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.

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