When I visit Gemma

The night starts with a plan.

I made sure to bring glasses that fit a half bottle of wine each.

then night ends like this.

That time we drank wine instead of beer

A couple months before, while walking around Dortmund, I had noticed a tiny little wine bar that looked super cute. I immediately made a little note of the place, because I knew it would be just up Patrick's alley for his visit. I know while he and Karrie were here, we did our fair share of beer drinking (as you well know by this point), but my brother is really more of a wine person, so one night we traded in the beer mugs for wine glasses.

 

The place is called der Weinkommissar (basically, the wine detective) and is just a little one room bar, not much bigger than the living room of our apartment. The wine was fantastic and the staff was so nice. They were so helpful as we pestered them with questions about the wines, trying to find just the right bottle to split! At one point, our waitress even said "I'll just open the bottle for you to try it, and if it's not what you want, you don't have to get it - I'll just take it home for me!" 

 

We had such a great time the first night, we went back the very next night. To be honest, we probably would have gone every other night after that, if we weren't leaving Dortmund after that. 

The most wonderful drink of the year

You might have noticed at this point that the Christmas markets are all located outside. And as common sense might have led you to believe that Germany can be quite cold in December. So standing outside for hours at a time to enjoy the markets can get a little bit chilly, to say the least. And when you're moving your feet just to make sure they're still there, the last thing you want to do is drink a cold beer. 

But fear not! After centuries (give or take) of Christmas market practice, those clever Germans devised a way to keep you hydrated without turning your stomach into a giant beersicle. 

Glühwein literarally translates to "glowing wine," and the reality definitely lives up to the name.This ingenious beverage is a staple for the holiday season. And the concept is wonderfully simple. It is a wine (traditionally red, but I have seen a white variation here and there) with different spices added (I could look them up, but that would ruin the magic that gives Glühwein its incomparable taste) and served warm. It is basically impossible to go to Christmas market without enjoying a mug of Glühwein. Especially if you're me. 

Speaking of the mugs. Each Christmas market makes their own unique mug  and they are totally free for the taking, if you so please. 

Of course, by free, I mean you have to pay a deposit when you buy your drink if you don't return your mug, you don't get your deposit back. Some people might point out that you could just buy a clean mug for the regular deposit (usually about 2.50€), but I prefer to keep the mugs I've enjoyed a drink from. It's a bit of a rite of passage for me. And as a person who doesn't often buy souvenirs, I'm all about the Glühwein mugs. I have one from every Christmas market I've ever visited from my past 2 Christmases in Europe and this year's collection is coming along quite nicely as well. 

Glühwein is definitely one of my favorite parts of the Christmas markets. Even if it's snowing and below freezing and all you want to do is stay inside in the warmth, the promise of enjoying a Glühwein at the Christmas market is all the motivation I need to head out on a cold December night! 

Ein gutes neues

Happy new year, internet people!

I'd like to start this by thanking everyone who didn't say anything about me coming home for Christmas! I've never gotten to pull off such a big surprise before, and despite the 24 hours of traveling, the 3 different planes, and the sleep deprivation, it was very exciting and totally worth it! Don't worry, there is a video of the actual surprise on youtube.

I was nervous about going home for Christmas. During the first four months I felt like I had really settled in well, and I was afraid going home, even for a week, would reset that and cause me to have to resettle all over again. But really, it hasn't. I had a great week at home, being able to see my family and visit my friends. In some ways I wished I had had more time, in other ways I was glad to be headed back to Germany.

Luckily, Gemma got back the same day I did. Which meant I didn't have to sit around and be bored and lonely for a week. We had one more week after our return to Germany before school started back, so we really made the most of it. Oh, that's right - we played cards. Let me explain, Gemma and I have a running card game that we started back in the week of our fall break when we still hadn't been payed. We've been keeping a running score since that fateful week in November. Before Christmas we had just reached 10,000. That's two months worth of playing. Last night after one week of card playing, we just broke 20,000. We enjoyed our week. We did get out a few times: shopping in Erlangen, movie and drinks in Bamberg, trips to the grocery store so we didn't starve, things like that...

Finally yesterday it was back to the grind. Of course, averaging about one class a day so far, it hasn't been too taxing yet. Yesterday I got to pull out a sort of old faithful lesson plan: the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King and today I just did the whole "interview the foreign girl" thing

Side note: I have mixed feelings about the whole "pretend you don't speak German" thing that teachers ask you to do. Not because I'm against it pedagogically, I do see the point in it. But it just goes against every nature of my being. For the past 4 months, my biggest pet peeve is going out and people assuming you don't speak German or would rather speak English. Now, I recognize that 7th graders who are trying to learn English aren't making assumptions about my language abilities. Obviously. But then I also hate when they ask "do you know any other languages?" When I have to lie and say "no" I feel like I'm just feeding that stereotype that English speakers don't ever learn foreign languages, they feel like their language is superior and therefore the only one worth knowing, or what have you. I actually take a little pride in thinking I'm helping to change that stereotype. Then, of course, when they ask how you ended up in Germany, things just get awkward "uh... I was just really interested in Germany. It seemed cool, ja?" Like I said, from a teaching standpoint it makes total sense that I would pretend not to know German. When students know you understand their native language, they tend to just give up on the new language whenever they feel like it. I guarantee if they knew I spoke German at all, half of those interviews would have just ended up with questions like "have you got any... uh... hmm... uh... Geschwister?" But instead, they would work just a little harder to come up with "brothers and sisters". But from a language student standpoint, it is difficult to just sit there and say "no, I do not know German. The only language I know is Engish." It's just strange!

Things look like they're going to be pretty low key for the next few weeks. I have my first band concert coming up this Saturday, but other than that, no big plans. We have our first break of the new year in March (the same week that UGA has spring break, actually) and I just booked my flights to Edinburgh to visit Shahida again! I'm really excited to get back up there to see her, and we're trying to gather more of the old Zurich crew as well too.

I'll try to be good about keeping you posted on all the exciting happenings here in Forchheim (I'll let you know when we hit 30,000 in our cards). And, imaginary internet people, I hope you have a wonderful 2011!

Oh, and while I've got you here, new pics have been posted!

Fulbright - 2011 and I'll be Home for Chrismas

Catch up

Oh hey blog, I almost forgot you were there! I'm sorry I've been so horrible about posting this month (3 posts for November so far, compared to the 14 of October. And not a single vlog!).

But lets not focus on my short-comings as a blogger...

Life has definitely been picking up since we last talked. Gemma and I finally got paid so we've been able to leave the apartment without fear! But there was some irreparable damage done... for example, the fact that we discovered a mutual love of wine and card games, making it much less exciting to leave the apartment when the promise of both waits for us at home.

On Wednesday we had a day off (some obsolete religious holiday that only the schools still observe), so Gemma, Andy (an ETA in Erlangen -click his name for a link to his vlog-), and I went down to Munich for the day to meet some other friends, 2 from Munich and another from Passau. The actual reason for the trip was to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 in English, but visiting friends and seeing Munich was an added bonus. We all felt honored (dare I say, unworthy?) that such a big movie was being released in Germany 2 days before its US release? For once we had the upper hand in pop culture by being in Germany (trust me, this doesn't happen very often).

I'll spare you a full movie review, but I do want to say that I thought the movie was fantastic! There were parts that weren't great, and plenty of details from the book were missing. But people need to stop expecting movies to live up to books, in general. There is no way you can fit every detail from a book into a movie. Not only just because of time constraints, but also because the two mediums, book vs. film, don't always allow for the same channels to inform the audience. Where, in a book, an important detail can be brought to light simply by the narrator mentioning it, in a movie, it would have to be added in a character's line or somehow visualized. So while the movie is based off the book, you can't watch it with the expectations of it being exactly the same.

right, sorry about that little tangent... back to life in Germany?

Not too much new or exciting at school. I'm starting to worry about changing schools with Gemma in March (that's when their semesters change), because I'm just now settling and feeling comfortable with my teachers and the way my school works. I still don't even know half the teachers' names (even some that I've worked with several times....)

I did get to make an awesome Quiz about drinking/going out in the US (click the link to the quiz for an idea of what kind of stuff we're allowed to talk about in school as opposed to in the US).

Gemma's parents are in town this weekend, so they have been out seeing the area. I met them for dinner in Nürnberg last night. But it ended up being the biggest night of coincidences. Gemma&co. were headed to Bamberg for the afternoon then to Nürnberg for the evening and dinner. My plan was to take a later train and just meet them for dinner. As it turned out, they ended up leaving Bamberg later than expected and we ended up on the same train down to Nürnberg. Then when we were walking around Nürnberg we decided to stop for our first glühwein of the season. Suddenly I heard someone say "Emily..." and since Emily isn't the most popular name in Germany, I was immediately suspicious. It turned about to be 2 other ETAs from Nürnberg who were supposed to meeting our other friend from the Erlangen area and her boyfriend. So there we were, all 8 of us, just having happened upon each other in the middle of Nürnberg!

It ended up being a fun night! Unfortunately there is a lot of construction going on on the railway between Nürnberg and Forchheim, so we had to take a bus to Erlangen. Well the bus dropped us off in Erlangen at 11:40pm and the next train wasn't due till 12:39. So we waited, in the cold, for an hour. But there were brownies from our newly working oven waiting for us at home, so it was all worth it in the end!

I'll leave you with this for now. I hope all of you in the US enjoy your Thanksgiving break and have a great holiday!

Life below the poverty line

"We strongly recommend bringing enough money to last 4 - 6 weeks (1,000-1,500€) when you first arrive." A wise suggestion from the PAD (long story, I know I'm here with Fulbright, but the PAD is really the organization in charge of everything, including pay).

Well, here we are 10 weeks since I started here in Germany and the only money my account has seen was travel reimbursement from Fulbright. Most of my Fulbright friends were paid within the first 2 weeks of October, but I wasn't worried, because I still knew people getting paid in the 3rd week. Well, as the last week of the month arrived, with our week long fall break on it's heels (this past week), I started to worry. I approached my teachers with my concerns and they reciprocated, so on Friday they called the powers that be inquiring about our payment. We were then told to give it to the end of the this week and if, by Friday, we hadn't received anything, to call back.

Monday: Nothing, turns out it's a bank holiday down here for all saints day

Tuesday: Nothing, no excuse.

Wednesday: Still nothing

Thursday: Nada - starting to question the need for an "if" clause when told to wait till Friday

Friday: ....Of course not.

But this post is not to tell you about the angry (and by angry I mean they included a lot of "please" and "thank yous"...) emails I've sent to Fulbright and the PAD. I wanted to give you a little glimpse into surviving a week vacation with no money.

On Friday last week I pulled out 100€ from my ever-dwindling American account to last me till we got paid (which I now consider the same as saying "to last me for the foreseeable future"). This 100€ would be my only funding for the week, for necessities, fun, travel, whatever I wanted/needed all had to fit with in my 100€.

So what do you do on 100€ for a week with all the free time in the world? Well at the beginning of the week, Gemma (who still hasn't been paid either) and I were pretty active. On Friday night we went out in Forchheim for the first time. Luckily, as beer is cheaper than water, a night out doesn't run the bill up too much. On Sunday we went out to the Franconian Switzerland region (Fränkische Schweiz in German) and spent the day hiking, splurged a little for lunch. On Monday and Tuesday we spent time with some teachers with Gemma's teachers hiking and visiting a "wild animal park" (basically a zoo with mostly animals you can actually find in the area) However, as the week progressed and we grew more skeptical of ever receiving our payment, we toned down the excitement a little and have spent the last couple days in the apartment.

I decided to compile a little list of some activities that can be done for free or relatively cheap over here in Forchheim.

1. hiking
2. visiting castle ruins
3. hiking
4. visiting castles still in use
5. hiking
6. playing cards
7. reading
8. sleeping
9. watching an entire season of Grey's anatomy
10. drinking
11. hiking
12. websudoku
13. pacing
14. doodling
15. facebook
16. writing blog posts filled with unnecessary links

from my original 100€, I still have almost 40€, but I'm very wary about spending any since I still don't know when I'll be getting paid for sure. But Gemma and I decided this recent poverty we've encountered, if nothing else, has been very character building. (and my Sudoku skills are much improved too)

Monetary donations can be sent to the address listed in the About Me section.**

**just kidding. Please don't actually send money. I mean, unless you really want to. But not really.