Sunday 12 August 2012

Catching up

Well, it seems I have a few days to catch up - was definitely right when I said the daily posts would stop coming!  Time has been moving so quickly, but then at the same time I really haven't been here long yet.  A week and a half-ish? It's amazing how quickly time goes when you're busy!

So Thursday and Friday had class again, of course.  Also tried to get as many hours as possible in the language lab, cos I have a ridiculous amount needed to get just 1 credit.  However sitting down and calculating it, I actually don't think I have enough time left to get the amount of hours required.  Luckily its not the end of the world if I don't get credit for this course.  Not sure, will have to check into it.  But anyway, back to the more exciting parts of the week.

Thursday night we went to the Biergarten to meet some people, then hung out in Augustiner Platz where all the students in Freiburg go to hang out at nights.  It was really nice, we sat with our feet in one of the Bächle, and bought a beer from this old Turkish man who buys them down the road for 60c then walks around the Platz selling them for 1 euro.  Then after that we went to a shisha place, which was cool.  We got apple-rose, which really made me want Turkish delight!  Then we ended the night with bingo at the Irish pub.  That was really funny, the guy was making up little rhymes for a lot of the numbers, like "the way to heaven, 7!".

Friday, we had a BBQ at the Seepark, which was awesome!  I use the word BBQ loosely - didn't get a photo, but should do next time.  It was like a little bucket with coals in it, and what looked like a strong cooling rack on top.  Worked really well though, and we ate delicious corn in foil.  I also had my first smore (I think thats how you spell it?), which was pretty delicious.  Definitely trying that the next time I go camping!  It was really good, cos a lot of people go there to hang out cos it's such a nice spot, so we ended up meeting and hanging out with a whole bunch of other people from the course, which was great.

Then on Saturday Rebecca, Jenna and I headed to Schwarzwald on one of the course organised excursions.  It was alright - I put one or two photos up on Facebook, but the Schwarzwald is beautiful.  Probably would have enjoyed it more if we weren't all so tired though.  It's been pretty non-stop since we got here, which is awesome, but tiring!  So we went to the St Peter Kloster first, which I guess we'd call a monastery?  It was a big, old, beautiful church with living quarters attached.  That was ok, but again, too tired to understand pretty much any of what the tour guide was saying.  Then we went and saw the world's largest cuckoo clock, which was cool, if not very brief.  Then we went to another town, where the 3 of us spent the whole hour and a half in an Italian restaurant for lunch then getting legit Schwarzwaldtorte.  Then lastly we went to a museum farm, of a traditional Schwarzwaldian farm. It was interesting - I learnt that they didn't really let cooking smoke out of the house, so they had to sleep sitting up so they could breathe properly.  Also they had a room at the top of the barn where they would send girls when they got engaged, and then the guy they were engaged to had to climb up to it with a ladder, and they didn't get married until the girl was pregnant.  Weird.

Think we're done with the organised excursions though - there's another one next weekend, but its nicer to do stuff on our own, cos then we don't have to do stuff we don't want to (such as tours we can't understand a word of!).  Will just organise our own stuff for the next 2 weekends.

So yeah today was a day of rest - didn't really do anything all day, and then just had dinner together and watched a movie.  Pretty chilled, in preparation for the next 2 weeks I guess!  Seminars start tomorrow, and I'm signed up for Deutschland und Europa (Germany and Europe) and Typisch Deutsch (which is about intercultural aspects of Germany in a global context).  So hopefully they'll be interesting.  They at least sound interesting anyway.

Think it will be weird going to London/Scotland after this - at the moment it just feels like a particularly awesome holiday, that will be ending soon.  And of course usually when your holiday ends you go home, where you can comfortably collapse in a heap and recover!  So yeah, could be interesting, trying to recover while starting out in another new place.  Will be awesome though, I'm sure :)

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