Home

Yess! I am home and I am excited to be home, but I already miss Germany. I am glad to be in a comfortable place but I miss Germany because I was starting to get comfortable with the people and the setting there. There were a few other things that I liked while I was over there though. The sports night that we had was a lot of fun for me because I got to compete with other people, and what I liked the most about that is how I got to compete in soccer with Mike and other really awesome people. And not only did we get to compete with other people, we got to compete with people who were not only good at what they do, but were willing to come together as a team and play. That was quite exciting, but I think the thing that really made my trip was the Abschluss or graduation. That does sound weird because it makes it sounds like I just wanted to come home and have it done with, but I liked watching all of the skits being performed and all of the excitement that was involved. What made it more exciting though, was being able to perform our skit and making everyone in the audience laugh. That is what I really liked. There were other smaller points, where I made people laugh, that hit me throughout the program, but the graduation is the one that hit it in my mind. Abschluss also taught me what I have learned throughout the trip and that is how I can more readily understand spoken German.

Changes of attitude

When I came here, everybody was kind of agraid of eachother. But, people starting to get to know eachother. It was easier though to get to know those who either came from the same country or that spoke the same language, and a lot of the time it was both, but not always the case. Now though, it seems though a lot of people are getting comfotable with other groups and the such. If we spent a couple more weeks here, it may be that it would develop even more, quite possibly to the point that we would see a split where people would kind of separate themselves or start to distance themselves from the people who they got to know that annoyed them. I have not paid too much attention to the culture necessarily of Germany although people here seem to be really friendly but not everyone smiles. Algthough, it is not true that everybody in Cincinnati smiles, I feel though that people are more willing to smile Cincinnati. But I have to say that people do stop for you at the cross walks and that people can be more apt to help you in certain cases here.

Adaptation to life in Germany

Adapting to life here is kind of exhausting, I would have to say. First of all, and most of all, is that we for the most part do not have cars here, so our main means of transport is by foot. That is a really big thing, because class is about a 20 minute walk from where we are staying, and at least half of the trip to class is up hill, which makes it a lot of fun. I have had to give myself a lot more time to get to places, because, like today, I had to get to school to the town, then to the hostel then back to the school. That took me about an hour and a half. I also have been eating breakfast a lot more and eating a lot more during lunch. I have been a lot more tired because of the walking, but also because I love talking to people back in Cincinnati so much that some days I have stayed in the lab until 2 o´clock Ilmenau time because of the time change. With me walking more here, I have noticed that I take driving everywhere for granted, that I just can jump in a car and drive anywhere.

Food

I have posted quite a few pictures of food. One that I have not yet posted but will is of this food called . And yes there is a reason that the W is in parenthesis. What it basically is, is blood wurst cooked in a couple of other ingredients, that when mixed with the other ingredients and cooked, the meet actually curdles and creates lumps. I will post the picture later, but it looks disgusting and tastes disgusting as well. I actually got it from somebody else at the table that couldn´t finish it because she thought it was disgusting, and I couldn´t finish it either because it did not please my appetite.

As I kind of implied before, there are two nicknames the students here give that plate. The first nickname is derived from taking the w in the parenthesis out of the word and thus giving it, what I think, could be a pretty appropriate nickname for that meal. Sch(w)eisswurste is the word again. And to help you with that nickname, the first part of the dish without the w is a German cuss word, and the second part of the word is a type of sausage. I was told that the students at the Universität Technische would oftenly cross out that first w.

The second nickname is kind of find but disgusting. The second nickname is "tote OMA" which basically means dead grandmother. I forget if this nickname what just spread through word of mouth or was written on the menus that contained the name of the dish.

Dresden

To Dresden we all went on a bus and it took at least two to three hours to get there. It was a trip. It was well worth the trip though. At first, we had about an hour of free time, which was nice to take some preliminary pictures that we probably would have otherwise taken during the guided tour by foot. We had about a 2 hour guided tour. The first hour of the guided tour was by bus and the second hour of the tour was by foot. We saw great sites like the Frauenkirche, the Scwhinger, and the Ball thrower. After the two hour tour, starting at about 2, we had plenty of time to walk around and check everything out. We had from 2 until 10:30 to walk around and be back at the meeting spot, which was about a half an hour from the main area. In the main area there was this festival going on which was exciting. There was plenty of food, outdoor shops and music. Overall, I loved it.

Surprises

Surprises. MMM. I am not sure what kind of surprises I had if I had any. I pretty much new what was going to happen. I was surprised at the beginning when two out of the three of us got in the same class. I was expecting all three of us to be in three different classes. I am kind of surprised that I have consistently went to bed so late, which I wasn´t planning on doing at all. I am not much more able to deal with novelty than I was when I was back home in Cincinnati, but I think I may have been more relaxed with it, just a bit at least. I have learned about myself that I think about doing stuff without doing them and that I give myself excuses in order to not do something. On the trip, I have seen that, but with the help of a few people, I have been able to meet a few new people on the trip and kind of push my envelope of being able to do stuff, like surveying people.

Bergfest

Today is Wednesday, but it is also Bergfest. Bergfest basically means the peak of something. Berg comes from the German word `Berg´meaning `the top of a mountain´, kind of like a climax and fest which probably means "festival". We are at the middle of our three week course and I am kind of excited. I have a lot more work that I will have to do. I have to work on my project that is due next week, which I will have fun doing. Then we still are going to go to Dresdenm. So we have a lot of stuff that we are going to do, but are now down to a week and a half until Abschluss, graduation. I am excited though. We have done well so far and I think that we can still only get better. I think I have a far distance to understand more but I think that I am doing well at this point and I am satisfied up to this point. I think as far as feelings are, mine are pretty much the same as everybody else. I am tired and ready to get back home. I haven´t noticed every emotion around except for the people in the U.C. group. I have noticed or heard from other people in the group that the a quite a few of the Russians drink quite a bit which is not really a surprise.

Wurtberg/ Eisenach

Today, as it was raining, we went to Wartburg and to Eisenach. Wurtberg is in Eisenach. Wurtberg is where Martin Luther stayed for a while. One of the things that I liked at Wurtberg was this well outside. It had a dragon on the top of the sculpture that was kind of like the Night Fury from `how to Train your dragon´. Also sculpted onto the top of the well were some flowers. Next to the well were snakes, which were quite simple looking but also awesome.
Inside, there were a number of things such as knight armor and furniture as well as utensils which I liked a lot because some of them had sculptures on the end of them of people. It was quite awesome. I was not able to get a picture of all of them, but I did get a few pictures.

After going to Wartburg, we went into Eisenach where it continued to rain and at this point, it was raining pretty tremendously. We could either take a tour of the city or a tour of the Bachhaus, which is a Bach museum, and a short tour of the city. I picked the Bachhaus and short city tour since it was raining. The Bachhaus basically had a lot of Bach´s music and some instruments that I think were used for his music. In the Bachhaus they also had a room where they showed a video of his music being played by a small number of people.

In the tour of Eisenach, there is not much that stuck out in my mind. The only thing that may of stuck out was Martin Luther´s house. There was a statue of St. George that kind of sticks out in my mind.

Weimar/ BuchenWald

Today, Saturday August the 14th, we went to Weimar and BuchenWald, which is in Weimar. We didn´t do too much in Weimar except for a tour that we took. Our tour lasted about 2 to 2 and a half hours. The place that I remember the most was probably the Schiller/Goethe statue. There are two reasons why the stature stuck out in my mind. The first is that it is so big. The other reason is that on the tour that we took, the tour guide was describing the statue and I understand what he said about the statue and a lot about Goethe and Schiller. The statue though had both Schiller and Goethe standing together with Goethe on Schiller´s right side. Schiller had his head tilted to his left as though he was thinking while Goethe had his head more directed to the front. The reasoning behind though head gestures is because Schiller was a more out there kind of guy, thinking of what could be done. Goethe on the other had more of a realistic point of view on things. Nothing really surprised me about the city. The thing that helped me the most that I did read was about the Weimar Republic.

I didn´t pick up too much from Buchenwald. I went to what they called the Disinfectant building and I found out that the disenfectant building at other concentration camps was used on humans while this disinfectant building was used just on clothes and incoming objects. I had to stand in the middle of all of the blocks and think about what happened there. There where over fifty blocks or buildings were kept and each block had about one occupants in it. I went into only two other buildings. One was that of a reconstructed building for urinals and the other was the crematorium. The one for the urinals was actually used to kill people in. A person would be brought into the room, and the first guard would measure the height of the person, while a second guard that was in a separate room would shoot the person in the neck through a slot in the Wall. The crematorium, I learned, was adjusted during the war with new furnaces.

Buildings and Landscape of Ilmenau

The buildings here in Ilmenau are different than the buildings in Cincinnati for the main fact of how they look from the outside. A lot of the buildings that I have noticed are stucco and have this color to them that is cool but reminds me of buildings from the 70´s, like they are faded and have they same feeling of how did they pick the colors but in a sense it looks looks cool on some of the buildings. There are a couple of different buildings those. Like on campus, they have a whole bunch different kinds of buildings. They have stucco, and brick and buildings one with siding and more windows on it than the others. Like this building, a lot of buildings are vibrantly colored and some of them are painted with a diverse amount of colors, not just one.

Although a few of the houses had siding, most of them are Stucco, but I noticed a really cool blue house that I thought was awesome, plus it appeared to be a little bit more open than the other houses. A lot of the houses by our hostel are close together though. And a lot of them that I noticed are either fenced in or have hedges or trees around them. Quite a few also have some kind of floral decoration and/or Gnomes or something in the yard. In fact a business that looks like a house has a decorative tree in it´s front yard.

I noticed this house that is in the middle of being built on the way to the computer concourse. I noticed that they use a cement block sized brick to form the basic house, like they do in Cincinnati with smaller buildings. before they finish the outside, it looks like they do a lot of inside work, but the basic frame outside is done including the roof.

Language: Living in Germany

I have only noticed the language only a little bit. But with what I have heard, I did notice that Debbie made a very good point that German people speak softer, or at least for the most part. The only people that I understand right now for the most part are the professors, and the other people in the Sommerkurs program. One reason, I think is the common answer of how they dpeak so fast. I haven´t noticed much use of hand gestures. It could easily be the fact that it may be similar enough to what I am used to that I just haven´t noticed it.

Well, it is Tuesday. The University had a party for the Sommerkurs program last night for it being the opening of the program. There are a number of people in the program and couple of them are back from last time. The only person that I recall being back is Ingolf. Ingolf, like last time, is a betreuler. At the party, we did eat, but we also found out which class we would be in for the program. Michael is in A1 andMary and I are in A2. This morning was our first morning in our classes and I know that I was utterly confused, but I became more able to understand people more clearly as the day went on, but it is going to take a lot of work not to just understand them and the words that they are saying but what they are trying to tell me in whole. It will also take a lot of effort to be able to communicate back. Today, we had class in the morning and had lunch, but after lunch, Debbie and I went to a meeting for a project that I will be doing. I am not sure what I am doing it on but Debbie wants me to do it, so I will do it. It will a lot of fun, work and satisfaction if done properly. Ofcourse I will have to give up to a five minute presenation about the project. And not only will I have to give a presentation, but it will have to be German. Around 5:30 we were taken on a tour of the city of Ilmenau which is in east Germany. The tour took about an hour and a half. Afterwards we ate a Italian place for Dinner where Michael and I had pizza which was really good.

Getting here

Oh my. It was a long journey to get here. First of all, we had to be at the airport at what Mike and I thought to be 11 in the morning on Friday August the 6th, but it turned out to be that we didn´t have to be there until 11:30. Then we flew through the security which was a surprise to all of us. Our first flight took about an hour and a half, it wasn´t bad at all. Luckily our gate to get onto our flight to Frankfurt was the only one or two gates over at JFK. The only problem when we got on the plane was that we had to wait about an half an hour to an hour before we could leave. So we our expected leave time was 5:15 but we did not leave until about 8:00. The flight started to drag on very early on, but experienced no other problems. We arrived at the airport at about 8:00, Ilmenau time. At that time, we were able to sit down and wait on our forth person. It was nice because we got to relax in comfortable chairs for a bit.

Once we had everybody, our professor got tickets and then sat and waited for our train that was supposed to leave at 12.11 Ilmenau time. But we missed it. There was a train right there in front of us and without our realization, it was ours sinc it didn´t have the right numbers on it, we didn´t get on it and missed our train. But no big deal because we just got on the next one.

Then we had to get on another train which was no problem at all. When we were at the that train station, which was a small train station, there was a steady increase in police. But we did get on the train and got to Ilmenau safely,and where we were picked up and taken to the Universität to be signed in. One of the guys from last time was there. That is awesome to find out.

My expectations

I don't know exactly what to expect this time. I am pretty sure that it will be a lot of fun. I expect to learn a lot while I am over there including activities and how to communicate in German.

Pre-trip feelings

I am not quite sure what to feel. Although I am feeling quite anxious and nervous. I am nervous about the placement tests that we will have to take. The plane flight will be long and I will be kind of scared about that because I am always afraid that something bad will happen on the plane rides. I am not quite sure why I feel like that. I am more more excited than nervous for this trip because I know that we will have a good time.