Hit the Road, Jack

Honestly, guys, I'm tired of playing Catch-up Travel-log.
Sufficeth to say, I had fun with Felicia. We went to the Steinhuder Meer Festival thing, and we chilled and watched movies and such.

I went back to Braunschweig. I was at my actual home for less than twenty-four hours. Wednesday morning I helped my friend Anna with a film project. I walked to the store to get food. I really miss buying my own food. I don't have too much of a say here... Dang it, I wish I could go to the store too instead of watching the kids while one of the parents goes to the store... So I bought fruit. A lot of fruit, considering how long I'd be home...

 But oh my goodness, was it delicious :)
Banana, orange, apple, nectarine, grapes... I really miss being able to eat all the fruit I want.

Thursday, I went to the kids' cousins home. They live on the other side of town. For some reason, the kids adore me. The twin ten-year-olds love that I have nail polish and earrings. That makes sense, but the other two children just like me... I don't know why, but they were all begging me to stay longer. And their mom and I were like, "chill, kids, Shelby will be here for another ten months..." BTdubs, Despicable Me is a lot more funny in English. It's not that I couldn't understand the script in German, but that a lot of the humor just doesn't translate well. Like the famous "it's so fluffy I'm gonna die!!!" is just "it's cuddly!!" It's just not the same...

Early Sunday morning, I took the train to little Lüdinghausen to visit my friend Leonie. Unfortunately, she was really busy this week. She's still in Gymnasium, so I got to visit the German equivalent of high school (more or less). Her parents showed me Münster, which is a cool town. The Thirty Years War was brought to and end there (ok, partially... these peace treaties tend to take forever to draft). I've discovered that apple pie isn't all that American, as I had something that was just like it here. And rotkohl is delicious :)
So, I read the second Harry Potter at Leo's house while she was doing homework or in class. My new goal:

 

before Christmas.

She let me borrow the remaining five :D

I think it's totally feasible.

I'm kinda tired of traveling by now. I'm going to a smaller Tagung in Darmstadt next weekend, too. This means living in five different places in less than a month. I'm not complaining; in fact, I'm really glad I've gotten to see so much! I'm just ready to take a break from taking a break. Good thing the kids are starting school Monday, so life will settle down nicely. 

The long and winding road that leads to your door

Friday was my last day in Wien. I couldn't decide what I wanted more- a couple more days at the Tagung, or a whole lot of sleep.
After the closing meeting, we had to say our farewells. Saying goodbye is always an unpleasant affair, especially when you don't know if you'll ever see your friends again. I also had to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. My train back to Hannover didn't leave until midnight-ish, so I had waaaay too much time on my hands. I had originally planned on staying with Felicia and seeing a bit more of the city, but her flight left four hours before my train, and I wasn't particularly found of being alone in a foreign city on a Friday night. Luckily I ran into Kerstin, who lives in Wien. She said I could stay with her and she'd show me more of the city. Score! Life just improved about a thousand times :)
So I went to Kerstin's apartment. Kerstin, her friend Miriam, and I ate lunch and chilled. We were all super worn-out. Then they decided to go to Tichy. It's apparently the best Eiscafe (ice cream shop) in all of Wien. And the Eis really was delicious! I had strawberry, chocolate, and hazelnut. Four scoops is the smallest size you can get. And it was pretty cheap too!
On the way back to the city center, we found these guys on the bus. You can imagine my excitement when we got on the bus and there were five guys wearing Lederhosen at the front of the bus.

From there, we went to see Schloß Belvedere. It's really beautiful, but lacks the view of Wien that one can enjoy from Schönbrunn. 

We went to the Naschmarkt. During the day, merchants sell their goods, and a lot of them offer samples (hence the Nasch (nibble) part). We got there rather late, and so there wasn't a whole lot of naschen going on.

We also went to see the Hundertwasser Haus. Hundertwasser was this artist who had some really interesting ideas. For example, he made sure that the tenants were allowed to paint the exterior walls around their windows as far as they could reach. 

After that, we all went back to the apartment to eat and relax. We watched some tv show while we waited. Then the hour came, and we took the U-bahn to the Hauptbahnhof. I was so sad that I had to leave that wonderful, beautiful city! My train was also kinda sketch... I think it came from Romania or somewhere in that part of Europe. It had a little cabin for each six people, kinda like the Hogwarts Express, but creepy. Oh well. At least the people in my cabin weren't creepy.

Around 6:00 I had to change trains in Munich. I wish I could've seen the city, but I guess I'll have to go to Bayern some other time... Then onwards to Hannover. Twelve hours of traveling. Talk about a long and winding road... I stayed for a couple days with Felicia there. More blog to come!

Why can't we be friends?

Wednesday in Vienna: classes. They weren't all that interesting, honestly. That night the whole 400 of us went into the city together and sang church songs to the light of candles that we brought. It was pretty cool! I couldn't help but think about the countless hosts of people in centuries past, whose only light at night was the moon and candles.
Thursday was sport and service project day. I'm not really into sports, but I went along anyways. We also had difficulty signing up for a service project, because most of the projects required German language capabilities. Anyways... we all went to a huge park somewhere in Vienna. I don't know where exactly since we took the U-bahn and so forth. I met a lovely girl, Kerstin, who actually spoke to me in German! This is really great because most everybody spoke to us in English. I can speak German well enough, but my friends... well, not so much... So I got to talking to her, and then she had to go to her service project, which was singing and talking to people in a nursing home. I decided to go with her. We went with the group clear to the other side of the city. We sang, of course. Then we were supposed to talk with the old people. I didn't trust myself to speak with the old people, since they most likely speak some sort of dialect that I wouldn't be able to understand. And there were a few too many young people anyway, so everybody had someone to talk to. Another guy decided to refrain from talking for this reason, so we just stayed in the back of the room and talked. He's an interesting guy from somewhere in southern Austria.
Back at the hotel, my friends and I skipped out on a political presentation. It was boring, and we don't really understand the whole Austrian government and politics thing. We decided to get ready for the last dance instead. It was a more formal dance, so we took our jolly time. It was actually a really good dance for once! I don't usually get asked to dance as much as I did on that night. Can't complain :)

You may find yourself in another part of the world

Tuesday in Vienna.

 We had several options to choose from: small tours to certain points, classes, or doing whatever. Felicia and I wound up going with Jeanette and her friends from Frankurt. We went with a group to see Schloß Schönbrunn. We walked around the grounds. None of us wanted to pay to go inside. If you walk around the back side, past the beautiful fountain from whence it gets its name, and up a hill and then look back towards the palace, you get a most lovely view of not only the palace but also the city. I was in awe the entire time! Palaces are beautiful, but Vienna! Oh Vienna! And to have it all in one! We had a sack-lunch picnic on the grounds.

Parliament

Later we met up with a friend of Jeanette's friends who is studying in Vienna, who then gave us a tour of the city. I don't know if I can remember the names of everything, but I do know that it was all lovely. We came up out of a U-bahn (subway) station and BAM! in front of us was the magnificent Stephansdom. It was so huge, I couldn't fit it into one picture. It didn't help that it was impossible to get far away enough and still be able to see it. Just google it. Here we ran into our Swiss friend, who decided to hang out with us. Then we went and got Eis (ice cream) which was heavenly! Nutella ice cream is a real thing!!! This is a dream come true! In no particular order, we saw the Rathaus, Parliament, some building where the Kaiser worked (I forgot the name of it), some ruins of a Roman wall... and a bunch of other things.

The building where the Kaiser worked

Vienna

 By this time, we were beginning to wonder when we would head back to the hotel for dinner. Then someone decided we needed to see Prater. It's a little theme park that's apparently really famous. Being an ignorant American, and a product of public education, I had never heard of it. At this point, Felicia, Jeanette, our Swiss friends, and I decided to quit the tour in favor of going back to the hotel. There was no hope for dinner at this point, but we would still be back in time for the dance. Besides being hungry and tired, we really wanted to be back for the dance because the theme was traditional dress. Can I just say, Lederhosen are the coolest things ever! Of course, not everyone had a Dirndl or Lederhosen, since they are rather regional clothes. Sadly dance pictures never turn out well... So to make up for it, here's a little gem we found on a staircase in the University of Wien:

"Only Chuck Norris finishes his studies in the minimum time"

Vienna waits for you

Holy COW. Vienna. Wien. I'm going to have to split this up into several posts.

Actually, I'm going to start with the Sunday before Wien. After church, my host family decided to go see the Heide. (Heide = Heather). The area is basically a super-huge field of heather, and there's nothing like it anywhere in the world. It turns purple! We were a bit early in the season (we've had a very cool "summer"), so it wasn't as purple as it could be. It was still very pretty.

The sucky thing though, was that I wasn't completely packed and ready to go for Wien. We got back around 9:00 PM. I was planning on getting to bed before then, but... oh well. It was worth it.

So I got about three hours of sleep when all was said and done. We had to leave the house at 3:30 AM so I could get on my train. That was fun. It was the earliest I've woken up, but in a way, it was kinda worth it! I have a rough time sleeping on public transportation, like planes and trains and such, so yeah... I was able to see a lot of Germany. Germany is so beautiful!!! I couldn't help thinking that throughout the whole trip.The best thing was that I got to see the sunrise (which I've always been to lazy to do) over some small mountains. It was waaaay awesome.

So I got all the way to Vienna all by me onesies. I had been a little nervous, because I've never been on such a big trip by myself before, and nobody was waiting for me at the train station. But I managed. And being the penny-pincher I am (or shall I say Eurocent-pincher?), I decided to walk from the train station in Vienna to the hostel. I had looked it all up on Google Maps and had my directions and everything. Well, Google let me down. It was supposed to take one-and-a-half hours, but it didn't. It lied. And Vienna lacks street signs. These things combined led me down the wrong road. Not very far, and I wouldn't consider myself lost, but it did take a bit longer than expected. I simply stopped at a gas station and figured it all out. No big deal. I got to see some of Wien that nobody else did. All those suckers that used the U-bahn (subway) missed out on quite a bit of Wien. And the sore feet and shoulders. Oh well. Wien is absolutely beautiful! And I didn't even see the touristy pretty area that day.
So, the first thing I did after check-in was take a shower. If you had just walked for 2.5 hours around a foreign city around 90 degrees Fahrenheit with all your luggage after being on a train or three for nine hours, you'd want a shower too. After dinner, we had a dance. Dances in Europe are way different than the Mormon dances I've been to in the US. Firstly, there is no such thing as a slow dance. Strange, yes? They have this basic dance step called the Disco Fox, which is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and then they just throw in some twirls and stuff. It is a lot more fun! Secondly, they dance this strange dance to all sorts of music. No crazy mosh pits or anything. Thirdly, they play a lot of unedited versions of American songs. They just don't realize that there are bad words or anything. Ironically, the only guy I danced with was from good ol' Idaho. We actually found quite a few Americans. By the way, the conference was for Latter-day Saints (Mormons) from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Speaking of Switzerland, I met my first Swiss person ever. I was a little too excited. I think the whole craziness of the day was manifesting itself...
After the dance, we went up to our room. Can I just say that there were some crazy coincidences goin on? My friend, Jeanette, who was my neighbor at the German House at BYU, had decided to come on the Tagung at the last minute. I thought she had signed up to be in our room, but she hadn't. Somehow, though, she was put in my room! What a coincidence! I was really glad about that though. So we just had a little English-speaking BYU room with the three of us.
I'm going to have to write about Tuesday on another post. Nobody wants to read about all of this in one sitting... But really, Vienna is fantastic. I would highly empfehl visiting there.

The exodus is here

..Or will be, dark and early, Monday morning. I'm going to Vienna!!! That means I have a bunch of packing to do. I'm going to a church conference for young single adults. Of course there will be dances, and they have specific themes every night, plus different things for day wear. I've got so much to pack!!! My train leaves around 4:30 AM and gets there around 1:30 PM. This is going to be fun. At least I'll get to see a good bit of Germany plus some of Austria as I travel. And afterwards, I'm going to stay with my friend Felicia in Hannover for a couple days. My German family is going on vacation, so I've got some time to spend. Not much money though... Traveling is expensive :P
Other than my excitement about Vienna, life has gone on much as before. I watch the kids. Woohoo!
Ok, so something different did happen this week. Two cousins, roughly my age, came to visit for two days. Those boys made life interesting... We didn't really get to be good friends, but I'll see them at the Tagung in Vienna. It'll be good to see a couple familiar faces in yet another foreign country.
I also got to go to a church activity for JAE (young single adults) on a lake somewhere near Hannover. That was a loooot of fun! It was soooo good to be around people my age!
Nothing else really interesting happened this week. Next week will more than make up for that, though! So excited!!!

Nothing comes easy

I finally got to do something with people my age on Monday! We went to go see the new Batman film. I honestly didn't like it. It was waaaaay too violent and dark, and focused entirely too much on how bad things got in Gotham City. I don't mind battles and such in films, but this was overkill. I discovered, though, that in Germany, if the film is really long, they insert an intermission. It was a total shocker! On the bright side, I found out my friend, Anna, is also very excited for the Hobbit movie, just like me. I had a bit of a headache after the movie. It was like taking a very long and strenuous test. Since German takes more syllables than English, they had to speak rather fast.  I had to concentrate very hard to be able to understand the script.
One thing I really miss about living on my own, or even with my parents, is being able to get as much produce as I want. I really try to eat a lot of it, but they don't so much here. Even the families that eat "healthily" don't eat as much produce as back home, even though there are more options here. I've been known to eat in one sitting: three bananas, or most of a cantaloupe, or four oranges, a pound of grapes, or a bowl of peas, or half a bag of baby carrots, a huge bowl of Lima beans or a smoothie large enough for three people. So what if I don't like salad? My German family thinks that eating salad every other day makes them healthy. It makes me so very sad. I have eaten green beans and mushrooms and other strange fruits. They aren't easy to get through, but I'm dying for nutrients. Ok, so it's not as bad as it could be, but I miss eating something healthy at every meal and for snacks. That's why I bought myself two oranges yesterday.
Other than that, life has stabilized. I just watch the kids from 10-4 and make sure they don't do anything too dangerous. They usually get along together pretty well. Just your average kids. Except that they don't watch TV, like, ever. Only MacGyver on Sunday afternoons occasionally. Some days it would be nice just to say, "here kids, you're being waaaaay too obnoxious, watch this Disney movie." I agree that watching too much television is bad, but really, people?!?
I can't even unlock the front door. But I have a problem with keys...
It's strange to think, that if this stay in Germany was the length of the last one, I'd be on a plane back home right now... fortunately I have another eleven months :)