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.