Howntown German Soccer

We had to say goodbye to many of our German buddies this last week. They have a different kind of school structure here at DHBW. Each student is ‘sponsored’ by a company in Germany, and they attend school for three months then go work for three months. It’s a pretty sweet deal for them, they receive a monthly salary even when they are in school, and many of them find jobs with their respective company when they are finished with college. It’s a kind of ‘dual partnership’ program. Anyway, most of our friends are headed back to work next week and (with an exception of a couple who work nearby) we won't get to see them again. Because of this, somebody decided that a little pizza gathering was in order. We ended up back at our favorite pizza joint, the same one that we had the birthday party at, and we said goodbye to our new friends there. 

Last Tuesday we had the opportunity to visit a grade school. We were invited to conversation, muffins and dodge ball by a local class of 10 and 11 year old boys. It was a lot of fun. About four of us Americans sat down with a table full of boys and they asked us questions in English that they had prepared earlier. We were asked how old we were, where we came from, and what we liked to do. After our conversation, we enjoyed a chocolate muffin that one of the boys at our table had made for us. It was after this that we saw what these little guys were really excited to show us-their version of dodge ball. Those kids were crazy. They weren't afraid to dive and yell. It was awesome. After the game, it was time for us to go back to our school. As we were leaving, the boys asked if they could come visit us at the university sometime. Even though we figured they probably wouldn't enjoy dabbling in the art of Microsoft Project or making sure their debits equaled their credits, we asked one of our main professors and he said he would look into it. 

(R:L) Courtney, Jessie, our Group, and Me

All of us after the game

Before heading back to the working world, Travis's study buddy Lisa wanted to him visit/meet her family in a little town not far from Bad Mergentheim. She also sent the invite my way. She set it up to work out so she could drive us there and so we would also be there to see her hometown soccer team play a regional playoff game. So after a nice dinner at her house and meeting her family, who were awesome, we walked down to the local soccer field. The best thing I can compare the feeling of the game to is a small town football game anywhere throughout the Willamette Valley. Everyone in the crowd knew everyone else, and half the fans watched the game and the other half seem to be catching up on the small town gossip. Since neither Travis or I could pronounce the name of Lisa's team, and since they were wearing yellow jerseys, we figured we'd just call them the Bumble Bees. Lisa didn't seem to like this too much, but she was a pretty good sport about it as Travis yelled in favor of the Bumble Bees. However, despite our support, the Bumble Bees ended up losing the game. The pain of losing didn't seem to stay with the players for very long though, for the team's clubhouse brought them each a beer after the game.

Steffi, Travis, Lisa, and Me

Go Bumble Bees!!!!!

Hometown fans

The players enjoying their beers

Road Trip!

The last three weeks have been really busy. The following two weeks after my last post were dominated by International Accounting and Finance. The class was pretty challenging. We spent most of the class learning how to translate financial statements between different currencies and accounting standards. I was prepared in two ways for this class: the first is thanks to the accounting genes that my mom gave me, and the second is thanks to two of my good friends, Jessie and Lisa, in the class who are grade A accounting majors. One of them, Jessie, is not only destined to be a great accountant, but also has the best birthday ever..May 5th, 1989. Just like me! So on our birthday we had a joint pizza party at a little ''mom and pop shop'' pizzeria down the street from where I live. Quite a few Americans, along with a good showing of our German friends, came and we had a lot of fun. My German study buddies even made me a cute little cake.

The birthday kids!

My cake

After the two week course in International Accounting and Finance, we were scheduled to take a week long class that we had already received credit for through a different class back in Corvallis. So we were told that we would not be required to take the class, in other words, we had a week off to see Europe! After some thought, we decided that we wanted to head to the Normandy region of France and tour the D-Day assault beaches and visit the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. Train tickets to where we wanted to stay were incredibly expensive, so after pricing it out, we found that renting a car and driving there would be about a third of the cost of taking the train. So that's what we did and it worked out great. With the car we were able to set our own schedule every day and it also allowed us to drive out to Le Mont St. Michel and to also stop in Paris on our way back to Germany.

  Our ride for the week

 So Travis, Will, Jeremy and I packed our bags and piled into a Ford Fiesta, and arguably the world's greatest road trip was born. The drive took about 9 hours, but that didn't seem to bother us too much as we winded through the French countryside listening to our favorite country music artists in our Ford. Our hotel for the week was in Ouistreham, which is a quiet town that sits on Sword Beach. The task of assaulting and capturing Sword Beach on D-Day was given the British army who invaded with about 29,000 men that day. From Ouistreham, we drove up the coast line and visited eight museums, the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach, and multiple sections of the Atlantic Wall. All in two days. I was like kid in a candy shop. There were at least twenty more points of D-Day interest that we did not have time go to, but everywhere we went was great. We saw more World War II artifacts in those two days than I have ever seen in my life. Every museum was loaded with them. We saw tanks, trucks, landing craft, helmets, guns and much more. We read stories written by the men who were there. We walked through the bunkers and trenches of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. History almost became real to us as we overlooked peaceful beaches and tried to imagine what they were like almost 70 years ago.

 Original landing craft that was restored and used in the movie

'Saving Private Ryan'

 Artillery bunker at Point du Hoc

Ranger Memorial at Point du Hoc. Built in 1984 by Reagan.

 

 Sword Beach. Where we were staying.

The American Cemetery at Omaha Beach consists of 9,387 graves. The majority of these graves are of servicemen who lost their lives during the landings on D-Day and the ensuing inland assault on the Normandy region. Two of the graves belong to sons of President Theodor Roosevelt.

"Here rests in Honored Glory

A Comrade in Arms

Known but to God"

 

Towards the end of our time in Normandy, we took a day trip to Le Mont St. Michel. St. Michel is an island/castle stronghold a little ways west from the D-Day beaches. It is very cool. It sits on a rocky protrusion/island on the beach, and when the tide comes in, it is almost completely surrounded by water. That also means, that you have to have your car out of the parking lot before the tide comes in. Construction on Le Mont St. Michel is said to have begun around the year 708 when the Archangel Michel instructed Bishop of Avranches, St. Aubert to build it. It started out as a small monastery, and tool hundreds of years to be build up to what it is today. Fun fact: the island has never been taken by an invading army.

Le Mont St. Michel. Photo courtesy of Travis Harper.

We drove through Paris on our way back to Germany and decided that we wanted to stop and take a look at the Eiffel Tower. Thank the Lord for a GPS. Paris was crazy confusing and the people there drive like lunatics.

Berlin

As I mentioned in my last post, we took a school trip to Berlin this last week. We were unbelievably busy for the four days that we were there. We would start touring as a group in the morning and finish late in the afternoon, when our teachers would set us free to explore on our own. We toured, as a group, the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Reichstag (Parliament), the Bundeskanzlermat (Chancellery), the Deutsche Bahn (German rail conglomerate), the ZDF-Hauptstadtstudio (major German news/tv network), the Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen Memorial (memorial located at a former east Berlin Stasi prison), and the Charlottenburg Palace and Garden. We also took a group boat tour down the Spree river which runs through the heart of Berlin.

After we were done as a group, we (the usual suspects) would head straight for another museum or attraction. Most museums close at 6 which didn't leave us much time to physically get to them, let alone have enough time to thoroughly look through them, but we managed fairly well. We visited the Olympic Stadium built by Hitler for the 1936 summer games where Jesse Owens dominated the podium, winning gold in the 100m, 200m, long jump, and the team 4x100m.

We also visited the German History Museum one evening, this was one of the cases where we didn't have much time to look through it. We managed to make it through the first floor which consisted of the beginning of Germany's history through 1918. The museum had a very interesting section on World War I. I haven't seen many artifacts from the Great War, and it was especially interesting to see a German perspective on it. I think the German History Museum was my favorite of all the places we visited in Berlin. I was a little sad that I didn't get to see the portion on World War II, but I think I am going to be ok.

Before this trip, I never really understood the true nature of what it had meant to live in East Berlin or East Germany for that matter. I was born just a few months before the wall fell, which means that for as long as I can remember, there has only been a "Germany" and not a divided country. Of course, throughout my time in school I have leanerd about the division of the Germany after World War II and the subsequent Cold War. However, I never really thought about what life must have been like in the East, until our group visited the Hohenschoenhausen prison memorial.

The Hohenschoenhausen prison lies deep within former East Berlin, amongst high-rise communist designed apartment buildings and run-down, vacant factories. The prison was run by the Stasi. The Stasi were the secret police of East Germany, Stasi stood for the "shield and sword of the party" referring to the SED, which was the ruling party of East Germany. The prison's purpose was to detain people who were against anything to do with the DDR. Except the Stasi didn't just detain them, they also tortured them, and for the most part, the majority of the prisoners who came to Hohenschoenhause were guilty of nothing. We toured the torture rooms, prison cells, and interrogation rooms. I instantly realized that the people of East Germany not only had communism forced upon them, but they also had fear and insecurity forced upon them.

While we were at the Berlin Wall Memorial, Travis asked our tour guide "When did the East realize they were not going to succeed as a country?"

Our tour guide responded, "The moment they began putting the wall up, because a truly safe and secure country doesn't need to wall their citizens in."

Reichstag

 

 Brandenburg Gate

Ridin' on the boat

 

 Jeremy, Travis, and Will taking the same picture?

 

 

Electrified fence at the prison

 

 Main building at the prison

 

 Cell

 

 Charlottenburg Palace

A reconstruction of the Berlin Wall (looking from the West side to the East side).

The tower in the left corner was purchased, on eBay, by the musuem from a private owner 

who dismantled it and took it home after the wall fell as a souvenir.

.

Frohe Ostern!

Happy Easter everyone!

Travis, Will, Courtney and I attended church service today at the Lutheran church that is attached to the castle where our school is located. It was a very nice service. They had a small group of trumpets and trombones playing along with the giant pipe organ. We didn't know the German hymns very well, but we could usually chime in with a "hallelujah" here and there. We ended up sitting next to our landlord Frau Hahn. She was really excited to see us there, and little did we know, but as we left the house this morning she sneaked into our kitchen and left us each an Easter basket full of chocolate and hard-boiled eggs for us to find when we got home.

I've been very busy the last two weeks with school and traveling with the gang. Last weekend we went to Munich and stayed in a hostel Friday and Saturday night. It was a lot of fun, and I really like Munich, but a couple days wasn't enough time for me to see everything I wanted to. So, Travis and I decided that we are going to go back sometime before the trip is over. There are some great deals for group train tickets. Five of us can pretty much go where ever we want in southern Germany for about 4 euros apiece. We have also managed to visit Heidelberg and Würzburg.

Glockenspiel

Pork-Knuckle and Potato-Noodle rolls

On Tuesday we took a class trip to one of Audi's production plants that is not far from Bad Mergentheim. As everyone already knows, I really like cars, so as far as I was concerned this was the best field trip ever. The plant is in Neckarsulm and produces most of Audi's luxury sedans and most importantly the Audi R8. The R8 is Audi's famous sports car. The base model retails for around $100,000 so needless to say I won't be able to ship one home to my Pops, but I wish I could! They were little sticklers about taking pictures in the plant, I guess they don't want their secrets getting out or something, so we were only able to take photos in the entry foyer.

After our morning tour at the plant, we jumped aboard our bus and headed to a little town called Bad Wimpfen for the rest of the day. Bad Wimpfen was unbelievably beautiful. It is a small medieval town that looks very similar to world famous Rothenburg, but hasn't been overrun by tourism. In fact, I'm pretty sure we were the only foreigners there. We had lunch at a small cafe and then wandered around town for the rest of the day. 

We're taking another school trip this week. We leave for Berlin on Tuesday and we are going to stay there for four days. The school sent us a schedule of events for when we are there, and it's going to be crazy. It's going to be go go go! I'll write about it when I get back.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

After week filled with long lectures on Human Resource Management and Macro-Economics, we were ready to get out of town for a little while. School was exhausting this week thanks to overly lengthy lectures and classroom windows that revealed blue skies and borderline 70 degree weather.

We were able to enjoy the weather Friday evening at a barbecue at one of the German student's apartment. I was a little jealous of the location of the apartment. It sat up on one of the small valley walls that surround Bad Mergentheim. Needless to say, this meant the backyard had a really nice view of Bad Mergentheim and a little bit of the surrounding area.

I found some bratwurst wrapped in bacon at the grocery store, and yes, it tasted just as good as it sounds.

The usual suspects met Saturday morning at the train station and we took off for Rothenburg ob der Tauber. I was fortunate enough to visit Rothenburg my first time in Germany with the exchange group, and I was very excited to go back. It is an incredibly well preserved medieval town surrounded by a wall. It's well known for a Christmas museum, a criminal torture museum, and a very intricate wood carving of the last supper in St. James church.

We hit all three and then took a short walk along the city wall. After that, we proceeded to stroll down less traveled streets in an attempt to get lost and maybe see some of the local culture. We ended up at a beer garden. That counts, right?

                                                                   I missed the memo..

                                                               A view from the city wall.

Back to School

I already broke my rule of writing every Sunday night. Sorry about that, please forgive me.

Last Monday we started school. We started off with a week-long crash course in German. Since I already speak a little, I was put into a class of four other Americans (who also had some experience) and we went a little beyond counting and naming fruit.

It was amazing how much German I learned in one week, and it also made me realize how much German I had forgotten. I finished my German Minor two years ago, and haven't been in a German class since. We spent the week describing pictures, playing games, and watching a German film. I wish all my German classes had been like that. Our teacher, Herr Spangenberger, showed a lot of patience with us as we stumbled through our sentences all week. On Friday, after we took our end of the week German test, we hopped abroad a train to Stuttgart.

There were about fifteen of us in the group and we spent Friday night on the town. Checking out the local 'scene' if you will. Saturday we did some sight seeing. It was unbelievably gorgeous, about 70 degrees and sunny.  

                                                                         Travis and I on top of the TV-Tower

Looking down on Stuttgart

Today we started our Business courses. I start with Macro-Economics. How our classes are scheduled is that we take one at a time, and it runs all day for about a week and half, culminating in a substantially large test on the last day. Although this is going to be a little intense, the bright side is that almost all my tests are on Friday mornings, which leaves me with a school-free weekends.

Tonight we went and played basketball with some of the students from our school. Three guys from the US Army base in Mosbach also played. All three were about half my height, but still showed me a thing or two about how to shoot hoops.  And it might come as a shock to you, but all three were also baffled that I had not played organized basketball since the fourth grade. 

Americans Everywhere!

All of the students coming from Oregon State are now in town. There are about twenty of us total, which if I have my facts straight makes this group the largest OSU has ever sent. It is nice to see so many friendly faces. Today I mostly wandered around town meeting up with everyone and seeing where everybody is staying. We are all scattered around Bad Mergentheim in various apartments and hotels.

Yesterday Travis, Will and I caught a train to Nuremberg for the day. Nuremberg is a magnificent city, full of history, located west of us in Bavaria. The city is known for being the location of major Nazi-Party rallies held in the late 1930's to the early 1940's at the height of the Third Reich. However, there is much more to Nuremberg's history than this. It also known for an incredible Christmas market, many notable artists, and these little sausages called Nürnberger Rostbratwürste. Very tasty, I must say. We stopped at a small restaurant in the heart of town and enjoyed a few ourselves.

                                                                      Travis and I in front of Lorenzkirche

On the train to Nuremberg, we were confronted at our seats by a girl with three pink roses. She spoke quickly, I couldn't understand anything she said, and when she was finished speaking handed each of us one of the roses. She then realized, by the baffled looks on our faces, that we had no idea what was going on. She then, in English, told us that she was riding the train with a group of friends and one of them was a bride to be. She explained it was an old tradition to have strangers, handsome young men of course, to deliver the future bride roses on the train ride to her bachelorette party. So we marched down the isle, pink roses in hand, and delivered them to the bride.

A little while later, after we had returned to our seats, all the girls showed up again and handed each of us a shot of berry-schnapps. We had to drink them, at 10am, with the future bride. This was the second part of the old tradition. The Germans are funny.

                               Will, Travis and I with the bachelorette (Gray shirt between Travis and Will)

School starts tomorrow, except I still feel like I am on vacation. I'm sure sitting in class from 9am to 4pm should bring me back to reality.