upon our return. We had some pizza’s for lunch and went out for another bike ride because the weather was just so perfect, this time in the other direction though. We went to a manmade lake with a beach and laid out there for a bit and then went to a look out tower. At this point we were pretty far away and realized we had to leave soon, so we rushed home his mom had some crepe things made with Canadian bacon in them..so good once again as was all the food. Then we packed and his dad drove us back to Dusseldorf to catch the train. Overall, it was such a nice weekend. Good to get a recharge, shower in a nice shower, eat homemade meals and just all the comforts of a real home.
Now im just back at my place, putting off studying for a German test tomorrow. Nothing much happening this week. We get briefed on our next trip, which we leave for next week and that is a week long trip to Luxembourg, Brussels Belgium and Paris!
I have also been getting all these emails from IES, PSU, the state department because there is Terror alerts for Americans traveling in Europe. Soooo I’ll keep my eyes out in Freiburg. Hah but probably not the best time to be traveling with 50 americans next week to Paris. Anyway, now to homework! And check my facebook for pictures of the Netherlands.
Hope all is well!
-Josh
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