Incoherent Stream of Consciousness

Oops, it's been two weeks since I last posted. Funny how that happens.

If you read the last post and wanted to scratch your eyes out at the sight of my ignorant Amurrican complaints about soccer football, you'll be pleased to know I've learned a lot more since then. For example, ties bother me a lot less now that I understand the whole round-robin elimination thing. At this point, I predict Germany will beat Italy on Thursday, and probably face Spain in the final on July 1st. It's so fun to watch a sport where there are no idiotic ESPN commentators to deal with and no commercial interruptions for Cool Ranch Doritos. (WE GET IT, YOU'RE DELICIOUS. NOW GO AWAY.)

As for my plans, my last day of class is on Thursday. After that, I'm hoping to visit a friend in Tübingen (south Germany) and then head to Berlin for my flight to South Africa on the 5th. I'm a little anxious about the whole "lugging my 50lb suitcase on to trains" thing, but we'll make it work (no promises, though. I might knock a few bystanders unconscious in the process.)

In other news, what is food in America? I think I've forgotten. Hamburgers? (They're actually pretty terrible here, so... congratulations, America! +1 Arbitrary Culinary Point for you.) Bacon? But there's not schnitzel, or wurst... but I mean, I don't... pasta, maybe? Seriously, what did I even eat last year? Soup? Raisins? I'm pretty sure that was about it...
Yeah, I'm going to miss German food a lot.
And their beer.
And their ice cream.

This is a transitional sentence. Over the course of the past two months, I've been collecting postcards, coasters and miscellaneous things and sticking them to the board over my bed. Here's a picture of it:

As you can see,  I started on the right and it gradually descends into chaos on the left. There's a little story that goes with most of them, which is nice; some I still don't understand. However, my favorite has to be the very first that I found in Frankfurt:

It was a promo postcard for some comic convention day in May, but let's be real, that doesn't adequately justify why this picture exists. There are just so many great things about this I can't even stand it.

Anyway, I'll be bringing all of these little memory nuggets with me back to the U.S. Taking them down in a few days will be a bummer.

I'm hoping to write at least one more post before I leave Göttingen, but I feel I should warn you in advance, it'll probably be tacky and laden with gross summaries of what I've learned about myself, blah blah blah, how my world perspective has been altered by this experience, yada yada... boring, preachy stuff like that. Something from the classic "20-something goes somewhere and thinks she knows everything now" genre. Don't miss it!

Winners and Losers and Ties, Oh My

I've begun watching the football matches in the Eurocup with other Goethe Institute people. Not being from Europe, my knowledge of "football" is little to none, but I reckon all that really matters is that Europe is playing each other and it's a big deal. Germany beat Portugal over the weekend, so that was good. But the next day, I was watching the Spain vs. Italy game, and it was really exciting, and the score was 1:1, and then... it was over. Everyone just stopped playing. 

The players walked off the field. The crowd stood up and filed out.

"Oh, but Katie, it wasn't an elimination roun--" 

Silence! I don't care, I'm so not okay with this. And if I'm not okay, how can the crazy Europeans be okay? Everyone in Amurrica knows there are only two categories, winners and losers, and someone has to lose. Or win. Something has to happen.

"Oh, but Katie, there are ties in some American sports, like hockey--"

Yeah, yeah, well, tied hockey games haven't really pervaded the American psyche enough for me to sit idly by and accept a 1:1 final score. It's frustrating, I tell you. I want some answers. And then it happened again today, with England versus France. COME ON, MAN. 

Also, they count time up instead of down. This is by far the most disorienting thing when watching this sport. They reach the end of play time (90 minutes) and then just... add a couple of minutes or so, depending on what they feel like. Maybe there's a more accurate system that I just can't decipher, but it appears to be really jank, especially to someone who watches a football where every second, nay, half-second is fought for and debated over with tooth and nail.

And have you ever actually watched soccer players? Because, well, obviously I hadn't before this. Every single time two (or more) players collide with each other, they replay it in super-slow-motion, and it reminds me of those National Geographic shows where the lion takes down the antelope really, really slowly (see below.) So much pain.

(spoiler alert: the antelope dies.)

Although I'm learning (sort of) as I watch, it still makes me miss sports I understand. Sports with countdown timers and padding and helmets to cover the agonized faces of injured players. Michigan football, anyone?

Save Point (Half Done!)

Three-part mega-blog! Half-way point! Nostalgia! Too many parenthetic statements, exclamation points and incomplete sentences!

Munchin’ in München! 

The ties that bind...

OK, we didn’t munch that much. We mostly drank. But there were some pretty impressive pretzels in between the liters of beer. 

München (Munich) was just as wonderful and expensive as I had been told! Since no building can be higher than the St. ...Something church, it doesn’t feel as “big city” as most towns with over a million people do. Positively charming in stature (Fun fact: I... don't know any of those words in German.)

München, and Bavaria as a whole, is home to those most ready to embrace German stereotypes (and now I'm generalizing. Whee!) Lederhosen, beer-quaffing, pretzel-nomming—all very, very easy to find; especially beer quaffing. There are six brews specific to this city, not to mention their airport brew (brewed in and for exclusive consumption in the Munich airport. Yeah, that's right.)

Overall, my weekend there was lovely. Learned a little, walked a lot, and met some interesting people. On a beer tour, I got to drinking with some Australians and gradually started speaking in (what I thought to be) their accent, so that was noteworthy.

Leipzig-zagging in a Renault

Now let me start by saying I love my father, really I do, but sitting in the back seat of a manual Renault while “navigating” the streets of German cities and the Autobahn was less than fun. I thought I was going to die about every 200 meters.

He auto be bahned from driving in Europe! Haaa. I feel clever.

My parents flew in Wednesday morning (and boy, were their arms tired! (I hate that joke.)) and arrived in Göttingen the same day. We spent Thursday here, then went to visit Leipzig for the weekend. Leipzig is home to Bach, as well as many other, less memorable things. Most of our time was spent in churches, museums, and not knowing where we were (see also: “looking for parking when there are angry German drivers behind you”). We went to a concert in Bach's church, which was pretty awesome, since the SATB choir that performed was fantastic (of course, with acoustics like that, a warbling Brooklyn smoker with a karaoke machine could pass for angelic.) They sang "Hold On" (WGC, I thought of you!) and a pretty nice modern piece, the title of which I have forgotten. Maybe I'll remember and then post a link to it or something. That would be cool.

Who are you people? Get off my lawn.

But seriously, there are 96 new people at the Institute this term. NINETY-SIX. I'm pretty sure that's more than double what was here before, in new people alone. It's a little overwhelming, especially when we'll be missing the friends who left... but new people are fun, right? Right.

Can't believe my time here is half-over. Already feeling sad. Grammatically incomplete sentences.

Thank goodness I have South Africa to look forward to at the start of July; it'll assuage the inevitable bummed-ness of leaving Deutschland...

Have to make the most of the time I have left! More incomplete sentences!