Lille, France

As I only had a few days left in the western part of Germany, I traveled to France because it is close and I hadn't been there yet on this trip. I went with my friend Paige to Lille, France where we stayed with some friends we know through couch surfing. It was an amazing time with some great people who quickly became good friends. Speaking English, German and me butchering French, we got along great. My French, in which I have no experience, got a little better, since with nothing to start with other than wee, as I now know several words.

It was raining most of the time we were there, but we got a good tour by Antoine and Fred, from Paris came along as well. Pretty cool place with awesome buildings, lots of people shopping and a hilarious fitness demonstation put on by one man on a stage in the rain. Just working out and doing aerobics by himself with everyone laughing at him. Quite entertaining.

Back at the apartment after a stop at a great microbrewery, Fred, the master chef, chef number one as he called himself, cooked up a tasty omlette and pasta. It took quite a while, but was well worth it as we watched the Simpsons in French before going out to the student area where the bars were. The French in this area love their French and Belgish beers. A nice change from the great German beer which can only have wheat, water, hops and barley due to a purity law.
It was a late, fun night, ending with Beatles songs back at the aparment.

The next mornign after a great French breakfast with lots of pastries, we got a ride back to the train station to go back after just a short trip. The GPS navigator in Fred's car used Yoda's voice: Bear right, you must after 300 meters. Hilarious and the best way to travel.
I have just another day left in Cologne, leaving Tuesday morning. Time's almost up. But I'll be going to Aachen tomorrow to see even more of the local area.

Deutsche Polizei Cars

Yesterday, outside the Cathedral, there was a car show for old German police cars. While many of them were amazing, the highlight was definitely a remote control kid car that a real dog was riding. I've attached a video in which you can see the dog in uniform move at the end. He was just going around through the crowd beeping his siren and cruising. You have to love the Germans.

Language School

So as I come to the end of my time in Cologne, I'd like to say that my language school was awesome. Highly recommended. Carl Duisberg Centre. We've been hanging out with the staff all the time and yesterday played soccer and threw the frisbee around for several hours in the park at a grill party (that is actual German : Grill party, as grillen is a word).

My class has been sweet. From the start where I went to the wrong class to now, I've had a great class. Fredrick from Kenya, Misbaudeen from Nigeria, Anisa from Albania, Dagnachew from Ethiopia, Professor Yutaka from Japan and even Nathan in a different program from the US are some of the people from class who are quite memorable.

The whole class jokes around, loves to argue and has several inside sayings. Whenever someone comes late, we all tell the person to come punctually (Kommen Sie bitte Punktlich!). I'll miss the class.

Veran from India, Fredrick from Kenya and Anisa from Albania

And now I have just one week left in Cologne. Kinda of sad to leave as it's been a fun place to live and has become another home for me. But I'm off to Erfurt early next week to start cooking school. Still haven't chosen the exact date of departure as I hope to do some traveling in between.

Rhein in Flames

On Saturday in the small town of St. Goar there was a wine festival and fireworks over the Rhein. Nothing like tasting some amazing wines from the region and then watching an hour long firework spectacle over the largest river in Germany. The best part about the fireworks is that they had three locations, a castle in St. Goar, a barge and then in the town across the river, St. Goarhausen, there was another castle that set off fireworks.

One of my favorite wines so far has been the Federweisser, which in english means White Feather. This is a wine that is not fully done fermenting. The wineries use grapes that can't be used for their top quality wines, and then make this wine, selling it while it is still fermenting with yeast floating around, hence the white feather. It's really tasty, tasting like lemonade on the first day you drink it and getting stronger every day after it has been opened.

In this video you can see the outline of the castle in St. Goarhausen on the hill above the Rhein.

Germany vs. Romania : Fussball!

So on the 12th, I got to see my first international soccer game. The German national team played Romania in Cologne in front of 44,500 people. It was amazing. So much energy in the air as German won 3-1.

It didn't start off too good, with Romania scoring in the 3rd minute and looking better, but as the fans were saying, the game is a full 90 minutes.

Everyone was chanting and singing throughout the game as well as waving flags. Lots of German pride all around. More than expected from what we had been told.

Lukas Podalski, the 22 year old superstar used to play for Cologe a few years ago, so the crowd loved him and keep shouting his name whenever he touched the ball and especially when he scored the 3rd goal.

I'm now all set with a German scarf, a little German soccer vocab and some awesome German soccer songs.

Mosel Valley

Last Saturday, the 8th, I went with 4 people from my group in Cologne to meet up with 5 people from our program who are studying in Saarbrucken, the capital of the German state Saarland.

We met up in the town of Cochem, a centrally located city on the Mosel River, an amazing, slow paced river filled with wineries and small towns. The way people describe the Mosel is as everything the Rhine wants to be, but cannot. Smaller, slower paced, and the ablity to relax and enjoy yourself. Another difference is a lot more bridges compared to the ferries on the Rhine.

Our group of now 10, after realizing we didn't have time to rent bikes to ride along the river, set out on an amazing hike up to Burg Eltz, a 700 year old castle that has never been destroyed. Hiking through the woods, past the stream, it felt like being in Portland, with lots of green everywhere.

The castle, Burg Eltz, is amazing. Very picturesque and sits on a natural bend in the river which acts as a moat. Inside, on the tour, we saw everything from the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the kitchen, the armory, the meeting room with the symbol of a joker allowing anything to be spoken in the room, and the symbol of a rose to keep what was said in the room in the room.

Lots of pictures, and then on back to the city for some wine tasting and some Doner Kebaps, one of the best and most common meals in Germany.

Luxembourg (small and empty)

So far, I have been to 25 countries and like all of them and would travel back to all of them. Luxembourg, my 26th country, was the first that I actually would not go back to. Perhaps it was that we were there too long ( 26 hours to be precise) or that there was hardly anyone there on the weekend. But I have had my fill of the little land known as Luxembourg, where there is a beautiful valley with nothing too spectacular on top of them. Some cool bridges, but no church, castle or other building that has come to define so many towns. Not to be mean, but nothing stood out.

Two good things about Luxembourg to compliment the negative: 1. a huge, steep, grassy hill that I ran to the top of, and rolled down. Got rolling pretty quick and out of control so I tried to stop, but couldn't, ended up doing a sommersault and landing on my feet, running crookedly and dizzily falling down and rolling even more. Grass stains all over my pants, shoes and jacket, along with a scrapped up elbow, but well worth it. 2. a huge playground. Gigantic pirate ship to play in with full netting, huge slide (30 feet tall) and water pumps and water sluces to play with. The kids in Luxembourg are spoiled.

If you are in the area of Luxembourg in the future, I highly recommend a day trip of only a few hours, the Natural History/Modern Art Museum is free for students and touring the Casements (20km of tunnels throughout the hills) are interesting. But a night is not necessary there.

Cologne Sunset

Here are some pictures of yesterday's sunset over the Cologne Cathedral, with the sun right between the two spires.

Love Parade 2007

The Love Parade, the world's largest street party took place Saturday in Essen, a city an hour away from Cologne. This year, around 1.2 million people came to Essen, dancing, partying and having a blast. Love was everywhere.

We got there right before the parade started and we able to get up close to one of the many floats. At 2pm the electronic music started pumping out of the float and everyone started dancing and jumping up and down. Everyone was dressed up in a festive manner. We danced, paraded and had a blast going along with the floats seeing thousands of people. Everyone was happy to be dancing and there were not any problems and not that many police around. Quite different from the US where there would be security all over and people checking the bags that were being brought in.

The parade ended at about 7pm and we left at about 8, before all of the night parties started. We were the last people to be allowed into the train station before it was closed off due to too many people. It was absolutley packed in there and it took us over two hours to get home, but it was well worth it.

Mussels in Brussles and the Manneken Pis Miracle

This past weekend, we headed to Brussels at 7am Saturday, getting an early start and not paying for a room Friday night. After getting lost for the first hour, we stumbled upon the Royal Palace, only open for one month a year, with some of the most gold filled rooms this side of Versailles, and a room covered with 1.4 million beetle shells, shining a bright greenish blue.

After lunch of Belgium waffles, we went to see the Manneken Pis, a fountain of a little boy pissing, a statue that has been around since the 1600s and is a landmark. What happened next, started with a parade led by the Brotherhood of the Pink Elephant (logo of Delirum Brewery), then the 10th annual ceremony about the statue, and inductions into the Pink Elephants, and then the miracle, the fountain was hooked up to a keg of beer, and soon it was pissing beer into cups whic were handed out to the public. Behold the Maneken Pis Miracle; the crowd rejoiced and drank some good beer from a statue older than the US.

The Grand Place, is quite grand as the name says. Amazing buildings completely surrounding a cobblestone square and hosting a concert later than night. I stopped by the impressive cathedral on the way to the Belgium Museum of Comic Arts to check out a large exhibition on Tintin, one of my favorite European comics from the 1940s-70s.

Later that night, after a very tasty dinner of mussels with pommes frites, a local specialty, there were free concerts all over town for the Brussels Summerfest 2007.

The next day, after going to the largest and randomest flea market I've ever seen, we took the train to Antwerp to go diamond shopping, see the Cathedral which was meant to have two towers and only got one, looked at some famous art by Rubens, dangled our feet over the river like the locals do, saw the park where graffiti is legal and quite colourful, and watched a street performer throw an apple 25 feet into the air and catch it in his mouth.

We took the train back to Brussels, to see some more sights, buy a Manneken Pis statue, watch a French gypsy band play their style of world music, grab some pommes frites and get on the train back to Cologne.

The Romantic Rhein

This past weekend, a group of 6 of us, took the train two hours south along the Rhein to the small town of Bacharach (home of Burt) where we spent the night in a castle, turned youth hostel.

With the castle above us, we had a German lunch from vegetable soup to Sauerbraten. Then it was time for wine tasting, as this is one of the best areas to grow wine in Germany. Vineyards all over the hills. They brought out a large lazy susan tray with 15 glasses of wine for us. We tasted, spun, tried another and kept moving until we tried all 15, then ordered a glass of our favorite. We tried 13 different white wines and 2 reds.

The highlight of the hike up to the castle, other than the great views along the way, were of Brooke and her roll-on suitcase. She rolled up the hill in style.

At the castle, we checked in, explored, had dinner and then hung out with a large group traveling through Europe.

On Sunday, we went by boat from Bacharach, back to Cologne, just over 8 hours. A long time, but with lots to see and plenty of time to relax, enjoy the scenery and hang out with friends. We passed over 20 castles, including Mouse Castle and Cat Castle, one of the best preserved castles on the Rhein and a lot of churches in the small towns along the way. Quite an impressive view, whereever you looked. Tons of vineyards along the way. Got a nice tan sitting out in the front of the boat, where the best view was.

So we watched the sun rise over the Rhein through the mist, and later watched the sun go down as we came into Cologne. Capping off a darn good day. Got back to my apartment around 9pm after a quick dinner, just in time to do my homework and be off to bed.

Köln Dom (Cathedral)

Picture from a plaza outside the Museum Ludwig, the modern art museum with cool architecture.




Picture from the top of the south tower






One of the entrances to the Dom which is no longer in use.

Language class

So Montag (Monday) was the first day of class for our group at the Carl Duisberg Center. To prove my genius, I went to the wrong class. As we only talked in German about ourselves and never received a syllabus or mentioned the class number, I had no clue. I was surrounded by smart people all over the world, South Africa, Armenia, Spain, Chile and more. A post-doctorate student, architect, stem cell researcher and more. They all spoke German well and I could understand most of it, but it turned out that the class was too advanced for me.

After our first break, I found my correct class, received a reading and grammar booklet as well as a workbook and started reviewing grammer, not quite as glamorous and speaking about life in German, but very helpful. Since then I've seen my language improve and have had some better conversations with my host mother.

There's only two people from my group in my class. We've got a wide variety of countries represented in our class of 12. The best are a Kenyan and a Nigerian, who always talk out loud and laugh, from across the room. Good guys, who speak in either German or English, so I can follow along.

Here is a picture of the language center with myself and Lara, also from the University of Portland.

Köln

So I'm in Köln now, my home for the next two months. Amazing city so far. Only been here a few days, but feel that I know my way around pretty well. Very friendly people. My host mom is awesome, a grandmother who keeps looking out for me with sunscreen, breakfast and umbrellas when it rains. I get a big German breakfast of a cold cuts, bread, jam, a soft boiled egg, museli, juice and coffee. It's a good start to the day.

The cathedral in Köln is the main attraction. You can see it from everywhere. It's awesome from the ground, due to it's grandness and size (157m tall) and has a great view from the top. Next door is the main train station and the Rhine River.

Language school starts on Monday, so we've just had lots of information sessions, registered our names at the local state office, and had a tour of the city and river.

Highlights of the few days include watching a Genesis cover band from the front row along with the dancing drunks. Nothing like Phil Collins to make people dance. The bright blue lights in the state office bathroom were more along the lines of a nightclub, rather than a place to tell the state your current address. We got free tickets to an American football game which felt like a high school game due to how badly they played, and the cheerleaders falling most of the time. Halftime had both teams walking into the tunnel at the same time, followed by the cheerleaders, so nothing happened except for the gatorade bucket being filled up from a garden hose.

Bryan Potts and Diana Arntz made it out to Köln for the Genesis cover band, bierhalls and a sweet thermal bath/spa. Spent 3 hours in the spa, which had various types of water, from scented, to super hot, to a fast whirlpool to the sauna which like several of the pools, were for naked people only.

So that's just a little of what I've been up to the past five days in Köln, my first stop in Deutschland. I hope all is well with everyone.
Cheers,
Justus