Christmas Break!

Yesssssssss! It's finally Christmas Break! I'm so happy to have a couple weeks without going to class! Though it's definitely not to say I don't have plenty of class work to do, but at least I can veg out a bit before stressing about school again. Here's a list of things I want to accomplish during the holidays:
1. Eat lots of sweets. It's Christmas, and it's Germany. What other reason is there? Right
2. Go hiking in the forest again, we went last year in October and it was really nice, but it's always good to revisit in different times of the year.
3. Find a job for the next few months. Part time/student jobs, or anything where I can use my English skillz.
4. Head start on some projects, to make my life in January a bit less hectic.
5. Bratwursts.

Oh, have I mentioned how excellent the bratwursts are here? Lawdy thems tasty! On Saturday Erika and I have plans to go to the Weihnachtsmarkt again to celebrate the end of her thesis nightmare, and I've heard there is a stand with foot long bratwursts. It's gonna be awesome.

Wish me luck on my checklist!

It's official!

Yay! I've successfully navigated my way through the German bureaucracy! Thanks to all those who've helped, especially Erika for coming to my appointment and making sure I have all the documents ready.  Here is my official German Residency Permit (Aufenthaltstitel) which permits me to stay in Germany for a full 12 months! I'll have to register again next year, but for now I'm happy that I made it.

This is a photo of me from last year. Now I have a new haircut that I self-styled with a little help from Erika. 

Yep it's a selfie, but I wanted to show how well I'm blending in to the Euro culture. There's a few odd spots around the back, but pretty good for a $0 haircut

December Holidays

I always enjoy the Christmas season at home, the cold fresh air is still new and exciting enough to keep you hoping for the first snow, decorations begin to appear, for better or worse depending on the displayer's tackiness, and people are generally in a bit better mood, trying to be fun and friendly in the wind up for Christmas Day. But it's a pretty different story here in the land of Saint Nicklaus. Yes the air is crisp, the decorations are up, but it seems the whole city has changed to welcome the holidays. And O Sweet Baby Jesus do the Germans love their Christmas season! The German Weihnachtsmarkt is a pretty common display in most German towns and cities, and in Erfurt they do it with gusto. Bringing in enormous evergreen trees to plant in the city center, constructing stand after stand that peddle all kinds of sweets, drinks, clothes, decorations, and more.  I think I'll just let some of the pictures do all the talking for now.

Main entrance of the Domplatz market

Massive Weihnachtspiramid

Carousel in the city center

The shopping center is called Anger. Here it is nicely decorated with little wooden stands leading up to the entrance

Other shops selling hot Glühwein at the Rathaus (city hall)

Langos is a delicious Hungarian food that was pretty popular at the Christmas market. It's almost like a really puffy naan dough smeared with garlic cream sauce and cheese. Can also add sausage to it, naturally.

Pretty excited about Glühwein and a funnel of candied almonds. Glühwein is definitely the best way to stay warm at the market. Dozens of places to buy it from, and there are an assortment of mugs to drink from. I liked this one the best.

Yup, it's an open carriage Ferris Wheel at 8pm in December

There were all kinds of games and things for the kiddies, including Bumper Cars and a train ride through the forest.

View from the cathedral steps

Definitely the place to be on a Friday night

This is the big Christmas market, but there are little stand set up all around the city, and another smaller, more traditional market set up a few hundred meters away at the Krämerbrucke. Traditional as in, people dress in medival costumes, serve different foods, and have live bagpipers for some reason. It's a pretty amazing spectacle and I wish there were more things like this in the US, but I think strict drinking laws would prevent the masses from coming and enjoying the hot Glühwein.

November welcome week

This is my class, well, most of my class. The Willy Brandters of 2015. The final tally I believe was 74 students from approximately 35 countries (but whose counting?). This picture is from our Welcome Reception this past Wednesday after more than 5 weeks of classes. It was quite an event, hence the fancy clothes. We had some big wigs of the university, the historical society, and from the major money donors of the school come and give some context to the school and it's icon, Willy Brandt. This was followed with an excellent buffet including salad and dessert and unfortunately only one complimentary champagne. There were a lot of photos taken by a professional photographer and others and they may crop up here later once I find any good ones of me. The professional setting here eventually dissolved as the night wore on, and many of us ended up going to the Kicker Keller, an underground bar in the center of town that features cheap drinks and free foosball (provided you pay 8euros for a year long membership card). It was pretty fun seeing so many people with dresses, suit jackets, and ties at a dive bar playing surrounding a foosball table. It's unreal how good some Germans are at foosball, and they have some interesting rules for each game. For example, when one team scores, they pull the ball out and place it at the feet of the team which just got scored on, to serve as a kickoff like it real soccer. Secondly, there is a pretty informal system of knocking the table with your knuckles to signal your intention to play the next game. This often leads to confusion (especially with drinks in hand) because multiple knock at several different times and then arguments break out for who is actually supposed to play. The quarter system in the US is pretty handy, but doesn't really apply when all the games are free. But damn do they respect the foosball table there- everything was well oiled and felt amazing.

Urgent! Tortilla Update!

In a recent post I sort of went off on how disappointed I was in the Mexican food here, but things are actually looking up and I thought my blog needed an update: I finally found a shop that supplies some pretty decent tortillas, of the Poco Loco variety. They were thicker, softer, and held their own when filled with the standard burrito affair. So for now, I can rest assured that my burrito cravings will go satisfied. Soon I will have to create my favorite recipe, the breakfast burrito. Although I'm probably going to need to adjust the recipe to fit my new environment. Germany is famous for it's sausages, so these might have to fall under the meat lover's category of B.Burrito

More city pics!

I've taken a few more pictures of the city but I forgot to take some of the university grounds. The weather has actually been pretty warm and not too rainy. Supposedly this time last year, there was already snow on the ground so we've been fortunate.

Late night walk through downtown

These are 3 liter bottles of booze. The double handle

The forest park nearby our apartment has a bunch of old water work facilities and pipelines coming out of it. 

Big boring apartment buildings

 

Some raw buildings around town, but I kinda like spooky post industrial vibe they give

Old hospital right next to the university. You can walk right up to the partially boarded up front door and peek inside

Döners and Nachos

Well school has been progressing nicely so far. 3 weeks in and not too much stress yet, so that has been nice. I'm going to sign up for 3 German classes so I think I will be able to improve my language skills very quickly. Bonus.  I got a little more practice in this week when Erika and I went to a "Neu in Erfurt" Facebook group meeting. Basically you go and meet some other people who are interested to make new friends and then have some dinner. It was a group of about 30-40 people and we went to a pretty nice restaurant in the center of town. It had all kinds of food and drinks on hand, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I ordered an appetizer of "Nachos" with "scharf Soße" (spicy sauce). Now, I've already had some questionable experience with Mexican food here in Germany. Last year I went to a Mexican restaurant in Freiburg and spent way too much money for what I deemed as mid-quality Mexican food. It was good, but it wasn't any special, and for $20 a plate, I was relatively disappointed. I've tried making Mexican food here too, but I can only find 1 brand of tortillas in any of the grocery stores and it is complete shit. They come in a 4 pack for 2 euros or so, but each one is just so thin and brittle that it's impossible to roll anything up in them. We tried making some bean and rice burritos with a few veggies in it and the veggies burst through the shell in 8 different places and I ended up with a taco salad. But despite these failures, I still love Mexican food so I really hoped this fancy restaurant would do me a solid and lay out some serious nachos. But, I was wrong again. Nachos here consist of someone opening up a bag of mostly broken tortilla chips (the same tortilla chips that I buy at the grocery store for 90cents)  and dumping them on a plate. And the spicy sauce was actually just a smallish bowl of not spicy tomato sauce, but sweet and sour sauce. The exact same sweet and sour sauce you get at any crappy Chinese restaurant. No tomatoes, no sour cream, no olives, no cheese, nothing remotely related to American, or Mexican as far as I know, nachos. 4 euros of Supreme Disappointment. It actually made me sad. I know I probably should have read the description more carefully, and I could have even had the waiter take it back and get something else for me, but I didn't know how to ask politely in German, and I didn't want to be "That guy" in front of new acquaintances. I'm never ordering Mexican food here again. I'm really going to miss eating it too, but it's just not worth it even trying to eat it when I'm only going to be disappointed.

BUT this has given me a new long term goal here: I want to open a Döner and Nacho shop. I know very little about operating a food business, but I think my idea is a winner. Don't get me wrong, döner here is excellent, it fills every happy receptor in both my brain and my mouth, but the one thing thats missing is the right hot sauce to go with it. Some stores offer the crushed red peppers to sprinkle in with the mix, but that never quite gets the right spice spread evenly throughout the whole thing (I forgot to mention that the dough they use can be made into a REAL tortilla like dough, or can be made into a pita bread style). I was thinking more along the lines of Sriracha or even some solid tasbasco-esque hot sauce, or even some hot shit like Blairs for the tough guys. There is usually a fair about of garlic cream sauce they add into the standard döner that it should create a really nice mix of flavors. AND on the side you can also order some serious nachos with all the good fixings, but maybe instead of ground beef or something they can use some of the same döner meat to reduce costs. There are already plenty of pizza and döner and even noodle options at all the shops I've been to, but I think my shop could seriously make some money. This is of course, my plan for after I work elsewhere and have some stable income...

To my family, and my wonderful family Christmas holidays and holiday traditions. I'm already missing them even though Christmas is 2 months away. I would love to ship some of this home for the holidays, but I think it's too heavy and fragile for trans-Atlantic shipping.

That was only two weeks?

Orientation for the MPP program ended last week and I'm pretty much finished with my first week of classes and I wanted to mention just a few key points that my leaders have used to describe the program. The first and foremost is so obvious it is impossible not to notice, like that very special mixture of odors, the stinging, nasal cavity opening smell of piss and bleach that reminds you you have entered a men's public bathroom. It's that same kind of unmistakable clarity that we are a very diverse group of people. I've met many of my 70 person class, we stretch from about 30 different countries spanning 4 continents (no one from Australia or Antarctica). As unique as the people is their previous education and training- we have people with backgrounds not only in political science or international relations, but also philosophy, theology, architecture, social work, education, law, English, European studies, human rights, computer science, and engineers of all varieties. I would be a fool to say there is a boring, or uninteresting person among us. After two weeks I feel like I can make some very interesting and long lasting friendships, and it's exciting to be around them for another two years. I will get to know some more so than other, as there is a significant amount of group work involved in the courses.
My greatest deterrent at the moment is 8am class 3 days a week, which means waking up before dawn to have enough time to press some hot coffee through my body before heading to the bus stop. The traveling is worse now because there is major construction through one of the main thoroughfares from the south, where I live, to the north, where the school is. I take a 5 minute bus, get off, take a 10-12 minute walk through narrowed, fenced in passageways next to construction workers dressed in orange and blue, to rush to my tram that faces the enormous cathedral on the hill nearby, only to take another 5 minute tram ride to the university complex. Fortunately the walk is through one of the nicer cobbled streets in the downtown district and as a result, I've gotten much more familiar with some of the streets.
Today Erika and took a walk through the more historic section of town, known as the Krämerbrucke. This involved a trip through some narrow streets lined featuring original Thuringen restaurants, jewelry stores, and various other arts and crafts. I'll have to take pictures to show better details, and I have the feeling that these sections of town own a completely different atmosphere at night, perhaps with snowflakes falling...

Tomorrow is the first day of orientation for the Willy Brandt School class of 2015.  It's a full schedule from 9am to 4pm with an assortment of activities, including the typical welcoming speeches and get-to-knows, as well as a campus tour. I'm pretty excited because I haven't been to the campus yet, so everything will be new for me. I don't expect the buildings to be spectacularly beautiful or interesting, unlike American universities, German schools are cheap, meaning they don't get a lot of tuition money to pay for brand new things all the time. When there are 25,000 students, with many of them paying $15k or $20k a year for school, one could expect fancy new buildings, indoor training facilities, buffet style cafeterias and the like. But at a little more than $4,000 a year, the education is the main focus.

I'm not only interested in seeing the school, but also getting to meet some of my fellow classmates. I've met a few of them already, but just briefly. I went out to have a drink with some of them on Friday, including people hailing from Canada, Nepal, India, China, Austria, Egypt, Brazil, Jordan, the Philippines, and more Canadians. So far everyone was quite friendly, and I'm excited to get to know them better. I think it will be a pleasant change of pace working with people who are genuinely interested in the school, unlike many of my undergraduate classes at University of Iowa. Here I imagine that I will spend a lot of my time in class listening to intelligent conversation with people from all over the world, and with varying degrees and work experiences. Being younger and inexperienced, I have a lot to learn from my new classmates. I'll be happy not being the only one to drive discussions and shaking my head, silently cursing the multitudes of bad comments from the girl with the sweatpants and Uggs and too much foundation, or the dude with the backwards Chicago cubs hat, a football t-shirt, and basketball shorts.

But I must rest now, I have to wake up early and traveling by public transport is slightly more time intensive than my usual 1 mile bicycle commute.

Deutschland Runde Zwei!

Whoa, whoa whoa... I'm back in Germany, nearly 10 months after leaving last year. This time will be a bit more permanent, most likely for 2 full years. There are quite a few differences between then and now, all of which seem to be major positive changes. First and foremost, I have a purpose here already as I will be a full time student at the Willy Brandt School for Public Policy beginning next week. Studying, will keep my mind active and force me to get out of the apartment everyday for classes. Last year I spent several days in Freiburg without ever leaving the apartment. Idle days and hangovers were a common occurrence.  To remedy my headaches and dry mouth I turned to döner kebabs, soda, and kräuter liquor.  Combine that with a Super Nintendo emulator, and I pretty much failed to do anything good for myself.

Another positive is that Erika and I have our own apartment a little outside of the downtown district of Erfurt. It's small, ahem, cozy, but after a trip to Ikea and a few other stores downtown, things are beginning to look more like a home, rather than a hotel room.  The final homely touch was a French press coffeemaker, nothing is more homely than fresh hot coffee when you wake up. We still need some decorations and a better closet, but most of the essentials have been met. Needless to say, I'm very excited to be here in Erfurt with Erika. It's a new city for us both, and so far it has been enjoyable. The main shopping area is very historic looking, with an enormous cathedral on a hill overlooking the city center, and old castle grounds from over 1000 years ago still preserved. As an American, I'm slightly overwhelmed by the age of some of the buildings around here. I'm always amazed at how well history is preserved in German cities, surrounded by modern niceties and despite a violent history. When Erika arrived, we took advantage of the nice weather and walked through the city and discovered a carnival going on in the Domplatz, near the city center.  As a result, we got a great view of the city from on top of a ferris wheel. Some of the pictures actually do justice to how pretty this place is.

 A view from on top of the ferris wheel

The carnival celebrating Oct. 3 Reunification Day

Another view from on top the ferris wheel

Domplatz Cathedral

Reunited and it feels so good

East Germany has the best walk lights: a man with a hat walking purposefully. The Do Not Walk signs are less exciting, just a red man with his arms sticking straight out, he still has a little hat though!

Some pics of our little apartment

This little Ikea shelf will serve as a clothing rack for now

And a nice little courtyard below

That's all I have for now, I plan to continue writing on this blog more frequently than before. More pictures and updates to come!