Ferropolis

On the way back from Wittenberg, my host parents took me to this other place in Sachsen-Anhalt called Ferropolis. It basically means Iron-opolis because "ferrum" is Latin for "iron". It is called this because this place is the final resting place for huge mining machines. I mean huge. These things are ginormous! Ironically, it was a very hot day so I kind of felt like I was deep in the hot steamy mines with these machines. We started off with one of the gadgets that gave us an audio tour but we soon realized we would be there for hours and "fast forwarded" our experience a bit.

This one was my favorite. It's name was Gemini and, being born on May 22nd, I am also a Gemini! 

Wittenberg

Do you remember that guy named Martin Luther? If not, let me refresh your memory. Martin Luther was the guy who nailed his 95 theses to the door of Schlosskirche on October 31st, 1517 in defiance of the Catholic Church to shed light on some of the practices he thought were wrong like selling indulgences. He also translated the Bible from Latin to German which gave way to a standardized German language. He was a pretty important guy and for a large part of his life he lived and taught theology in Wittenberg which just so happens to be in the state that I live in in Germany. It is about 1.5 hours with a car from where I live. My host parents took me and a friend on a day trip to Wittenberg to see the sights. We saw the actual church where Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses. It was pretty cool to be standing in such rich history. In fact the city has come to be known as Lutherstadt Wittenberg which means Luthercity Wittenberg.

The church where the 95 Theses were nailed!

A replica of the 95 Theses.

The door where Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses.

The church in itself is amazing to see but Wittenberg is also very beautiful little city and we explored it further.

The city square and the Stadtkirche (city church) in the background.

At the base of the Stadtkirche.

Bier Käse Suppe

Bier Käse Suppe means beer cheese soup! I have been wanting to make this soup since I arrived in Germany because, as a Wisconsinite, it embodies all that I can be proud of. Beer and cheese! I wanted to make it so that my host family could taste a little bit of my home. I am also no cook so it is a miracle that it worked out. Recipes from America are hit or miss in Germany. It can be difficult to find the ingredients you need sometimes and sometimes, when you find the ingredients, they can be a little off. For instance, we would have ideally used sharp cheddar but the best we could find was mild cheddar. It was delicious though. My good friend Nicole sent me a recipe and it turned out great! The ingredients are:

1 onion (diced)
3 carrots (finely chopped) 
1 clove of minced garlic
4 TBSP butter
4 TBSP flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp onion powder
4 cups of milk
3 cups of shredded cheese
1 cup of beer


I was really glad that I took the plunge to make this soup because now I know what a roue is and I now know just how important it is for a soup. I decided to make the soup when I had another participant from my program visiting. And, of course, Joe had to be included as well. I have never really seen a measuring cup or measuring spoons in Germany. I am sure they exist somewhere in the country but I have never seen anyone use them. To measure we had to use coffee cups and we had to "eye" the butter up. My host mom uses this technique all the time and her cooking always turns out amazing so we went with the flow and estimated. The soup turned out very tasty and es hat so viel Spaß gemacht!

Teamwork.

You just add the beer to the cheese right?

We be adding milk to that roue! 

Kate can open a beer bottle with ANYTHING.

Final step...ENJOY!

Oster!

Oster is German for Easter. I know, I am wayyyy behind on my blogs since easter was awhile ago. The good news is this post will be kinda because it is really just pictures of how the city of Magdeburg decorated the city. That is good because I will have more time to write the next blog. As you may know, I spent Easter in Copenhagen but these decorations were up for almost the entire month of march in the malls in Magdeburg.

You could pet REAL bunnies while shopping at the local mall. 

Medieval bunnies in front of the old Magdeburg skyline.

Tokio Hotel is a band that originated in Magdeburg so, of course, they needed to have a Tokio Hotel comprised of bunnies.

GIANT and I do mean GIANT chicks in eggs floating from the ceiling.

Copenhagen

I am seriously soooo behind on my blogs. You can't blame me though. There is so much to do when you are living in another country. At least I always come back to my blog and post something again. Some of the people in my program posted 3 or 4 times and haven't written anything since October 2011. Okay, now that that admission is out of the way, we can move on to the blog. I went to Copenhagen over Easter weekend. It was awesome. As you can see from the map, Copenhagen is in Denmark which touches Germany at its Northern most tip. Copenhagen, however, is located on an island to the far East. In order to get there you basically can use a bus or a train BUT that bus or train will have to board a ferry and travel across the Baltic in order to arrive at Copenhagen. I used a bus to get there but can you, just for a second, imagine being on a train as that train boards a ferry and then proceeds to travel out to sea? Engineering marvel. My friends and I decided to use a hostel called Danhostel. I highly recommend it. It is close to the train station and the main square which is the meeting spot for many tours and pub crawls. It is also a very tall tower so, if you get lucky, you can get an amazing view of the city like I did. All for around 25€ per person per night. Oh yeah, and the hostel is clean and offers a breakfast buffet in the morning. SIDE NOTE/TIP: If you ever stay at a hostel or hotel with a breakfast buffet eat what you want and then stash something in your backpack for later so that you have a snack while you are exploring in the city. It is a great way to stave off hunger and save some money. The weather in Copenhagen is crazy. It was raining when we arrived, it snowed the next morning, that turned into clear skies but was still very windy, and then, when we left Copenhagen, it was not windy and sunny. Crazy weather but it is an amazing city and Denmark consistently has the happiest people in the world.

View from the hostel room. This is what 25€ will get you.

Our first full day in Copenhagen we took the SANDEMAN's New Europe free tour. New Europe is this company that operates in touristy cities in Europe. They conduct things like pub crawls, free tours (but you should tip the tour guide at the end), and paid tours. Our tour guide was awesome. His name was Filip. That's right. Filip with an "F" and one "L". He was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. He told us many interesting things about Copenhagen. Only about 5 million people in the world speak Danish which is why almost everyone in Copenhagen can speak English. Denmark had the lowest Jewish mortality rate during WWII. 96% of its Jewish population was saved because brave sailors gathered the Jews and sailed them across the sea to Sweden where they were safe. I was in awe when I heard that. You go Danes! Filip said that that was one of the reasons the Danes are so happy. He said they take care of each other and have a sense of family in their country. They stick together.

We got to see the most photographed place in Copenhagen. The famous New Harbor which is lined with colorful buildings and has a canal filled with ships. Little known fact. The ships in that canal do not leave the canal. There is no way for them to do so. The bridges are too low and the ships are too tall.

The creator of The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Anderson, also lived and worked in Copenhagen so there is a Little Mermaid monument in his honor. It is very simple. It is just a mermaid sitting on a rock on the shore. Simple but cool.

The currency in Denmark is the Krone. A single Krone is worth much less than the Euro or the dollar so everything seems very expensive in Denmark. You are like "Oh my gosh! I just spent 100 Kroner!" But that is really only about 17 dollars so don't freak out if you go to Denmark. Even after conversion though, things are still pretty expensive in Copenhagen so watch your spending.

Copenhagen is also home to the amusement park Tivoli. A certain Walt Disney went there way back when and was then inspired to create his own now famous amusement parks.

Denmark is also the home of LEGO! LEGO got it's name from the two words "le" and "got" in Danish. It means "play well". In Latin, "le got" means "I put together" so LEGO is basically the perfect word for these little plastic bricks. The LEGO factory is not located in Copenhagen so we didn't get to see it but our tour guide Filip told us something very interesting about LEGO. Per unit, LEGO produces the most tires of any company in the world. I know I know, if we were talking per weight, it would lose horribly but it produces the most single tires in the world. That is pretty interesting!

All in all, Copenhagen was pretty darn cool. Just think. Without Denmark, we would not have LEGO, Disneyland, or The Little Mermaid. I shudder to think. The weather was crazy but even that could not dull the beauty and richness of the city. If you can, I highly recommend visiting.

The ferry ride was beautiful.

The main square. 

An awesome fountain of a sea creature thing. Nifty!

New Harbor 

Me and a giant anchor...why not? 

We went to an English church service on Easter and I do mean English. The priest had an English accent. 

Me and a windmill!!!!!!

Awkward Convo

When you get lost in translation, a lot of awkward things can happen. This particular awkward conversation put a smile on my face the entire day. It was between me and one of my coworkers. I went to lunch with some of my coworkers and we got to talking.

Coworker (to me): Machst du einen Sport? (Do you play a sport?)


Me (to coworker): Nein, nicht wirklich. (No, not really.)


Coworker (to me in English for some reason): Oh, I thought you would have played football or something because of how your body looks.


Me: Danke? (Thanks?)

In his defense, what he said was grammatically correct and perfectly okay to say but it just happens to not be something we would ever say to someone in English because it is...you guessed it. Awkward! We might say "build" instead of "body". It was very funny and I am laughing about it even now as I type this post. I enjoy biking a lot and the occasional long walk but I have no idea why he would say I look like a football player. Hmmmmm I wonder...

Mandala Kinderbetreuung

Some of you may already know that my program requires all the participants to complete 40 hours of volunteer service by the end of January. If you didn't know that before, you do now. Finding a place to volunteer in Germany is hard. Volunteer service is something that is slowly creeping into the culture but it is not quite there yet unlike in the United States where it is almost expected for things like scholarship applications and college applications. So after searching for months, I found a daycare that wanted me to volunteer by them. Now I am no child person. I am like a fish out of water when it comes to kids. I don't get them. They cry for no reason, they are unreasonable, and they play with their food. Time was ticking though and I needed to find a place to volunteer quick or I was not going to complete my hours on time. So I decided to bite the bullet and volunteer at the daycare. It was called Mandala Kinderbetreuung. I first had a small interview with the boss lady and then, the following week, I was working there. I wasn't ever given a formal introduction to the other employees or the facility so it was really not easy the first couple of times I worked. I didn't know anyone's names, I didn't know any of the rules, I didn't know where anything was, and everything was in another language! This is a German thing though. They don't really give you an introduction. You need to ask questions and get the information. I understand that asking questions leads to answers but if the employees know that I know absolutely nothing about how things are done then why not volunteer information? This is not a rude thing it is just a German thing so I really did not take offense to it. It just made me want to cry a couple of times. Haha.

I don't even know where to begin with the kids. How is it that my first experience working with kids ended up being in a different country and different language? The silver lining was that they were young enough that they spoke such simple German that I could actually understand them...sometimes. And that's the thing about kids too; half the time they make no sense anyway...even when they speak the same language as you. The kids were just like I thought they would be. Silly, loud, dirty, irrational, and REALLY CUTE! By working at Mandala I kind of understand why someone might want to work with children or even have children of their own. For all their downfalls, they are just so stinking cute especially when you are sitting down and they just plop in your lap and ask you to read to them or grab your hand with no warning whatsoever. Have I become a kid person?

There was one girl though...you know the one. Every daycare has one. That little boy or girl that will grow up to be a bully. This girl shall remain nameless. The first day I was at Mandala she was really nice and even competed for my attention. She would say things like "I cooked you some noodles" or "I can count to 10 in English". She even hugged me the second day I was there. That should have been my first warning. It's always the ones that want all the attention. During that second day, however, the kids built a little bridge and were just walking over it for fun. This girl decides to just plop down on it and not move preventing 10 other kids from having fun on it. I asked her to please move several times because it was everyone's bridge and she didn't so I picked her up and set her to the side. Well, that really must have ticked her off because, every other day I worked there, she was super mean to me. She said that I was stinky sometimes and her favorite thing to say was "Du bist böse" which means "You are angry/mean". She said it several times in a row one time while I was playing with a different kid. The little boy finally leaned in towards me and said "Du bist nicht böse. Sie ist immer böse". Hahah so he basically said that I wasn't mean and that SHE was always mean. I love that little kid for coming to my defense. He will always hold a special place in my heart as my little savior.

And now we come to the part that we all think but never say out loud. The favorites. We all have them even with our own children. I of course had my favorites within the daycare. I had two favorites. Even though I would have been blinded by my love for them, they really never did anything wrong. It was a boy and a girl and they were just so well behaved. They never cried, they never fought with anyone,  they went to bed when it was nap time, and they were just so gosh darn cute. They both had big blue eyes, chubby cheeks, and blond hair. The blond haired, blue eyed thing wasn't that important but because of that they looked like they could be my children. Haha If every kid was like them I would totally work at a daycare but unfortunately the little bully girl ruined any chances of that happening. The first time I met my favorite little boy, he also had a runny nose. I am sorry but there is nothing cuter than a little kid with a runny nose. It sucks that they are sick but the way they wipe their little noses with their sleeves and hands is so cute. Yeah sure, they are spreading diseases but who cares. They're cute!

I would basically just show up and play with kids all day. They never made me clean anything or change a diaper. I just got to play with kids all day and give them individual attention. A lot of the kids knew German, English, and one other language. A lot of the kids knew Russian (I'm in the east block remember?) so I would always ask them what things were called in Russian. It was cool that these little munchkins knew so many languages but it sure made me feel dumb for being 23 and learning my first foreign language. My favorite part of the day was Morgenkreis. It means morning circle. We would all make a circle and sing a song or tell each other what we were gonna do that day. One time we had a tea light in a bowl and we passed it around to the person next to us and as we gave it to them we had to say "Schön dass du hier bist" which means "It's nice that you are here". It was so cute. I learned patience and how to keep my cool when a kid is acting ridiculous. It's easy to like kids when they are being cute and behaved but you have to learn how to act when they are not being that cute. I have a baby niece back home so I have to perfect these skills for when I return home.

Randoms #3

All faithful followers of my blog will know what my Random posts are about. Although people who do not regularly check my blog deserve to be punished I will not punish them. I will fill them in. Random posts are posts that contain pictures of things that really did not fit into any other post. So they are basically posts of just pictures with a short explanation about the pictures. They are sometimes groups of pictures taken over a period of months. This one contains pictures from my first week in Magdeburg and pictures that have been recently taken. I figured I should post them quick before I ended up with a post that contained 50 pictures. Here they are. I hope you enjoy the randomness.

This is my Schultüte. It is a tradition in Germany to give this to a child on their first day of school so that they can bring it to school with them. I woke up to this on my first day of German college. They are always a paper or cardboard cone with treats inside. They have so many themes for Schultüten but mine was Max und Moritz themed which is a very well known German child's story. I did not bring the Schultüte to school but it was still awesome that I got one even if they are really only for little kids. 

Kinder Überraschung Eier!!!! Some of you may already know how obsessed with these I am. They are a chocolate egg with a toy inside them...now don't even start comparing them to the short-lived Nestle Wonderball. The Nestle Wonderball had stupid toys inside but Kinder Überraschung Eier always have super awesome toys. For instance, I got a little alien dude one time with a head like a paintbrush. He also came with a sheet of water color. So I could paint with my little alien! They are illegal in the US because of irresponsible parents who didn't watch their children. The children ate the toys and choked on them so those bad parents ruined it for everyone. Everyone knows that if you can fit an object through a toilet paper roll that it poses a risk of choking so those parents should have known better. These were Christmas themed Kinder Überraschung Eier. 

While visiting the local electronic store, we stumbled across this life size Doby...he lives!

The words on the window do not continue to the right so yes, it really says that and no, speaking German is not an excuse because they know what that word means.

One morning I woke up to a world covered in frost. I walked by this spider web perfectly frosted and just had to take a picture.  

All sliced white bread in Germany is referred to as "American Style". It is so funny. 

Many people have heard of Ampelmänner which are the little men in the walk signals in Germany. I noticed one day that we had female versions with pig tails in Magdeburg. Ampelmädchen! 

We have a lot of really great graffiti artists in Magdeburg. The Dom is a constant construction site and this yellow barrel was laying out one day by the Dom so a graffiti artist decided to make it a bit more interesting. 

Döner shops are a dime a dozen in Germany but Magdeburg has a Döner shop that makes you feel like you are in a cave. They had stalactites all over the place.

This was a picture I took through my blinds. German blinds have these little openings in them so the light was coming through just perfectly...and I was bored so I wanted to take a picture. 

One of the restaurants in Magdeburg. As you may have guessed, their dishes are mostly chicken. 

Me and my first spaghetti Eis. It will proabably also be my last spaghetti Eis. There was so much of it and the center was filled with whipped cream...and not just any whipped cream. It was that super thick whipped cream that sticks to the top of your mouth even after it is long gone. I had to have it at least once while I was in Germany though. If you don't know what it is, it is ice cream pushed through a spaghetti press and topped with strawberry sauce so it is ice cream that looks just like spaghetti.