Nurnberg, Germany

It's been a minute since I've updated but I have been busy taking Europe by storm.

Last week I was in Nurnberg, Germany.  I stayed with my friend Rob (who I met in Fall 2009 at Longwood when he was an international student) and his family.  It was a great time but just getting there was an adventure in itself.

I woke up with just enough time to finish getting ready and get to the train station.  That morning, it was snowing in Strasbourg.  When I got to the tram station, the tram was late and when it did arrive, just before it stopped it had to slam on its brakes because someone went out in front of it.  I got inside near the front but as soon as I did, a man from the back of the tram came to talk to the conductor to tell him that someone was injured when the tram had to stop suddenly.  The conductor turned off the tram and went back to see what had happened.  We were stopped for almost ten minutes.  Leave it to the French to make a mountain out of a molehill: apparently the person who was injured only bumped their head or fell over or something because the conductor walked back up calmly and we were on our merry way.  I had five minutes before my train left and we had about 5 stops to go before the train station.  Did I make it?  Stay tuned.

No.  I ran into the train station just as my train was pulling away.  The one day I needed my train to be late, of course it's on time!  I tried not to panic but I was flustered when I went to the information to get an alternative itinerary.  Thankfully I didn't have to pay extra, but my new route was much more complicated than the original Strasbourg-Stuttgart-Nurnberg.  I went from Strasbourg-Appenweier-Karlsruhe-Nurnberg.  Appenweier is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere not too far from Kehl.  Its train station consists of one platform.  I waited in Appenweier for my train to Karlsruhe for an hour in the snow while I may or may not have been harassed/laughed at by 4 Turkish guys who kept walking around me, talking to each other, then looking at me and laughing/smiling.  It was really uncomfortable and an extremely long 60 minutes.  

When I did get to Nurnberg, Rob picked me up at the station and we walked around the city.  We got coffee, shopped a little, and got a typical Nurnberg snack of three sausage-type things in a bun.  It was pretty good!  We walked to the top of a hill in the city center where there was a castle.  

After we walked around the city for a few hours, it got too cold so we went back to his house and I met his family.  His brother and dad both spoke English, which was helpful, but his mom only spoke German and Russian, so I had to use the little German I know (2.5 years' worth) to communicate with her.  Thankfully Rob did a lot of my talking for me but I somehow managed.  In the few days I was in Germany I noticed that my comprehension is really good and I have a passive vocabulary but it's sometimes difficult to express myself, which is normal in language acquisition.  The other days I was in Germany, Rob and I went into the city, went to bars, and watched a lot of King of Queens.  Even during the day it was between -8 to -10C (that's in the teens/really low 20s) and windy so it was difficult to stay outside for long. 

The first night I was in Germany, Rob and I went to a bar where we met up with his friends.  We hung out and played a game with 6 dice that I didn't really understand and consequently lost horribly.  The next two nights Rob and I went out to bars with his friends to watch soccer matches.  It was really chill and I felt like "one of the guys."

Luckily I did not have any problems with my return trip.  In brief, some things that I noticed about Germany:

1.  Beer is cheaper than water

2.  The country smells good.  It's really clean.  Public transportation, stores, even the people, they all just smell good.

3.  German women are beautiful.

4.  Their feelings towards other countries are based off of results of soccer matches.  

5.  Taxis come in the form of Mercedes Benz

When I got back to Strasbourg on Thursday afternoon, I had enough time to drop my stuff off before Harris invited me to a movie.  We went to see "Les Femmes du 6e etage" (the women of the 7th floor).  It was about a group of Spanish women who moved to Paris to work as maids for rich people.  It was really cute!  After the movie I had to book it across Strasbourg to babysit for an American family from NJ living in Strasbourg for the dad's work for a few years.  I hung out with the two kids (9 and 11, I think) and we had fun.