Osterferien Part 1: Berlin, Bucharest, Brasov and some Budapest

I'm currently in Vienna, but I wanted to share a few pictures from my trip so far.  After a great Fulbright Conference in Berlin I caught a flight Thursday morning to Bucharest, Romania.  Took a train to Brasov in Transylvania with a stopover in Sinaia.  Had an adventurous time on a night-train from Brasov to Budapest.  Bussed it from Budapest to Vienna.  Seriously, how's that for planes, trains and automobiles?

 

P.S. Guess who went caving in Budapest?  Pretty BA if I do say so myself!

Wanderlust

So there's this great German word Wanderlust that you only seldomly see used in English, but I think it's perfect.  Wanderlust literally translates into English as the desire to travel, and it's something I'm very familiar with right now.  After an exciting February, March has been a fairly relaxed month in leading up to my big plans for Osterferien (Easter holidays).  After lots of planning and booking, I'm really ready to get out there and do some exploring.  Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'm meeting Bill and Sara at the train station to head to Berlin where we have a Fulbright Conference for a few days.  It should be a good start to the break, and it'll be nice to be wined and dined, but my sight is really set on what happens after Berlin, what some have dubbed my Eastern Europe Extravaganza or EEE or simply E^3 (well, while these sentiments have been echoed by many, the name was really coined by Jackie). 

Eastern Europe Extravaganza (E^3): Thursday morning I fly out of Berlin to Bucharest, Romania.  Then I'll spend about two weeks making my way back to Hannover via Transylvania, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic.  I'm excited about the exoticism of Bucharest, the mountains and tacky Dracula souvenirs in Transylvania, the grandeur of both Buda and Pest, the beauty of Vienna and the beer in Pilsen.  I should work for a travel company or something--there's more adjectives where those came from!

Phishing for Idiots

To me, spam and the internet have always been inextricably linked.  Remember the good old days when the daily influx of emails into your inbox were about 50% real emails and 50% spammers trying to sell you reduced price consumer goods, Viagra and porn?  Those were truly the good old days.  Then came the threat of phishers, people trying to trick you into giving out your personal information, passwords and bank info.  All of this quickly accelerated people's fear of identity theft, as if we didn't have enough to worry about with computer bugs and trojan viruses.

Well call me an oddball (you wouldn't be the first) but sometimes I miss that random absurd piece of spam that would float in with your normal emails and make your day.  Over the past few weeks, I've been keeping an eye on my now-overprotective email system's spam system, and I thought I would share a few instant (or in some cases old) spam classics.


1) payment

Well, at least it's straight to the point.  The interesting twist on this spam is that Femi Babafemi (fun name, right?) is actually working against spam artists.  Wow, that's really nice of him.  Apparently through all of this hard work at his really official sounding job he's amassed quite a load of money that he wants to share with me!

2) Dearest Friend

This one is just kind of awful.  Mrs. Marie Rajie is currently dying from terminal cancer in a London hospital.  She wants me to be the beneficiary of her gold and diamond fortune only if "God will in his infinite  mercies touch this project the way [she] promised" and donate the $1,550,000.00M USD to charities for the "poor and motherless babies home where I came from."  Wow, Marie, way to pull on the heartstrings.

3) Good News!!!

When I first saw this one, I knew it was going to be good because of the three exclamation points!  Apparently two boxes containing 2.5 million USD each were found in the London Heathrow airport with my name on them, so Rev. Frank Williams wants to send them to me.  That's really nice of him!

4) You won Patrick

I got really excited by this subject--I never win anything!  Unfortunately all I really won was the right to get spammed and cheated by 150 casino promotions "No max No Limits Extractions."

5) Be My Friend

So this one was actually a friend request I got on Facebook.  Always curious to see who's requesting my "friendship," I clicked on Mercedes Wrinn's profile.  Who wouldn't want to be friends with Mercedes and see her "etroic pcitreus".  By the way, while she was posting the link to these pictures (sign up required) she was having a great time at the mall!!


Gosh, these spam emails are almost as fun as the envelopes my mom used to get from the Publishers Clearing House that had fake checks and car keys in them!

The Brighter Side

Today was, all in all, a pretty good day.  After a seemingly rocky start with less than thrilling English lessons, it was nice to find that the rest of my day actually turned out pretty great.  I had a short midday break to catch up on some news around the world and eat a quick lunch before running back to school.  Every Tuesday for the past month or so I've been helping out with an extra English lesson at the request of Bernhard, the teacher I lived with for a week or so in September.

Every year Bernhard organizes a trip to for some of the vocational students to travel to Houston, Texas for three weeks and take a few classes at a technical school.  This extra class has really become a highlight of my week.  The eleven students taking part in the exchange this year are genuinely some of the nicest people I've met here, and while their English is definitely not up to par with the upper level Fachgymnasium classes I teach (a Gymnasium is an advanced high school for university-bound students), they make it for it with enthusiasm and willingness.  I've found that sometimes the problem with gifted or advanced students is that they are sometimes too afraid to volunteer in class at the risk of saying something wrong or "dumb."  Bernhard's group is almost fearless in their desire to talk to me in English, and I'm actually somewhat jealous of their unabashed attitude.

After leaving school for the second time today and in much higher spirits, I enjoyed a very serene walk to the university campus, and was able to bask in the rarely seen (as of late) sun.  After three consecutive days of snow, I think today marked the beginning of the (very) slow beginning of spring.  The optimist in me is finally showing up this winter!  Now let's just hope these next few days of sun will take care of this lingering snow.  After briefly walking around a physics workshop and poster session I happened upon and spending a few minutes in the International Admissions Office, I started walking home with an extra bounce in my step in a piece of paper in my hand confirming my official enrollment at the Leibniz Universität Hannover!

To top off an already great day, I cooked a great dinner, if I do say so myself!, of chicken tikka masala, shared a bottle of equally great red wine with my roommate and did a bit of trip planning for my upcoming school break (Osterferien or Easter break).  Details to follow soon!

Last but not least, I finally took a picture I had been meaning to take for months now.  The VW-Tower in Hannover was actually built by the Deutsche Bundespost in 1959, but it was taken over by VW in 2000.  The VW-Tower is actually pretty fitting for Hannover, since VW is one of the largest employers in the region.  Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, a brand of the VW Group, is actually headquartered in Hannover and employs about 15,000 people in the Hannover region.

The Beat of a Different Drum

One thing I've noticed in Germany is that many aspects of life here are...well...a bit slower.  I give you two (somewhat related) case studies.

1)  I came home from school one day in the beginning of December and was surprised to find three workers preparing to repaint the entrance and stairwell of my apartment building.  Work started fairly slowly, but I gradually got used to waking up those early winter mornings to the noise of their radio and friendly banter and the smell of their cigarette smoke slowly wafting through the building.  After a brief break around Christmas they returned and brought out the primer and paint with them, and the lovely smell of oil-based paint was thrown into the mix.  Over the next few months I got used to passing them on the stairwell on my way to and from school and various engagements around town.  Sometimes, when I was in an good mood or they seemed extra cheerful, I would even offer them coffee and share a few words with the friendly one of the bunch.

One day, as I was rushing out to meet Libby at the Hannover Main Train Station, I even had the pleasure of brushing up against a freshly painted wall when one of the workers almost ran into me.  Sadly, I know have a (mostly) ruined black jacket that I'm still trying to salvage.  Last Thursday I came home from school and started bounding up the stairs when I noticed something was wrong--the workers were gone.  The wet paint signs were missing and the smell of paint was growing faint.  Just as soon as I had grown accustomed to their daily presence they were gone.  After over three months of daily work on our apartment building (and little daily progress), their departure was definitely bittersweet.


2) In mid-December, I was finishing washing my dishes from breakfast and getting ready to head out the door for school when I was startled by a knock on our apartment door.  I opened the door to find a man I had seen once or twice in the building and who introduced himself as the apartment maintenance man.  He explained that they had discovered a water leak in one of the apartments and wanted to know if we had noticed anything unusual.  I told him I didn't think we had, but he still asked if he could look around really quick.  I know what you guys are thinking.  If this were a movie you would probably be screaming "Don't let him in!" but Hannover and the neighborhood I live in are quite safe, and I had seen the guy before.  Turns out he was definitely legitimate, and there was in fact a water leak.  Guess where it was?  That's right, my room.

 It wasn't a big leak, but he said that sometime after New Years a pipe in the wall would need to be replaced, and that he would call my roommate Poisy (who I rent from) with the details.  Nothing was said about this until the second week in January, when, all the sudden, construction started in my room.  I had to pack most of my room up, and while I didn't know at the time, I would pretty much be living out of boxes for the next five weeks.  January 12th they opened up my wall and replaced the pipe but said the wall needed to be left open to dry before they could fix it.  The whole process gave my room a good coating of dust and left it with lots of character.  So much character, in fact, that when my upstairs neighbors would stomp around above me, extra character sprinkled from the ceiling.  Best part of this day was the new bedding I scored from my roommate while we washed my old bedding.  Let's just say that at one point she said I hope you aren't afraid of snakes!  Worst part was when it was decided to throw away the couch in my room (regardless of whether I wanted it or not).

After about two weeks, my wall was closed and partially plastered.  After a few delays due to very aggravating circumstances that I started writing a post about in early February titled "Hog Legs and Human Legs" that I decided to not post, my wall was completely plastered on February 8th and painted while I was in Düsseldorf on February 15th.  This was one chapter of my year in Germany, that I was happy to close.

Crazy March Weather

 So earlier today it hailed hard for a good 5-6 minutes.  It then proceeded to rain pretty hard for about half an hour.  Now, it's on and off snowing.
 
How's that for a variety of winter weather?

 

 

In other news, after a week of (relatively) warm weather including two days that peaked around 50 F, the Leine River in Germany is swollen with melted snow.  It's already flooded parts of two nearby towns and it has slowly risen up towards the banks here in Hannover.

 

 

 
To end on a slightly happier note, here are some pictures from this past Friday with Bill and Sara at the Ernst August Brauerei here in Hannover.  They've got the Münchner Beer gardens beat--at this brewery you order beer in 2 L increments instead of 1 L (but then again it's to share).  The beer on tap here is Hanöversch Pilsener, organic and pretty awesome!

 

 

Karneval in Germany

February has been a crazy month.  You might have been able to tell that simply from the low post count so far in February, but I've been a busy bee lately.  February started off with me in Paris, and I was greeted back in the school in Hannover with an extra large workload because of the number of teachers who are out right now.  My host teacher, Martina, broke her ankle on a huge patch of ice and has been out since.  Another teacher I work with, Louisa, has been having respiratory problems with bronchitis and asthma thrown in.  I also had two reports to finish for the Fulbright and the German Pädagogischer Austauschdienst, and I've always enrolled at the Leibniz Unversität Hannover to take a few seminar courses.

Enough of the boring stuff--the recent highlight of my stay in Germany was Karneval.  Karneval is an old tradition in Germany as well as in Europe and across the world (similar to celebrations like Carnevale in Venice, Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro).  In Germany, Karneval is particularly important in the Rhineland and in southern Germany where it's called Fasching.  The most famous Karneval celebrations in Germany are in Köln and Düsseldorf, where I was last weekend!

The whole week was a bit of a double treat/adventure, first Libby flew into Frankfurt on Wednesday and spent two nights with me in Hannover before we headed out to Düsseldorf on Friday for Karneval.  We met up with her friend Nora who now lives in Düsseldorf (Libby and Nora did a high school exchange, and we visited Nora in Leverkusen after our exchange in Wittenberg in 2006).  The best part of this whole Karneval am Rhein was that Libby and I got to meet all of Nora's friends who still live in the area and party with the "locals".  Friday we were immediately whisked away to the tiny village of Hitdorf where we caught the tail-end of the Hitdorf parade and then continued celebrating at a friend's house and then at a tiny Cafe/Beer garden that had been decked out for a huge Karneval party.  We had so much fun that night and stayed out pretty late, but little did I know at the time that this was just the beginning.

Saturday afternoon we met back up with Nora and friends and had a quick dinner before heading down to Köln for the famous Geisterzug (ghost parade) which is a nighttime "ghoulish" parade and some more partying in Köln.  Sunday we went to Langel, which is a village across the Rhine from Hitdorf and even smaller!  The Langel parade was one of my favorite moments, and definitely the hardest I've laughed in a while, because at this parade instead of throwing things out to the crowd they threw them at the crowd.  Not just small candy but also giant bars of chocolates and granola bars and stuff.  Imagine bending down for an awesome grab of a full-sized chocolate bar only to be pelted (seriously, pelted) with tons of bon bons and other small candies.  It was ridiculous.  After the parade we took a ferry across the Rhine and headed back to Hitdorf before we celebrated all night in a small beer brewery that was having a special Karneval party.  

By the time Monday morning rolled around, I was starting to get a cold, and since most of the locals had to work the following day, we took Rosenmontag a bit easier.  After going to the major Rosenmontag parade in Düsseldorf we grabbed a few drinks, sang a few more Karnevalslieder and grabbed food before heading out separate ways.  Tuesday meant saying goodbye to Libby after a great trip, and I headed back to Hannover and tried to recover from the marathon party that is Karneval.