Not so recent pictures

Finally I spent the time to upload pictures from my camera. I hadn't uploaded any pictures in a long time so these are a bit random. Most of it is food and drinks from our recent holidays.

 I FOUND A PALE ALE IN GERMANY!!! LIMITED TIME ONLY. It wasn't that great of a pale ale by comparison to some stuff in the US, but it had the right flavor and was perfect with the Thanksgiving dinner.

I went to a different grocery store and was pleasantly surprised with the new selection! I didn't like the 2 in the middle very much, too light and wheaty and Bavarian. The ones on the sides were good, especially the one on the right. Grevensteiner is now my new fav

Here is a glimpse of our Thanksgiving dinner. We had chicken instead of turkey, and it rocked! Brining is the only way to my meat-heart.

And for dessert we tried to emulate my favorite breakfast from Mom, the cream cheese cherry tarts. These got a little out of hand...hah! Seriously though they were gigantic and exploded everywhere.

For Erika's birthday we went to the Christmas market and ate bratwurst

And Langos! Can even see the steam (think fried bread with herbally sour cream on top)

Obligatory selfie

And dessert at home. I tried making French silk pie but it didn't turn out quite right. Not having quite the same ingredients as back home was the culprit of the mediocre dessert. I ended up eating most of it. We had just gotten back from the Christmas market and my camera lens had fogged up too.

For our anniversary we went to an American steak house and got a buffet of ribs and wings and other goodies. Food was awesome and never ending and I really like this picture except for the stupid Confederate flag in the background.  Some things just don't mean the same...

A WBS Joke

I want to start off this post with a joke: What do you get, when you put a Ghanaian man, in a sushi restaurant kitchen, in the middle of Germany?

A: A lot of strange looks.

Maybe you don't get the joke, but that's okay, it's because you don't know my classmate and friend, Anderson. He is from Ghana and recently started working sushi restaurant to make some money on the side of classes. I heard he was doing pretty well there and I asked him how he got a job in a sushi restaurant, and how he likes it. He told me that it's okay, but he gets a lot of strange looks. Which could be expected I guess, considering sushi and Africa do not usually meet, even less so in Erfurt, Germany.  But we should know better by now, there are so many immigrants working all over the world, and working in a kitchen for low wages is probably one of the most common occupations for migrant workers. It's just how The Spice is a Thai restaurant with a fully Mexican kitchen staff in central Iowa. It's not going to be reversing anytime soon either, just gotta get used to it.
I found Anderson's situation and his comments about his job quite funny. He is pretty stoic though, it won't get under his skin.

I think that's such a great thing about this school. For all the difficulties of international students, the language barriers, adjusting to different cultures, work ethics, and trouble of sharing quality jokes with each other, there is a completely different style of comedy that pops up every now and then that really is quite funny. It's a bit challenging to describe what kind of humor it is; it's kind of a surprise response, mixed with realistic-irony and a bit of humility. I think the Anderson case is a perfect example. He knows his situation, that he is doubly an outsider (an outsider squared?). But that is what allows him to see himself from another position, that he is twice removed from expectation.

That is probably the best and simplest example I can think of. But there are tidbits of this comedy everywhere. Perhaps another example came from a classroom example, where our professor told asked us to imagine we just became prime minister of Rwanda, shortly after the violence in 1996 wound down. He picked on a classmate from Jordan/UAE to answer the question and the response surprised me: "I would build more prisons". And right next to me, another classmate from Egypt muttered to me "That is such a typical Arab response". To that I had to laugh. There wasn't malice in either persons' comments, it wasn't religiously charged or anything, it was just a self-deprecating recognition of a character flaw.

Studium Unterwegs and Welcome Reception

Yes, classes have begun. And although I don't necessarily have many hours of class time each week, the number of things I should read or think about, and the number of group meetings I have never seem to end. That's all and well though, I suppose. Nothing like academia to speed the calendar along. Last week was exceptionally quick paced because we had our Welcome Reception event, this year at the local museum at the Anger (pronounced ahng-er, not anger like in English). It was a bit smaller of a location than last years reception, with only a modest supply of finger food and champagne, but that is just fine. It allowed students to mingle a bit better with other classmates and staff, before heading out to another museum basement to party. Strange that we would attend two museums to party at, though we were only allowed in the reception areas.

This Welcome Reception was also a bit more special than last year because of the attendance of Mr. Franz Haniel, one of the Willy Brandt School's major benefactors. I was actually quite excited to meet him; he comes from a very reputable family and has proven himself very successful and I believed he would have some very notable words for his keynote speech. I was also interested in meeting him because I personally am a recipient of his scholarship. It was one week ago that he spoke, and I will do my best to remember some of his key points from the speech. I do remember more precisely how he looked. He is somewhere in his mid 50s, lean, with very light blonde hair and blue eyes. He told us a bit about his history, that he grew up as part of the wealthy Haniel family, but his inheritance was not guaranteed and he had to earn his way into his position (though I imagine a high reputation and enormous wealth can pretty much pave the way to success). He studied mechanical engineering, always liked tinkering with cars, but had a change of heart somewhere along the way and moved into business and business consulting. Regardless of his position, he has continued to be a successful leader of his family's estate.  When your family has been in the top echelons of European economic history, and you have a 3 story mansion-museum to commemorate your family's history, you will probably get a lot of respect from other people. I definitely wanted to hear what he said.

Much of what he talked about could be taken from a business perspective, but I think that many of the same core principles apply for many aspects of life. For example, his number one point, was to establish your own personal values, and to make them known outwardly. Values are an especially important characteristic of any business or person. If you can express and uphold your key values, people will also believe you and follow you.

The second major takeaway I got from his speech was to "know your DNA" as he put it. Do not fool yourself into believing a certain thing or acting a certain way because it is what is outwardly expected of you. You have to really look hard at yourself, very far down, to know what kind of person you are and what you really want out of life. It's not as easy as it seems, and there will be second guesses, but you have to make an effort to see yourself as you are.

I wish I could remember some of this other points, they were all very good and wise.  I may ask around to my classmates and see if they remember any of the others.

In addition to his speech, I also got to meet Mr. Haniel more personally the following morning, when he invited the whole group of Haniel scholarship students to breakfast at his hotel. So while the food at the welcome reception were rather unremarkable, the food at this hotel was freakin' awesome, dude! They really brought new meaning to the term continental breakfast. I'm talking 6 different kinds of muesli, dozens of different kinds of breads, rolls, slices, whatever. They had mini pancakes, yogurts, 6 different fruit juices, dozens of kinds of sliced meats including bacon, breakfast sausage, bloodwurst, Hungarian salami and a bunch of other ones I didn't know. Also hashbrowns, eggs, cappuccino, fresh spring rolls, and dozens of kinds of sauces for everything. I opted for some sweet chili sauce (that was actually spicy) to put on my potatoes. It was amazing. There was even a guy on standby next to one of those fancy meat and cheese slicers, observing the levels of salami that were left and he would cut off individual slices of meat if you wanted it.

So yeah, breakfast went well, and we got to introduce ourselves to Mr. Haniel and ask him some more questions. He asked us to tell him what it is that helps you get out of bed in the morning. Which is actually a difficult question once you bar all the nonsense answers. There are the classic answers of "I'm just so curious about the world and what is out there, and when I get out of bed I just want to read CNN or the BBC" which are kind of a cop out to me because it puts on bogus intellectual mask. I liked the other answers that were a bit more humanist, like "I had this and this experience which really made me want to get out and help". I can appreciate that better.

I'm not sure how stupid my answer is, because I haven't shared it with anyone yet. But I told him I got out of bed because of something along the lines of: "I am still quite unsure what to expect in for me, and I get up, anxiously, to face the unexpected". Which I think is really quite true. I get up almost everyday without really knowing what is going to happen to me that day. As if I'm still waiting and hoping for something groundbreaking to occur that I can actually formulate my life around. So many things are still up in the air about what will happen to me in the next year(s) that it is enough to keep me anxious. I don't necessarily feel the need to get up because of an overwhelming curious nature, but more out of fear of what happens when I don't get out of bed. And an interesting thing about that is that I don't think you can ever run out of fear like you can run out of courage or stamina. I think it is something that is always there inside you unless you turn around and face it somehow. I don't mean to say that I am absolutely petrified with my situation, but there is a fair bit of anxiety about future days. Stability seems a world away. It won't always be this way, but for right now it's getting me up in the morning.

A long awaited return

Yessssssss. I am finally back in Germany and finally getting settled back into place. I knew this week would be busy, but it turned out quite well actually. But first! The travel report:  I arrived in my apartment last Saturday evening at about 7:30pm, which was almost exactly what I had calculated. That means I was traveling 5000 miles in roughly 24 hours, or about 208 miles per hour. Of course that includes time at the airports waiting to catch flights, and the travel time to Minneapolis and from Berlin airport to Erfurt. My initial flight out of Minneapolis to Chicago was cancelled because of weather, and I got lucky and caught a flight later that day direct to Paris, instead of detouring in Chicago (woo!). And another bonus was when I got off the plane in Berlin, it was about 68F and sunny, compared to about 35-40F and overcast in Minneapolis. It was so warm and I was so tired that it was a real struggle to stay awake at the bus station, but eventually my bus arrived and I fell asleep immediately. I don't think I made it out of the neighborhood in Berlin before I was out.

Long story short: Living in big cities is nice for flying because you don't have to take extra time to get to a big enough airport. Coulda shaved 7 hours of traveling if I was in a bigger place.

Okay, travel stories are over. I'm back, and apparently I didn't miss much of class while I was gone. I have one half page make up assignment for a class I missed, but other than that, no problem-o. I got my classes sorted out on Tuesday, and today I got my residence permit stuff taken care of for the most part. I just have to wait for a letter in the mail to come with a pin code, then I take it back to the Foreigner's Office and pick up my new card. And, if I understood the woman who helped me today, I don't even have to pay the 100 euro fee for a residence permit because I have a scholarship. I didn't know I could do that, but I brought in my scholarship documents just for the hell of it and was pleasantly surprised. Bonus!

Everything else is going swell too. My apartment was well in order since renting it to someone for the past couple months, I have my first soccer match today after a long hiatus. And don't worry Mom, I will be extra careful to stretch well and warm up well so I don't hurt my leg again.

Unfortunately I don't have any new pictures or anything. There will be more to come soon when Erika arrives. 2 weeks from today and we will see each other again! I'm looking forward to it very much.

And to all the homies who probably don't read this - It's always sad not to be able to hang out and I hope all is well. Miss the good times with all the late night guys. But I am very happy to be back in Erfurt, doing the school thing again. I feel a little more at ease for whatever reason might cause that. I guess even more at ease knowing that a lot of the bureaucratic crap is over with for awhile.

Much respect!

Whoa it has been a while

Warning: I wrote this blog post over the course of several weeks, as I kept forgetting about it, writing parts, getting distracted, and never finishing. So this may be one of the least cohesive posts I've written, but now it's done! So that's that.


Ah. So long, so sorry. I got back into the US at the end of July and I'm not really sure what happened to the last 8 weeks. I wrote once on my blog and outlined some of the things I wanted to do while I was at home and then the next day I deleted it because I didn't want to turn my blog into a stupid to-do list. Especially a to-do list of things that most people who read this don't actually care about. If I had an awesome to-do list like Get Gnarly with Charlie, that would be a different story... So maybe I should just write some things that I noticed are new/different. One thing for sure is that I had to readjust myself to the humor at my dad's bike shop. Everyone there has a pretty good sense of humor, but it often involves a heavy dose of sarcasm and a fair bit of strange voices and obscure references to customers or famous people that I am not used to. I think I've managed to adjust adequately, but it was a steep slope.

Other cool things about being back in the US involve riding my old bicycle, which was superbly upgraded by my dad while I was away. And in addition to riding bikes, riding bikes in Ames is soooo easy. There are so few people here that I can ride much faster, especially late at night, because there are no people, cars, trams, cobblestones, or complex intersections.  Also I have enjoyed a lot of good American traditions like drive thru Mexican food, bourbon whiskey, and tequila. Not like these things don't exist in Germany but it's just so much more plentiful here.

That being said, I am very much looking forward to my return to Germany. Erika and I have done long-distance stuff for so long that you would think we would be used to it by now. However, that is not the case and the last few weeks especially have seemed to last forever. My brain won't let me be in Ames peacefully and as a result I have been slowly piecing together all sorts of items to take back with me. A few more bicycle related accessories, a few more documents, and hopefully a goddamn internship waiting for me in February would be perfect.

Did I mention I still haven't found an internship yet? I am not sure if I am just terrible at applying, or that I'm applying for positions out of my area/qualifications, or if I just have bad luck.  Maybe some of both? One of the lazier people I know recently picked up an internship, so what does that make me?

Die Mannschaft

And now I would like to take a moment to describe my World Cup experience, which has been absolutely fantastic.  It's great being in a country where soccer is the most popular sport anyways, but when its a World Cup year and the national team is doing well, then even more so. Our program director is a big football fan, so the school gave some spare keys to students so we can go into the school at night and watch the late games on projectors. Most of the group games were either at 6, 9, or midnight, which is actually perfect timing as people finish work and classes just in time to watch. And of course, beer is a staple for any football match here, including in the schools. Awesome. However all the matches, especially during the group stages, led to some long days and late nights. For example on the US's first matchday I had class from 10am to about 5pm, then Germany played at 6pm, and a few hours later the US played at midnight. That was a long day...

And in order to make the the whole thing more exciting, a bunch of my classmates entered a betting pool. So every put in 5euros and we try to predict the outcomes of the matches. It has been really fun and I was in 1st place/near the top for awhile, but now it's too late to come back. The winner would end up with like 150euros or so. 

Now Germany is in the final after thumping Brazil 7-1 last night. I went to a public viewing area to watch the game with a bunch of classmates and I even met up with some of the guys I go Kegeln with. Expectations are high all around for Sunday's match and I really really really want Germany to win. How crazy would it be to be in the World Cup winning country?! Sehr verruckt. I would have liked to go out and party last night after the game because everyone was in such a good mood, but I couldn't muster the energy.   

Also when I was in Munich Erika and I had a chance to watch the Germany vs. Ghana game at a huge Biergarten. It was a really nice setup, lots of benches, 10 liters of beer came with our reserved seats, and a whole lot of Germans cheering. It was a really great experience, something that I don't think happens very often in the US.

EDIT: I just found this video and thought it was awesome. Merkel shows some real passion for her country.

 Reppin'

 So the 2 girls on the left behind Erika are her old friends from Uni who are living/visiting Munich. The 4 on the right are the people from Erika's new internship.  They were all super nice and the guy was impressed by my football knowledge as an American. 

This is actually the Argentina game, 2 hours before Germany. But the place was still pretty full. Got crazy at kickoff.

Anyways, I think if Germany wins the World Cup this year, I will have to buy a Thomas Muller shirt, number 13. 13 is actually a "good" number for German football. It was the number worn by another Muller, Gerd Muller, who had the game winning goal in the 1974 WC finale. Gerd Muller also has the 3rd most goals in WC history with 14, and he only played in 15 or 16 WC matches which is pretty incredible.

Munich!

Ah sorry I haven't written in awhile. I have been somewhat busy with classes wrapping up, but I should have written sooner. It's been so long I can't remember what to write first. I think I should start with uploading some pictures of my trip to visit Erika in Munich.

Erika lives pretty far away from the city center, so we walked through some rustic scenery to get to a nearby lake my first day there 

Downtown Munich at the Marienplatz. The big building in front is the old Rathaus (city hall) and the big building on the left is the famous Frauenkirche too bad it was under construction

The weather was a little gray this day, but it turned out sunny in the end.

Obligatory photo. Erika is not a common name in Germany, so this is nice.

Beer and Brezeln! So Bavarian

Bavarian breakfast. This is a classic meal to be consumed before noon. White sausages, prezels, sweet mustard and beer.

When people talk about how awesome the beer is in Germany, I think they mostly refer to Bavaria. I was very pleased with the selection and variety and the grocery stores here. Love the labels

 This is the walk way towards the Schloss Nymphenburg about 15 minutes away from the center of town. I don't know much about it, but I assume some old rich white guy had this place built.

 It was beautiful weather and a beautiful location. I can only imagine what this place looked like when it was new... Huge gardens, horses and wagons, and maybe a hedge maze somewhere.

We finally got the hang of taking good pictures together! The garden grounds go all the way to the through this building's gates and onto the other side with another huge canal and more gardens.

All in all a very successful and enjoyable trip. Munich is beautiful but I don't think I could live there myself. It is pretty expensive living and there are sooooo many tourists I could see myself getting frustrated by them if I was a long time resident there. I have a few more pictures on my Facebook album, but this should do for now.

Some comments on social media in an international school

Well, the day we knew would come for several weeks finally came. Yesterday Erika got on a bus to Munich to begin a 6 month long internship...boo. We have had a great last few months together and it seems like we never get to spend a summer together, which is no good because summer is the BEST time be hanging out, especially in Germany where the public parks are everywhere and the beer flows like water. As a result, I spent a lot more time on Facebook in the past 24 hours trying to fill some time and create the usual distractions from responsibilities. But I recently begin noticing more the kinds of things that come up on my feed, specifically the number of news articles and links to stories around the world that are coming from my international classmates. Makes sense, people are most knowledgeable about their own countries and still have family there so their local news is more important to them. Perhaps even more so because my school is for public policy and my classmates are very much the type of people who are interested in politics, news, social upheavals and international organizations. And the more I think about it and try to remember, the more I discover that a growing portion of my news is coming from news articles that people post in Facebook. The immediate response is "Duh, of course! That's why social media is so amazing, because you can learn about stuff happening all around world and the information is disseminated by individuals." And I admit, it is pretty cool to see what different classmates care about and to gain more information about the world, provided the news article and responding Facebook comments are written in English.

But then I start to realize that maybe this isn't as one-sidedly good as I originally thought because many of these international and political (social, economic) news stories are actually quite controversial and complicated issues. Yes it's great to gain information, but being informed is not the same thing as understanding. And when I read news from a colleague about their home, I inherently begin to formulate opinions as if I was also from that foreign land. The news my classmates post, whether it is good or bad, optimistic or critical, encourages me to take sides on an issue (or at the very least to share a perspective) even though I don't have the same background or comprehension of the issue. 

Perhaps an example would help. Yesterday I read a post from a Pakistani friend it was about how a girl in rural India was raped and her body was hung from a tree while the police did almost nothing to find and apprehend the attacker. It should come as no surprise that India has problems with sexual violence against women and girls, or that Indian politics and police can be pretty corrupt. These are well-known facts. But the ultimate, emotional appeal is simply: "India is bad." or more fantastically "India shelters corrupt police and rapists". A few days before I read this post, I saw another post, this time by an Indian friend, about how a girl in Pakistan was stoned to death by her own father and brothers in front of a state courthouse because the girl wanted to marry a man she loved, rather than the man she was arranged to marry. The final remarks in this article mention how perpetrators of honor killings usually receive a slap on the wrist, even for such violent acts. Again, an emotional undertone tells me "Pakistan is bad" or "Pakistanis would rather kill their own children than have them disobey orders". 

Now I don't know very much about India or Pakistan, I have never been to either place, but I know they have a long rivalry that often resulted in violence, and the border territories are still tense. So it's not surprising that my two classmates would have lingering negative feelings about each other (despite the fact that they get in along well in our class). Both of these news stories of course show just a piece of the country as whole. The same thing happens when the world heard the news of the Newtown, CT school shooting and they begin to see Americans as a gun-crazy dystopian wrecking ball. The underlying message in all these is to spread information to bring out an emotional response, instead of actual understanding. And that's where I see the failure of individualized social media. 

Perhaps I am actually just pointing out the obvious. Of course there are expressed biases on Facebook. Of course I am exposed to this same kind of subliminal messages all the time, and not just on social media. Of course I have to filter out the good information from the bad, assess it, and formulate my own opinion of it through a critical lens. We are taught to do that in school, since childhood. And I feel like I have been reasonably competent at it, but all of sudden this last 6 months I have been experiencing a new kind of exposure to it through Facebook and an international framework. Perhaps this struck a chord in me because all my previous experiences at filtering were aimed against mass media, The Man, or even someone or something my parents have taught me to be wary of. I didn't have to be so critical of my friends. My friends growing up were all excellent people, whom I could trust not to mistreat me (in real life and online). Now I have new "friends" on Facebook. They come from all over the world and I haven't adjusted to their new perspectives and intentions, whether they be obvious or far from it. 

Unfortunately, the world is just too big and the amount of information is so great that I will probably never get a real understanding from the time I spend on Facebook. It's much too easy to gloss over it, that's all.

Temporary Transportation

First few weeks of classes are over with some positive results. I will be taking one class that has a trip to Bonn planned to visit a NGO for a day, and another class we will conduct a study on our class using cool surveying program, and the rest of the classes will likely be sufferable. Aside from school I've made some nice improvements to my life, such as getting a bicycle! 

It's the same frame and size as my commuter bike in Iowa City.

Thanks to my fellow bicycle enthusiast, Markus, I now have this baby. He loaned it to me for the semester because his brother left it at home. It was in great shape and had just had a tune up, and it rides pretty nice on bumpy sidewalks. Rock on Markus!

Still need to think of a good name for it.

Classes in a week

So classes start again next Tuesday for me. Yippee! No really, I'm actually looking forward to it. Well at least some classes. Mostly I'm looking forward to being busy with something again, because this break seemed to last forever. I feel like my brain has been slowly deteriorating due to my own...shit. What is that word I'm looking for? Oh right, lethargy. It will be good to be engaged in something, and be around my classmates again. Many of them will have some good stories about the cool places they've been to, while I can only respond with the movies I've watched, and perhaps some new vocab I've learned. That'll carry on for about 2 or 3 weeks probably before conversations will drift back to academia. I already have an assignment that's due for my first day back, which is actually what I was expecting out of this particular professor. Cool.

In other news, Erika's childhood friend came to visit last week for a night. She was traveling through this area of Germany visiting some friends and relatives and it was nice to have her company. We spoke in German pretty much the whole time (cept for me, but I tried my best) and went out to eat and this pretty nice restaurant. Well, the food was a bit overpriced in my opinion, especially the BS chicken sandwich I ordered. It was disappointing to be presented with a nice plate and big burger bun only to find out that the chicken inside covered about 1/3 of the actual bun. But apparently on Tuesdays they have all you can eat ribs for about 10 euros. Next time we go on Tuesday. Definitely.

Also I found out that I'm a home decorator! 

Local friends

I haven't written on here in a few weeks, so that probably means I haven't been doing anything. That is fairly accurate, but there are still some news items to share.  Let's see...

I made some local German friends during the past few weeks. Some guy named Michael I met a bar was friendly enough to invite me to watch some soccer games with his buddies, which is nice because they don't speak English very much so I'm forced to practice my German when I'm around them. Which is a good thing because I didn't get into the 3 week intensive course I wanted to take (too many applicants, not enough teachers/space). There were of course a few confusing moments, like after some of the soccer games were over, he told me he and his friend were going to "wetten",  and asked if I would come with them, then later come back to watch the Bayern Munich game. I heard the wetten as "betten" because the v and b sounds are pretty similar sometimes, thinking that was some way of saying they were going to go home and take nap. Betten, go to the Bett. Made sense to me. But it was a bit strange that they would ask me to join them to take a nap... it seemed like a good idea cuz I was really tired so I was planning on making my leave to go home to my own bed. As we walked out I asked them again where they lived blah blah and walked with them a bit further, and soon we walked into a building and I realized that wetten is not betten, but pretty obviously, "betting". They were going to put some money down on the Bayern Munich game. "Ohhhhh...Alles klar". I don't bet on sports, so I didn't even think about it. I didn't even know that were were sports betting buildings, I thought everything was online. That was an interesting place to visit even though I had no idea how it worked. There were lots of TVs with numbers scrolling down them with scores and odds and turnouts kind of Matrixy. We were the only ones there except for some Turkish looking men standing around in silence and black jackets smoking cigarettes, and a tiny little woman with red lipstick and red hair behind a desk taking the betting cards. It was a good day and I learned some new words. 

Later Michael invited me to go "Kegeln spielen". I didn't really know what that was even after he explained it to me. After telling Mom and Dad about it, I found out it was called 9 Pin bowling in the US. But I've only heard the name 9 Pin before, never seen anyone play it. Apparently it was really popular in the GDR (German Democratic Republic/East/Commie Germany), second only to soccer for many years. It's a really fun game actually, more so than bowling because instead of bowling in 10 frames, you get 100. The pins are much smaller and more spread apart, and the bowling ball is also about half the size of a standard bowling ball, but still pretty heavy. There are also no finger holes in the bowling ball so you just kinda heave it down the lane.  The place that we play at is pretty cool too, it's a sport club in a neighboring town that exists entirely for Kegeln. It has 2 lanes, a little kitchen, and a sort of anteroom with tables and chairs that you can watch the players through a big glass window while you sit and drink your beer. Also in that room there are posters and news clippings from past players, and bunch of trophies on shelves. The other guys I met there were all very nice and gave me some tips for playing. I've gone twice now and improved immensely. Hopefully I can go again tomorrow. I'll also take some pictures of the club, cuz it's pretty cool.

UPDATE: I went Kegeln spielen again yesterday and took some pictures of the club!

Yeah 322 points on my 3rd game, apparently that's pretty good for a beginner!

Temporary food blog

Okay it's been a while since I last wrote, but I think I remember something about posting some pics of food after the fasting. The pics were taken, but never uploaded... until now. I don't mean to turn this blog into a food blog, but after fasting eating good food had a new, improved value. So I just wanted to share some of the yummy things we ate, many of them were firsts for us. Plus pics are fun, right?

The first food after 4.5 days of fasting. It went down well.

 I call this one "Bigass tuna sandwich"

First dinner was Bulgar Salad Surprise, with side o' turkey

Steamy stuffed peppers

 My first whole chicken! Turned out pretty damn well I think.

Thanks to King of the Hill I was prepared to carve my first chicken.

Okay, that's it for the food blog now. We've made more new goodies in the past couple days, and Erika has been baking a lot more cookies and bread rolls, but those will come at a later date.

Fasting complete

So the internet in our apartment stopped a few days ago, so I haven't been able to write a new post. But the library will suffice until it gets reconnected. We ended our fast on Saturday afternoon, roughly 4.5 days without food. After day 2, things continued along the same trend: hungry, tired, cranky. Even more cranky because there were many fewer distractions without an internet connection. I went from about 166 lbs. to 158.4 lbs. in 4 days. My hunger never really subsided and I felt pretty exhausted just going up a few flights of stairs. Fortunately my exams were over and I didn't have to concentrate on anything, but it was hard. Harder than I imagined.I could persevere for many hours during the day, and feel ok, but then all of a sudden the hunger hit me and for the next 2 hours all I could think about was food and no amount of tea could help.  I even played soccer on Thursday but it was really difficult, I could run for about 15 seconds before being completely winded, so I spent a lot of time in the goal and playing sweeper. But I ended the soccer day better off than one of my teammates, who tried to head a lofted ball away from goal while backpedaling, and in the process jumped, hit his head on the crossbar, and went down bleeding. I didn't accompany him to the hospital, but I'm pretty sure he needed several stitches and a new white t-shirt.
The night before we quit fasting, Erika went through several cookbooks and found a least a dozen recipes of healthy and delicious things we could eat, and the next day we walked anxiously to the grocery store. The weekend was filled with a bit of binge-eating, but of the healthier variety. The first dinner we had was bulgar salad with nuts, sun-dried tomatoes, leeks, carrots, and a half portion of turkey breast. It really was awesome. The next day we had tuna sandwiches with whole grain bread, arugula, pickles, capers, and cheese. Also awesome. So awesome in fact we ate too much. I haven't had a chance to upload pictures from my camera of our overfilled refrigerator and our two dinners, but they will be coming soon.
But all in all, the fast was a good experience, I think I have a better appreciation for food, and better understanding of how my body acts. But I probably wouldn't do it again for awhile. And also enemas are pretty crazy, not bad though. You would be surprised how full of shit we all are.

Day 3

Aaaaah today was a much better day than the previous 2. I woke up and my headache was gone! I guess my body has finally used up all the carbs left, and most of the salt I accumulated from processed foods is finally releasing a lot of stored up water. But today I felt like a normal person again, still with some hunger pain, but nothing too bad. I even had the energy to play some soccer with my classmates, but of course I got really tired really fast so I spent a lot of time in goal or on defense. And in other good news, my insurance company is giving me 110euros for some reason that I don't fully understand, but will happily accept. And Erika got news that she passed the exam she was most worried about, which means she is a bonafied graduate! Just waiting for her diploma to come. Woohoo!  Things are looking good right now.

Strange couple days

Yes, it has been an interesting past few days. It started on a very good note from Saturday night, when Erika finally made it back to Erfurt, at 4am, and sick with a cold. So Sunday was spent resting and recovering, but at least she is finished with test taking! We had homemade chicken wings for dinner, which was awesome. We needed a really tasty meal on Sunday because we began fasting on Monday. The plan is to go 5 days without food, and one day on either end of the fast with light fruits and vegetables to get the body accustomed to the changes. We had been planning to do this for awhile now, but haven't really had a good time to do it, finally we both have enough free time to do it. And don't worry Mom and Dad, I've done some research and fasting shouldn't have any negative side effects for Crohn's. Many people actually say that it helped them, according to the interwebs. So this week I'm going to be talking more about that on my blog here, to record some of the things I'm feeling.

The idea to do this actually came from a This American Life episode I listened to during one of my late nights at the hotel last summer. David Rakoff was the test subject and he did a 14 fast with 3 days on each side to adjust. His goal was to reach some kind of spiritual enlightenment, like Gandhi or Buddha or Jesus and in the end he didn't quite find what he was looking for. Here is the link to the TAL episode, it was a pretty good episode I think. But basically he achieved a better appreciation for his body and for food. Erika and I are trying to achieve a similar end, it's more about testing yourself, and learning about yourself, and also a bit of spring cleaning, to see how well detoxification actually works, as I'm very skeptical about detox "treatments" myself. It's not about losing weight, because fasting is not the best way to lose weight. Proper diet and exercise are the best ways. But we do also hope that at the end of this we will reset our eating habits as a way to improve our diet overall. After a fast, we hope to have a better appreciation for basic foods, fruits, and vegetables. But don't worry, I don't plan on giving up some of the best things in the food world, like steak. Or ribs. Damn I miss good barbecue.

So yesterday we started the fast, and I think it will prove to be the hardest day. Firstly because we drank some diarrhea inducing salt, I don't know what it's called, but that stuff is awful. I gagged and spit up more than I thought I would, and it definitely brought back too many bad memories from the hospital, where I had to drink a gallon of the shit. Yesterday I only had 500ml, roughly 1/8th a gallon. Thankfully that got over with in about 30 minutes, then I spent the better part of the day watching Netflix, waiting for my guts to release their poison. Definitely hungry, but not so bad. Also I could feel a headache growing.

Today started out much better, I was able to sleep very well through the night, and woke up a little woozy. It took me awhile to feel really comfortable in my skin again, felt a little nervous or shaky walking around, but overall my stomach today has cooperated much better than yesterday, the only problem is my headache. I didn't realize that running out of carbohydrates can really cause a big headache.  But today I had the pleasure of giving myself and enema. For how gross it sounds, it's really not so bad, and it is pretty amazing what comes out of you at the end. Going to do it again tomorrow. Don't knock it til you try it, guys. It's kind of like diarrhea, but waaaay less smelly. And you really do feel much better afterwards.

So I've spent all day trying to write this, but distractions and dis-ease made it a slow process. I will update again tomorrow to describe how I'm feeling. Also, Erika and I have already picked out a bunch of new recipes we are going to try...

Woo!

Hey hey hey, I've very happy today and I'd like to share with you all the reason why! I received an email this morning from the school offering me a scholarship to pay all my tuition fees for the next 3 semesters. Woo! The Haniel Foundation will give me 4500 euros (6160 USD) over the course of the next year and half to finance my studies. Rock on! That's the biggest scholarship I've ever gotten and I'm pretty excited about it because it reduces my education costs a whole helluva lot. By the way, the Haniel Foundation coordinates lots of research and study-travel events and they provide a lot of money for exchange between Europe, Asia and USA. Here's a little note about their goals taken from their website:

The Haniel Foundation concentrates on four main areas in its work. Firstly, it supports young talent with scholarships for study trips and internships abroad and with pupils' academies. Its main focus here is on Europe, Asia and the USA. Secondly, the foundation works with selected universities to establish courses encouraging international knowledge transfer. Thirdly, it sets up platforms for exchanging opinions and experiences. For example, experts from business, politics and society discuss global developments at its events. And fourthly, the Haniel Foundation supports projects which help young people achieve a better level of education.

They have several partnerships with specific programs and one of the biggest beneficiaries of the money is the Willy Brandt School and I know several other classmates that also are receiving money from them. Glad I could join the ranks!

However, I can't take full responsibility for this good news, because the reason I got the money now was because one of my classmates is moving to the Berlin to attend the Hertie School, which is the big name policy school in Germany, meaning I inherited his scholarship money. I'm sad to see him leave because he was a very nice and fun person to talk to. But I am overjoyed that I was given his remaining funds and I hope I can carry on somewhat in his legacy. Here's to you, Lukas!  Of course I also have to be very gracious to my family who have helped me get here, and especially to Erika for living with me during this time. But it's really great being able to breathe easier and I imagine I will have a sound sleep tonight.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the DAAD scholarship which I applied for in November as well. If they select me then I will have to choose between one scholarship or the other, but since I still don't know those results, I'm very happy to have this one in the bag already.

Whew! This news combined with the beautiful weather this month has been an excellent boost of positivity. Today was about 50F, clear and sunny, and a slight breeze. Ich liebe frische Luft! Sorry to hear all the wicked weather news stateside, but all I see is an incentive for people to visit me next year. Although, it worries me that all the good things will come at once and there will be a shitty day soon, but I'll let future possibilities bother me when they are present realities.

EDIT: I discovered the name of my actual benefactor, it wasn't Amit as I had originally thought, but a German by the name of Lukas. So I changed the details around up above.

Video project team

So for one of my classes, we were divided into groups to complete assignments throughout the semester. One of our semester long projects was to create a public policy project to improve something around us, it could be in the university, the city, or even globally. Most of the projects involved the university and improving student life, especially for international students coming to the university. Our group's project was to install some photoluminescent tape in the staircases at one of the dorms. To me this was a pretty good project idea because this particular dorm is very ugly and run down. It was built in the mid 80's I believe and it is very utilitarian- big, blocky, concrete. The hallways have a tremendous echoing effect, the lights are few and far between, and there isn't much for emergency safety in it. A couple fire extinguishers here and there, and all the lights are on a timer, so in the hallways and staircases you have about 3-4 minutes from lights on to lights off. So you can easily get caught in the middle of a flight of steps in complete darkness. Getting to get to the next closest light switch must be done in pitch blackness. I noticed this problem also in my apartment, that if I go a little slower up or down the steps, I'm left in the dark midway through a flight of steps. So here is our project group's video. Originally it was going to be 5-6 minutes long, but we had to cut everything down to roughly 3 minutes to meet the requirements.  So here's our shortened informational horror film. Full screen for better viewing pleasure.

Leipzig

More photos! Wee! Last weekend Erika and I took a trip to Leipzig to visit her cousin and her cousin's boyfriend.  They hadn't seen each other in over 10 years, but now that both live in eastern Germany it was about time for a reunion. Leipzig is about 150km away from Erfurt and is about double the population. It's a rapidly growing city actually, and it's arts friendly attitude attracts a lot of young people and recently the New York Times wrote an article praising the music scene and hip culture as a "better Berlin". We didn't venture into one of these venues, but we did go to the Spinnerei, an old cotton textile factory that has been transformed into an art haven.

Some of the buildings are actually apartments for visiting and in-house artists.

From the outside everything looks pretty raw. I guess it makes for good inspiration. There is a custom bicycle maker: Rotor. Also art galleries and a pretty big art supply store.

But on the inside the buildings are nicely refurbished, but I bet heating can get pretty expensive. Here was a small art gallery that is open to the public

 Their specialty is the steel city bike. Looks pretty nice and I bet it rides smoothly. They have a few bikes prebuilt for sale, but you can also talk with one of the builders to fully customize your own.

Someone want to explain the lever on the left side of the handlebar to me? It connects to the front suspension, so it must be a lever for adjusting the compression on the fly.

A few old racing bikes on display, as well as some of their own creations hacked in half. And a bigass rear hub

Lots of old derailleurs in a glass case

I liked the upstairs office... 

I took some more pictures of the downtown area, but I'll only post a couple more. It was a pretty nice downtown area, lots of shops and people. But as I said earlier, Leipzig is much more for the hip, gritty, grungy, student types, so the shopping center is not the "cool" place to go. Oh yeah! Speaking of grunge, Erika's cousin told us that Leipzig hosts the world's largest goth festival each year. Thousands of people come to show off crazy outfits, piercings, and whatever else is happening in the goth world. I recommend you all google it and check out some of the pics.

This was a very cool cafe in the downtown area. The inside was also gorgeous, but I didn't take any pictures unfortunately. It was originally made around 1908 in the style of some Austria architecture so there was really ornate wood carvings all around the windows and above the bar with deep red velvety curtains and some very nice chandeliers.

One of several Kaufhalles, fancy shops and some historical statues of Faust giving his soul away to the devil. Stupid tourist group was in the way so I didn't photograph that either.

All in all, it was a very nice weekend trip, and not too costly either. Double score. Since gas is so expensive here, there are a lot of people that do ride shares and several different websites that organize them. So to get there we met up with some guy near a highway exit who was traveling from way western Germany. He dropped off one person in Erfurt, and picked us up and drove us to the main train station in Leipzig at a meager 7 euros per person. By comparison, we took the bus home and it cost us 11 euros. I can't believe how expensive the buses are in the US by comparison. $50 to go from Ames to Minneapolis, one way. 18 euros is about $25, for both directions.