It’s nice to see that someone is finally changing the face of school lunch. Not that I don’t miss cheesy fish Fridays.

Vacation is almost over; the semester starts Monday here and I need to get a little more serious about learning German and life in general. I’m still not sure what classes I’m taking and how this whole thing called university works in Germany, but I’m sure it’ll all work out somehow. Most classes here only meet one day a week, so it’s looking like I will have Fridays, and probably Mondays off- four day weekend every week. That’s the life!
The last couple weeks have been relaxing and fun, and sometimes a little boring. The only people who were around were 3 of the American guys who live at FDH, my dorm, but we tried to make the best of it. As kind of a quick overview, a large group of us went to Heidelberg the weekend before class eneded for Herbstfest. It is a beautiful city with an old castle overlooking it. One of the attractions at the castle is the grosses Fass, or large barrel. Words cannot do justice to this thing, nor can the pictures I took because you can’t get far enough away from it to get the entire barrel in the picture. But, take my word for it, it is a huge barrel, once filled probably with a year’s supply of wine or beer for everyone at the castle. The festival was great; truly a German experience.
The next weekend I went to an orientation seminar for the German-American Clubs program that is sponsoring me here in Kaiserslautern. There were lots of formal activities because this coincided with German-American appreciation day (check out the picture, slightly ironic) but we unwound one afternoon by going to a soccer match against Berlin, and that was quite an experience. German soccer fans are insane! To top off the weekend, I learned a German drinking game, and spent most of Saturday night laughing at some of the very drunk American students.
We spent one afternoon last week in Wiesbaden, but though it is a nice, old city, there isn’t much to do there and after a few hours of walking around we were ready to head back home. Last Saturday I went to the 30th anniversary celebration dinner of the German-American club here in the Frankfurt area. The food was very good, a nice change from cooking for myself all the time. The highlight of the evening, and maybe the most painful part also, was the country-western line dancing group that performed. That’s all well and good in Texas, but I really don’t want to watch Germans line dancing. Nevertheless, it was hilarious for a little while.
Yesterday my dad came through Frankfurt for the day on his way home from a business trip in the middle east. It was nice to see him and we spent the day walking around the city, much of it in the rain. But we caught the only 20 minutes of sunshine all day long while we were at the observation deck on top of the MainTower. It has a great view of the entire city from the 2nd tallest office building in Frankfurt and I can’t believe that I haven’t been up there yet. We went to a typical German restaurant with good food, though huge portions, and the local applewine. I was sad to see him leave, but it sounds like these trips may become more regular so he might come through more often. The agenda now is a trip to the grocery store, and a visit to Mainz tomorrow if it’s not pouring rain.

I know that I promised pictures were coming soon, but it’s no suprise at this point that there are no pictures. My computer still has problems of some sort and I can’t transfer photos from my camera to the laptop. It’s frusterating that there are still all these little problems, but I’m sure they’ll be resolved eventually.

I’ve gotten over the frusteration of computer problems and all the other things that seem to go wrong here. I don’t really care anymore, and for the moment I’m content to enjoy life as it is. Everything else will work itself out.
This morning there was some problem with the subway on the way to class. We got on one train and stood there for 5 minutes listening to a recording saying that we would have to get off at the next stop and walk to the campus because there was something wrong in the tunnel for a couple stops. Finally they told everyone to get off that train and we tried to find a bus that would take us there, with no luck. We thought we’d have to walk all the way, and at this point we were going to be late anyhow. But another train came, we got on it, and it took us to the right stop. When we got off the entire station smelled horrible and it was kind of hazy. There must have been some kind of electrical fire or something. All very strange, but we ended up being just a few minutes late and the teacher hadn’t started yet, so it was all good.
I registered to vote by absentee ballot today for the election. Seems way too easy, they don’t even require ID. But that’s nice because my passport is off somewhere supposedly to apply for a student visa but I have this fear that I may never see it again.
We’re going to Heidelberg tomorrow for the Herbstfest. Don’t know what that is, but as my German teacher said, “a fest is a fest.” The tickets are ridiculously cheap: €28 for 5 people, to anywhere in Germany on a Saturday or Sunday. Why not at $6 a person? I will take pictures and share them eventually, when that is possible again.

That’s my word of the week. I seriously think I have a curse when it comes to computers. I left my room for 5 or 6 hours on Sunday to go to a picnic, left my laptop on. And when I got back it had one of those lovely blue “you’ve managed to screw something up without doing anything” screens. That’s happened before, though it’s certainly not a regular occurance. So I shut down the computer and went to dinner at Mr. Lin’s (I think we’re addicted). When I got back I had our resident comp sci nerd look at it, and it wouldn’t start normally or in safe mode. His semi-expert opinion is that one of the drivers failed, or maybe the hard drive is just dead dead dead. So whatever, I’m back to no computer in my room until Justin figures out what’s wrong. And of course I left my recovery disks at home so I had my parents Fed-Ex them. Wonderful. Well, on a happier note, it was a good weekend otherwise. Went for a long, relaxing walk yesterday in the park near where we live and then may have given us food poisoning at dinner. I feel better, but Dave didn’t show up to class today. Ok, well I’m heading into town to take care of some stuff. No class tomorrow! I love having Wednesdays free; it’s like a weekend in the middle of the week. A group of us talked about trying to go to Stuttgart this weekend for Oktoberfest and that could be lots of fun.

Words cannot describe how happy I am to be finished, for now anyhow, with T-Punkt. I finally tracked down my “Schplitter” at the post office today and for the first time since I arrived I can function normally online without spending a fortune in time and money at the internet cafe near the university. I know I’ve spent too much time at the T-Punkt store also because today when we walked in “The Dude” not only recognized me and the guys I was with, but anticipated our problem and remembered our address from the millions of other trips in there. We decided that Deutsche Telekom and the postal service must be at war and we just got caught in the middle because it’s just astonishing how many things have gone wrong. So much for German efficiency. The End.
Today started off as a really crappy day, but when I got home this afternoon I had a letter from Kate which improved my mood a ton, and then we won the internet war. So it’s turned out to be not such a bad day afterall. Sadly, I missed volleyball today, but there’s always tomorrow. A trip to the grocery store may not be a bad idea; provisions are running low. But then again, maybe I should try to finish some of the food I already have, because it will go bad in another day or two. Everything here seems to go bad really quickly. I guess the lack of preservatives will do that.
This has been quite a week. Tuesday was the 21st birthday of this Irish kid, Aidan. So a bunch of people from our German course met at an Irish pub to celebrate. We were a pretty wild bunch, but it’s an Irish pub, so that’s acceptable. People bought me a couple of beers for my “birthday eve” so by the time we tried to catch the last subway back at 1 am, I was pretty drunk. German beer is stronger than American beer, and it’s served by the half liter, so it doesn’t take many. The evening was a blast, but we didn’t leave quite early enough. We missed the last train by about 4 minutes and then had an interesting time getting back. We were under the train station so we walked up there but apparently it pretty much shuts down at 1 am. They were closing most of the entrances so we went back down through the subway station where they were also closing some of the exits and got out that way. It was a really cool evening, probably around 50, and we weren’t really dressed for it. We ended up walking most of the way across Frankfurt back to our dorms. Lots of things about it would have sucked a lot more if I hadn’t been drunk, but I’m glad I had people with me who could find the way home because I certainly wouldn’t have. An hour and a half later we finally got back and crashed.
Yesterday I finally got around to setting up my university e-mail account. To do that I had to go to the new campus of the university which is nowhere near the subway stop that has the same name. Luckily I had just picked up a map of the city or I probably would have given up. On the way I walked down this street with all these barricades and tons of barbed wire and police with machine guns and a police tank. It must have been an embassy building or something but it wasn’t at all what I would expect an embassy to look like, so who knows.
Last night we had a party. Surprise, surprise. It was a combination 21st birthday party for me and party for a Brazilian girl who has been in Germany for one month now. Any excuse… I really thought that having my birthday in Germany was going to suck, but aside from wishing I was with friends from home, it was a great birthday.

Pictures are here! More later this week when I can connect through my laptop. But the fun has begun.

We went out for Thai food last night; it was pretty cheap and surprisingly good, an important combination. There’s a Tex-Mex restaurant that I’m tempted, but hesitant to try. And next to the university is a café with a menu in English that I’m told serves American style food. I need to get out and try more restaurants or vary my cooking repertoire a little because right now my diet consists of pasta and the occasional frozen pizza. I’m meeting people at a park this afternoon to play soccer so I should probably try to get some homework done and find an internet café that’s open on Sunday, God forbid.
September 11 in Germany was interesting. I saw coverage of the anniversary ceremonies on CNN and BBC but otherwise there was no mention of it at all here. And we’re isolated enough that a couple of the other Americans didn’t even realize what day it was. Then last night as we walked up to this plaza where we were supposed to meet people, we heard Carmina Burana playing and saw lots of people gathered around something with lights, which turned out to be a replica of the twin towers. We all found it a little strange. Not that there was a memorial, but that it obviously wasn’t sponsored by Americans, or even by Germans, but Iranians. And there was a painting of some Iranian man who died in the attack. Aside from the oddity of it, it was nicely done and very respectful.

Some of the Americans, Italians, and Portuguese have started playing volleyball regularly, at least as long as the weather is nice. We’re all quite awful, but it’s fun anyhow. We play at the university sport center that is next to one of the dorms. There is a grassy hill, sand volleyball courts and a track that we can access without being registered at the center. By far the highlight of our games though, is the “Fitnessleute,” as we call them. “Fitness people.” They are a group of about 40 people, many older men and women, but all ages, who meet at the other end of the track at the same time we play volleyball. The sheer joy of watching them is beyond words, but I’ll do my best to describe this phenomenon. They begin by running in a large circle, waving their arms and dancing. Then they run or jump in place and make similar gestures. They conclude an hour later by laying on the ground and waving their legs, bicycling and the like. This is all accompanied by music of some sort, usually loud, bad, techno, but sometimes Michael Jackson and other interesting choices. It’s really something you have to see to appreciate. On Friday I walked over there with my camera to try to capture the ridiculous display. Some of the pictures are decent but the video on my camera won’t zoom so none of that is any good unless you know exactly what you’re looking at. I’ll work on getting better pictures this week, because you all have to see this. In short, it’s hilarious.
The other students enrolled in the German course that live at my dorm are 4 American guys. My next door neighbor calls them my entourage of boys that show up at mealtimes to eat my food. Which is more or less true; often we do cook dinner together in my kitchen; it’s easier than 5 of us cooking individually. But through extensive dealings with Deutsche Telekom, we have learned this one important German principle: Germans don’t believe in customer service. This is apparent by looking at business hours of offices, stores and other businesses. But between 4 of us we have scheduled a grand total of 9 appointments this week to set up phone lines or internet connections. The technician failed to show up to 6 of those appointments. And these “Schplitter” things that are supposed to come in the mail for the DSL connections haven’t come at all, though T-Punkt claimed they would be here days ago.
We got yelled at by the cashier at the university cafeteria this week. The hot meals are really cheap and good enough, but when we checked out she practically shouted at us, “Ein Salat dazu!” Apparently salad is included with the meal, and this all fits with our theory that the Germans are trying to fatten us up and eventually serve us for lunch. Every day the Spätzle gets bigger and bigger and they cover more of your plate with it. So either they want us to eat more or this lady was determined to make us eat our veggies.