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!