Auf Wiedersehen Radolfzell

Isn't it funny that someone who has not taken one minute of German instruction can understand perfectly well what "auf wiedersehen" means. The same goes for "adios" and many other words for "goodbye" in other languages. Why is it that we know so well how to say goodbye in multiple languages? I think it speaks to the fact that we, as human beings have come to terms with the fact that saying goodbye is a part of life. It can be difficult at times but it is inevitable and completely necessary.

The reason I am dwelling on this word so much is that today marks my last day in Radolzell am Bodensee, Germany. This place has been my home for the last 2 months. I have done so much stuff here that I never thought I would ever do. Some of these things I have mentioned in my blog...some of these things I care not to mention on such a public venue. I have made friends with people from other countries and have made friends from around the United States that I would never have met had I not been accepted to this program.

I had conversations in another language and learned that speaking different languages is just the tip of the iceberg. In the United States I would hear someone speaking another language besides English and I would turn my head around so fast in amazement that I had discovered someone not from where I was from. I am now that person.

All is not sad, however. I am moving to Magdeburg tomorrow morning and am moving in with a wonderful new host family. They have been so proactive and nice. They have sent me multiple postcards, sent emails, and have even been checking up on this blog to get to know me more. What more could I ask for? I am sure I will have many more adventures to report upon from Magdeburg, Germany and I can't wait to share them all with you.

My host family here in Radolfzell has been amazing. Every single morning they left me breakfast on a little tray outside my door. It's not the food I want to emphasize but what it meant to me. A stranger opened their house to me for 2 months and not only providing me with food but brought it to me every morning so that all I had to do was eat and run out the door for class. What a wonderful thing to do for someone. My one regret with them is that I wish I would have spent more time with them and gotten to know them a bit more. They had a "come and go as you please" mentality (made even more clear by the fact that I had a fully functional kitchen in my room) but I am sure they would have welcomed more conversations. I plan to write every so often and hope to visit them near the end of my adventure when my German is much better and I can carry on a better conversation with them. Yesterday, my host mother Renate said "du bist immer willkommen" and my little heart skipped a beat.

With all these emotions going through my head, I finally realized how unimportant exchange rates were and how silly I was to have been annoyed that I couldn't stream my favorite American television shows over the internet because, what I am experiencing right now was EXACTLY what this program wanted me to experience...a feeling of home in a land far away from my own. I have a less intense version of what I felt when I left the United States.

Us Radolfzellers had a saying "meeting am Strand." We say this because it was one of our favorite past times to go to the Strand (beach) and watch the sun set over the Bodensee with good conversation and cheap wine. So we asked ourselves what to do tonight, our last night in our Radolfzell home. The answer could not have been more clear...our last night here will be spent am Strand with good friends, cheap wine, and many memories.

The picture below kind of sums up my feeling for this 2 month home of mine. This is a picture of my language school Carl-Duisberg Centren. It was what has allowed me to better my language skills to connect even more fully with the people of Germany. For this I am forever thankful and the sun will, for me, always shine down upon Carl-Duisberg Centren in Radolzell am Bodensee, Germany.

Randoms #1

Some experiences just don't have the plot or excitement that would require they have their own blog post. Blog posts don't just grow on trees you know! I will, more than likely, have a couple more posts like this one throughout the year that group a bunch of random experiences together.

So one of the other CBYXers in Radolfzell lives in a nearby village called Markelfingen. It is about 1 hour by foot or 5 minutes by train.

So Markelfingen is pretty boring...it's not nice but it is the truth. But we were walking around and found a cat with only 3 legs!!!! Sad...but this cat was cute and it totally owned its three-leggednes. I didn't even notice it was missing a leg for the first 5 minute since it walks so well. It would come up to us and brush up against our legs. It was so friendly and treated us like it knew us its whole life. There is a photo of the cat below but you can't tell it has only 3 legs...it hides it well.

On to the next mini "post." I love that you can walk around in Germany and find the same weird things in Germany that you can find in the USA. People trying to part ways with their old hub caps for cash and the like. I ran across this awesome "beware of dog" sign the other day. It is just like ones from the US...but WAY BETTER because it is in German! See below.

It reads "I am always hungry. Enter at own risk!" Oh that silly Molly.

And then we come to the last mini "post." We have two daily pauses during our language courses here in Radolfzell. The first one is 30 minutes and the second is for lunch and is 1 hour 15 minutes. We act kind of silly during these breaks since our brains are buzzing with German words. When you cram that much knowledge into someone's brain in 4 1/2 hours, a little sanity is bound to fall out. And here is the outcome. Yes, I am wearing a silly paper hat made out of a German magazine...and proud of it!

Does Hair Go To Heaven?

I am not one of those lucky people who can let their hair get too long. My hair is not, in the least, thick or voluminous. On the contrary, it is thin and lifeless and it is blond, which means, when I get even a little sun, it bleaches itself to the point where it sort of disappears on my head. The extremely hard water here in Radolzell coupled with no water softener is also not helping the dull and lifeless situation. It also does not grow uniformly whatsoever which means even when it gets to be about 2 inches long, it looks very scraggly. Yes, you heard me correct. I said "scraggly". So I reached the point over here in Germany where I needed a haircut. My first haircut in Germany. I was fearing it for a while. I was hoping I could have waited longer for my German to get better but desperate times call for desperate measures. I had a good enough vocabulary but decided I was not leaving anything to chance since, if my hair was ruined, and I ended up getting a buzz cut to hide it, I would have to keep that buzz-cut for months since my hair grows so slowly. So I ended up finding a photo online to bring with me. Let's call the guy in it Herr Schmidt...cuz he looks like one okay. See the picture below.

Herr Schmidt??????

I had to go to my language school, CDC (Carl-Duisberg Centren) to get it printed since my host family does not have a printer. Even simple things like printing something off has become more difficult over here. All is well, however, since there are others things that are great (like having Nutella everyday and not gaining weight since you are walking everywhere). Es ist toll! So I go to the Sekretäriat to print off this photo and I also asked them where I can get beide ein billiger und sehr guter Haarschnitt (both a cheap and very good haircut). They refer me to this place call "Hair Killer." I say "come again?" And they reiterate that this place is indeed called Hair Killer and that it is located just down the road. Yes, a lot of food labels and even business names here in Germany use English. Hmmmmmmm...I definitely would not get my dog groomed at a place called "Dog Killer" but I don't care for my hair as much as I would for a dog so I said "When in Rome" and headed for Hair Killer. The entire process proved to be fairly quick and Herr Schmidt came in handy. I was in the chair for no more 7 minutes and ended up paying 13€ for my haircut which is pretty preiswert (inexpensive) for Germany. I was overall satisfied with the cut but nothing can compare to Roffler Styling in West Bend. I have been going there since I was like 5 and have never gotten a better haircut. That is the first place I am going when I get off the plane home.

A hair slaughter house???????

Right before the hair killing. Ich habe Angst (I am afraid)!

Me, after my hair has been thoroughly murdered. Who thought killing hair could be so much fun?

Stuttgart

This post is gonna be a short one kids. I didn't really get to do much in Stuttgart. Me and some other CBYXers went on Saturday but still wanted to sleep in a little so we didn't leave Radolfzell until 10:55 am. The train ride lasted about 2 hours so we ended up wandering around Stuttgart for about 5 hours and leaving around 6 pm. I didn't get to see enough history or beautiful buildings but there were plenty of shops. The main street is like one big mall. I didn't buy anything. When you have to fit your life into 3 suitcases, you question every purchase and acquire as little as possible. I bought one shirt since I have been in Germany and the deciding factor was that it was only 5€ at H&M. I do love, however, looking through all the different clothes and other things that stores have to offer. The everyday fashion is a bit different but, I feel, when you venture into the more expensive brands and styles, the fashion is very similar to the US. So I basically saw a bunch of stores and one pretty cool church that was locked so we couldn't even go in. Stuttgart is beautiful though so just walking around the town was nice. I did a little research and discovered that the church is called Johannes Church. Pretty cool.

A very tiny door. Nutrition has done wonders for present day people's height.

Fürstenberg Brauerei

Bier! Yes, that means beer! Now, I cannot tell a lie. I am not much of a drinker which is very shameful since I was born and raised in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is known for two things...cheese and beer. Beer is especially something that does not often touch my lips. I know, I'm an embarrassment to my state. Even though, I am not a drinker, I was still very excited to go to the Fürstenberg Bier brewery in the town of Donaueschingen on a trip that the Carl-Duisberg Centren organized (yes, our school organized the trip). I have lived in Wisconsin my entire life and have never been to the Miller Brewing Company brewery and now I find myself having gone to a brewery in Germany halfway across the world before I visited one that was 40 minutes away from my home in Wisconsin.

Apparently the statue is of Diana.

So, before we got to go into the brewery, we got these awesome neon orange vests! We all had so much fun with them. We were fighting the urge to sing "YMCA".

Stylin'

Me and Joe being crazy in a dark hallway.

Adam, me, and Liz.

That's a lot of beer! 

Beer is so educational!

Of course, when the tour ended, we got to try beer. Now, Germans take their beer seriously and we sat in the sitting room for over two hours sipping our drinks. They savor their beer. We conversed and enjoyed ourselves. I had this drink called Qowaz that Fürstenberg Bier makes. It is a cola-beer mix with lemongrass. The perfect drink for someone like me who needs to be eased into the beer world. The sweetness of the cola and lemongrass cuts the bitterness of the beer just enough for me to enjoy it.

Me enjoying my Qowaz. I had to edit the picture a bit because SOMEONE decided to make a very strange face behind me.

This gives new meaning to Beer Goggles.

They have this brew called Bären Pils. Hence the bear. "Bär" means "bear".

Affenberg

To the untrained eye, the word "Affenberg" can seem pretty normal...but to someone who knows a little bit of German it means Monkey Mountain! What a wonderful place this is. I currently live in Radolfzell. It takes about an hour by train to get to this little town called Salem. It is a quiet little town and, seemingly, uninteresting. If you hop on a bus, however, you are taken to the country side and to the entrance of a little nature park. You pay 7 € as a student for admission. The park is full of all kinds of wildlife like swans, storks, deer, and some very large fish in the pond.

Once you walk through the first part of the park, you come to another gate. Once through this gate you walk a hill a ways and are greeted by staff with a basket full of popcorn and you grab a handful. I'm not gonna lie. I had some. It tasted pretty good. You walk a little more and then you see them. Monkeys! The path is lined by a wooden rail and they come up to the rail, sit on it, and wait for you to give them popcorn. That's probably why the park chooses to use popcorn. It is mostly air and probably doesn't fill the monkeys up too much. They are not aggressive but the employees do tell you not to bother babies (so as not to incur the wrath of momma). I got some awesome pictures!

They got a little rowdy here!

This one was so docile.

He's so excited!

Neuschwanstein

Last Sunday me and the other CBYXers went to the Neuschwanstein castle. The language school, CDC, organized a trip last Saturday but the CBYXers didn't want to go as a big group and we wanted to stretch our little travel wings a bit and venture out on our own so we decided to go on Sunday as a much smaller group. We all went in on what is called a "Schönes Wochenende" train ticket. It is this really neat thing you can do on the weekends in Germany. You buy a 40 Euro (or around that) ticket and up to five people can ride all around the Bundesland all day. It is really great and a super inexpensive way to travel around Germany as each person only ends up paying around 8 Euros. One of our stop overs was in a city called Lindau. It was very pretty and worthy of its own trip. The train station in Lindau had a one legged pigeon in it that basically lived in the train station and was fed by travelers. Super cute.

Lindau

So we went to Neuschwanstein which is located in a city called Allgäu. Allgäu is within walking distance of a city called Füssen. So we took a train into Füssen and took a short bus ride into Allgäu. The city is pretty small and very touristy. We heard a ton of people speaking English (as well as other languages that were definitely not German).

Allgäu with a view of Neuschwanstein (The little white specks in the sky are hang gliders!)

If you don't know anything about the Neuschwastein castle I will give you a crash course. It was built for King Ludwig II of Bavaria but he barely got to live in it as he mysteriously died in 1886 when only a couple rooms in the castle were finished. The name "Neuschwanstein" roughly translates to "new swan stone" and was probably named so because King Ludwig II was obsessed with swans. They were depicted everywhere in the castle. Also, I think that, if ever a castle could look like a swan, Neuschwanstein does a pretty good job at it. The castle is known to some as the Disney castle as it served as the inspiration for the castle in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and also bares a striking resemblance to the castle seen at the beginning of almost every Disney film. You be the judge, look at the pictures below.

The castle, by comparison, is fairly new having been built in the 19th century. The castle is absolutely stunning. Even though it is a touristy thing to see while in Germany, it is worthwhile to see if you are ever in Germany. Better than the pictures of the actual castle are the photos from out of the windows of the castle. The views are breathtaking!

I want to live in this castle!

Looks like paradise.

You do have to walk up a monstrous hill to get to the castle but it is really not that bad and totally worth it. So me and the other CBYXers took a 10 hour round-trip train ride to see Neuschwanstein for about an hour and see Allgäu for about 6 hours. Again, totally worth it!

Heaven?

The overhang you can see in this picture is the same one I am standing on in the photo above this one. It's like you are standing over eternity!

I'm wearing my Paradise Dental shirt!