To the Top!

After being sick for the last week or so, I decided a relaxing weekend was in order. I had no trips planned - actually, I had NO plans. All I knew was that the weather was going to be great and that I wanted to sleep in, stay in town, and have a stress-free weekend.

Despite my plans of sleeping in, I was awoken around 9:45 a.m. to help a friend who had her laundry stuck in the washing machine. Apparently a piece of the machine has snapped and the lock was not un-locking. She was frantic, but was calmed down soon enough. The Hausmeister must have heard the desperation in her voice on the phone because, despite telling her earlier that she would have to wait until Monday to get her laundry (it was SATURDAY), he came back and somehow unlocked the machine.

There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. Instead, I ended up getting ready for the day. I watched a bit of The Originals, a spin-off of The Vampire Diaries. I'm hooked.

Despite spending those few hours watching The Originals, I managed to get out and into the world for a few hours on Saturday.

Julia, Chris, Joe, and I went out for a Chinese/Thai/Japanese sushi buffet. It was all-you-can-eat, and it was fabulous.

After being sufficiently stuffed, we all headed back to the dorms to change - we were climbing Aachelm.

Aachelm is the largest hill/mountain in Reutlingen and the view of the entire city and surrounding area is wonderful.

After a few bumps in the road, Chris, Lineke, and I were on our way. We walked leisurely up the large hill, stopped at the restaurant on the way to fill up our water bottles, and made it to the top about an hour before sunset.

We enjoyed the tower, as well as the wall overlooking the city, and headed down again. Overall, it took us over 14,000 steps - I received a step counter from AOK and it was cool to see how many steps it took us.

My night was spent watching the remaining episodes available of The Originals.

PHOTOS TO COME

Armed with a Cup of Coffee, Stapler, Staple-Remover, and Binder of Papers

With my best friend in town, work, and a bunch of other going-ons, I have fallen a little behind on the blog.

I hope you can all forgive me!

Not too many grand, new tasks in the office that I have been assigned (and the ones I WERE assigned, I will tell you about in this post!) - because of that, I choose to condense my last few weeks into one blog post. We can do it, I know we can.

If you missed it, I recently wrote a blog post about my wonderful road trip to Salzburg last weekend - check it out, pictures included.

This week has presented a few new hurdles in my professional journey here in Germany.

On Monday, I was to have an interview with a local hotel owner whose son needed an English tutor. I walked the 15 minute trek to Kantstrasse for my interview - much to my surprise, this interview was actually just a tutoring session! Unexpected, but alas, successful.

Stefan, the boys name, is 15 and is learning the English language. We spent an hour working on his pronunciation and reading through his text book so that we were sure he understood the material that was assigned to him.

During the middle of my session with Stefan, Herr H. came into the room and asked if I had time to meet with the next door neighbor's girl as well - she is in the same class as Stefan and also needed some help. After my hour was done with Stefan, I headed over. Mira had a few more questions about grammar than the readings - I promised her I would come back next time with a better understanding of my own language's grammar!

It is nice getting a little bit of tutoring experience on the side here. Both of the kids are very nice, and I think I am learning just as much German during our sessions as they are learning English!

Tuesday is when my next new task was given to me. Anne-Cathrin, who works with Erasmus scholarships for students studying in Europe, needed documents scanned into the computer and emailed to her.

This ended up being a lot more complicated than originally thought, and I ended up spending that entire day and Wednesday morning working on this project - never before this have I felt like my internship fit within the bounds of "typical internship." After spending hours in front of a copy machine armed with a cup of coffee, stapler, staple-remover, and binder of papers, I DEFINITELY felt that.

Due to a problem with the scanner function, I had to re-do about half of the papers the next morning. I bound all the PDFs that were related into one document and sent about 9 documents over to Anne-Cathrin on Wednesday morning.

After that task was complete, I had to head to German class, where I took my first test. I believe it went pretty well! I enjoyed today's class - we were speaking German with one another more than we were listening to a lecture, which was nice.


Dawn's birthday was on Wednesday, so Dawn, Ashley, Joe, and I grabbed some Swabian food downtown.

The next morning, Thursday, my focus was the Tandem program. I helped Karin to understand it more, and then we figured out how to put the Tandem Excel file onto a common network so that she could access it as well.

During the afternoon part of my shift, not too much work was done. Claudia had invited quite a few people from the department to celebrate her marriage. She made tons of delicious baked goods, bought some Sekt (sparkling wine) for everyone, and coffee was provided!

It was a great chance to see some of the beautiful pictures from Claudia's white dress wedding, as well as meet new members of the Reutlingen University staff. Tobi, Max, and I all got to catch up some, as well.

Today, Friday, the office was kind of slow. Gus came in to help me with more StudierenPlus stuff, but that was it! I worked a bit on updating my resume, as no one had anything for me to do.

There was a faculty get-together. We all met around 11 a.m. in the Aula and a lot of people made speeches (all in Deutsch, of course). Pretzels were promised, but after sitting through the presentation for over an hour (and almost thirty minutes into my lunch break), I ended up going home to make some food.

The afternoon was just as quiet in the office. After I got off of work, I headed over to Kantstrasse again to tutor Stefan - next week is fall break for the younger students and he will not be here next week for a session.

A Girl's Weekend in Salzburg - ROAD TRIP!

About a week ago, Lineke, Ava, Emma, Thea, and I decided we wanted to do something this weekend - there was talk of renting a car and heading to Amsterdam for the weekend, but that fell through.

Where else could we go?

I mean, we're in Europe, so the possibilities feel endless. We decided to start small - just over the German border into Austria sits the beautiful city of Salzburg, which is where we decided to visit!

We rented a car, one that Emma and Lineke could drive, as it was a manual car, and on Saturday morning around 8 a.m. we picked it up!

Around 8:30 a.m., we were on the road with a full tank of gas and a trunk stuffed full of our things.

It took us about five hours to get to Salzburg. We made only two stops on the way to our hostel!

We kept ourselves occupied for the five hours and made it to Salzburg in what seemed like a way shorter amount of time than five hours!

We got the last parking spot at our hostel, attempted to check in a little early, and headed into the city. We were starving, so that was our first order of business. After that, we wanted to actually do something that afternoon - we settled on visiting the Hohensalzburg castle, which was within view of the hostel.

From our hostel, we had a great view of the Nonnberg Abbey and Hohensalzburg castle



We found a sausage stand in the city and grabbed some food there. Then, we made our way to the base of the castle, and then up!

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Walking around Salzburg towards the Hohensalzburg castle!

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Lineke, Ava, Thea, Emma, and me!

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Saw a poster nearby that was like this and decided to reenact it



We stopped to take a few more pictures as we walked up the huge mountain to get to the castle:

We had about an hour in the castle before it closed, and that was just enough time! The castle was huge and there was a lot to see, but there were not too many people at the time to get into our way. :)



View from the castle

Hohensalzburg castle

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Dancing in the square of the castle

We stumbled upon a beautiful cemetery - it looked a lot like the one from The Sound of Music movie!

 St. Peters cemetery in Salzburg

As we continued walking, a very nice British couple snapped a picture of us with Lineke's camera amongst the beauty that is Salzburg.

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On Saturday night, we ate a nice dinner at one of the more local-looking restaurants. I ended up getting a pumpkin pesto pasta, and it was phenomenal!

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Emma, Ava, Thea, me, and Lineke at dinner in Salzburg

That night, we wandered the city as well - we wanted to make the most of our time in the city.

The next morning, we packed everything up, grabbed our free, delicious breakfast and had a nice, lazy day! We wandered around the city still, but we had seen most of what we wanted to see.

We wandered according to the map that we received from the hostel. When we saw a point of interest on the map, we would swing by and see if it was worth seeing.

We got to see the Nonnberg Abbey, the abbey we think was in The Sound of Music. The view from the abbey was beautiful.

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Nonnberg Abbey

The view from the abbey







Our final, and very noteworthy, stop was the Mirabell Gardens.

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We celebrated fall!

Mirabell Gardens - featured in The Sound of Music

Despite the weather getting colder, the gardens were still so very beautiful. We sat in the sun in the middle of the gardens around mid-day to soak up as much Vitamin D as possible!

While we were in the gardens, we saw a man walk up to a bench near the large fountain in the gardens and he set up a fake man - you know the street performers that are painted entirely silver and are completely motionless? Well, it was like that, except this one was not real, so of course it was motionless. We sat for about 20 minutes and enjoyed watching as people wandered by, took pictures, and debated about whether the fake, silver man was real or not.

We decided then, that we should grab some lunch and head home. The drive seemed longer on the way back. I think we were all a little tired from our whirlwind weekend.

We arrived in Reutlingen around 9:00 p.m. and, once we got back to the university, all headed to our rooms.

I had completed my first road trip and it was absolutely a success!

Photos with an asterisk (*) next to them:
Photo Credit to: Lineke De Paep

Work and a Dinner With Friends

Today, my tasks in the office included the Tandem program and updating information for a classroom handout. Alas, it was a much less exciting day than my Wasen experience last night!

I paired and sent out the email to four pairs Tandem partners - I am excited to provide this connection between students and hope that everything goes well with the pairings.

My task that took about an hour of my afternoon was updating a handout that Herr Veit created for one of his classes. It was a handout about the auto industry in Germany and its importance within the country. I had to use the bibliography of the original handout to check each source and see if there were new figures to update the information that the handout contains. It was like a scavenger hunt to try to piece together the source with the information, but in the end, I think I figured everything out. I also included in my email of up-to-date information some of the charts that I found interesting that showed the information. I find I am a visual learner and know that charts would help me to understand.

Tonight was a relaxing night. I ate dinner with Amy, Eric, and Ben. We made burgers, sliced potatoes, and fried zucchini - what a feast! At least by college student standards. Chris ended up joining us later with his own food.

It seemed like everyone was trying to avoid doing homework last night - Julia and Joe joined us after we were done eating. We ended the night with some tea, so very British, and that was that!

Wasen: A Great Night, and What a German Beer Fest Has To Do With My Future

Today began as a nice, relaxing Sunday. Veronica and I woke up mid-morning and grabbed brunch at Cafe Sommer downtown. We both got tea, scrambled eggs, and a small brötchen - I also got ham. It was the most American, and most delicious, breakfast I have had since getting here! Both of us had gone to Cafe Sommer with Herr and Frau Brixner, who recommended the place to us the last time we were in Reutlingen.
 

We made it back to the university with just enough time to get ready for our evening fun - the final day of the Cannstatter Volksfest (a.k.a. Wasen) that we have been awaiting for months had arrived.

Wasen is the second largest beer festival in Germany (second only to Wiesn in Münich), and Herr Veit had gotten around 2,600 tickets for the students and faculty of Hochschule Reutlingen at a great price.

Veronica and I met everyone at the bus stop.

Getting ready to get on the bus at Pestalozzistrasse

The bus was crazy - I think everyone was all heading to Stuttgart at the same time. We filled the bus to the max. There were even people who were preventing the doors from closing in order to try to squeeze more people in. The poor bus driver had to contact his supervisor to get permission to go straight to the train station with all of us!

 

I rode on the train with Tobi, Augusto, and Carlos, and when we arrived, we set up and then began to take the tickets from hundreds of excited students. Each ticket got the student two beer tickets and a food ticket. Having worked in a fast-paced environment at good ol' Steak 'n Shake definitely prepared me for the mad rush of students. I actually really enjoyed myself. After a while, the flow of students stopped and we waited around.

 

Carlos, another international student, and I gave students their tickets for food and beer for the first two hours that the university reserved spots in the Fuerstenberg tent.

Around 5:30, we were free to go and enjoy ourselves. I found my friends and joined their table - I got the try both the typical chicken and the plate of Käsespätzle. Both were delicious! I was very happy to be with friends after working during all the fun!

Rafael, Thea, Emma, Sam, me, and Lineke at Wasen

Me, Julia, Sarah, and Tammi during the festivities

 

We danced the night away and had a great time. The band that occupied the tent did a fantastic job, and the atmosphere was something that you cannot even imagine if you have not experienced it. I would have to say that I preferred Wasen over Wiesn, mostly because of the crowd of people I knew, our wonderful reserved table, and the free food and beer I received since I worked for part of the night. You can't beat that!

 

Perhaps some people are wondering what going to a beer festival has to do with my professional experience in Germany - having enjoyed and understand this type of cultural event has given me the chance to "be exposed to new people, places, and ideas," "be a more interesting and well-rounded applicant," and has will help my internship "sound like more than the traditional on-campus student job because of where it was, what you were exposed to, and what you did." (quoted from How Study Abroad Prepares You For Your Career) I couldn't have said it any better than that, Ms. Lucier.
 

Bad Urach UNESCO Geopark Tour, Schnitzel, and an Arrival

On Thursday, Herr Veit asked what I was doing on Saturday (today). I will admit, all I heard was "Saturday," "Bad Urach," and "ten minutes before ten" and I knew that I would want to participate! He also mentioned that it was going to take about five to six hours, but I thought there was no way that would happen. Bad Urach is big, but that was a long time.

I was wrong.

On this cold, grey, and rainy Saturday, around 20 students met at the train station at 9:45 a.m. to head over to Bad Urach, a nearby town. This beautiful spot on earth has a waterfall and old castle ruins on top of the Swabian Alb that lets you look out of what seems like half of the country. 

When people ask me what there is to do around the area, I absolutely recommend the Bad Urach waterfall and castle ruins as a must-do. Here is the lovely tourism website for the trails and waterfall of Bad Urach (a plug for this tourism agency - after my internship at Indiana Dunes Tourism, I realize how important these plugs are!).

 

We arrived at the small train station for the Bad Urach waterfall and got out. A guide was waiting there for us, and we were on our way! I found out that this tour that we were on was a hiking tour of the UNESCO Geopark on the Swabian Alb - that's a mouthful of a name, but it describes perfectly what we did.

On our walk to the first waterfall of Bad Urach

 

 

 

Our tour guide took us on about a ten kilometer (a little over six miles) walk around the park. He stopped every once in a while to explain how the park was formed, the types of rock in the area that were created because of the waterfalls, and about the limestone in the area - being from Northwest Indiana and living about an hour away from a limestone quarry, I was well-versed on the properties of limestone!

We walked along the creek towards the Bad Urach waterfall and up to the top.

The Bad Urach waterfall.

At the top of the waterfall, there is a small kiosk for food and beverages. I had only ever gotten about halfway up the waterfall and had not realized that there was food and drinks available for purchase! This was a nice stop on our tour.

We continued on along another path to the very top of the Alb, into a volcano vent, and made our way back down to the bottom. We could not see very much from the top because of the weather - it was much like my trip up Mount Pilatus in that there was so much fog and not much visibility! 

The top of the Swabian Alb.

The start of the Bad Urach waterfall!

Beautiful, old farm house in the middle of a field on the Alb.

 

On the way down, we saw the remains of a monastery (there was very little left), saw another beautiful waterfall with a small pool, and wandered on the edge of a slippery cliff to see how the waterfall, over many years, created a small cave.

The second waterfall in Bad Urach

I was so glad that I had gotten up for this tour. I had only ever seen probably 1/4 of the things that our tour guide showed us - there was so much of the park that I had not even realized was there!

Another example of this was when we stumbled upon a state-funded farm at the bottom of the Alb! The stables/house were beautiful. They breed horses there, Arabians being one type. Beautiful creatures!

The state-funded farm at the bottom of the Alb

Beautiful horses occupy part of a field behind the barn/house

 

 

Once we reached the bottom, we all received small glasses with the name and symbol of the organization that our guide represented. We all got to sample some home-made cider that was made from the apples in the small fruit fields that are in this part of the Alb.

 

Ava, Emma, Lineke, me, and Allie with our cider

Despite the weather being pretty dismal and the visibility just as bad, the day was a success!

We boarded our train around 15:30 and just started to feel our fingers again, when we looked out the window and saw sun and blue skies - as soon as we had left the park (after a day of grey and rain), the sun came out just as we left. We were speechless and could do nothing but laugh!

On our train back, we made big plans to stop for some schnitzel in town. We were exhausted and hungry after our long day and could focus on little else.

 

As we were looking at the menu for Onkel Otto's (we had arrived at around 16:30), I made a terrible realization - in my exhaustion, I had forgotten I was to meet Veronica at the train station around 16:15!

 

I frantically looked for my phone, relieved that I had no missed calls or text messages. I decided to call Veronica to see if her train was delayed. She picked up and I found out that she had arrived just fine and made her way up to the university already. She, somehow, ran into Tammi and a few other students who she had met at pre-departure meetings and was hanging out with them for the time-being. Relief.

 

I had enough time to devour my XL schnitzel and potato salad (if you ever get to Reutlingen, I completely recommend this restaurant), grab a bus home, and take a hot shower.

 

Once we got Veronica settled into my room in Wurm-Haus, we went upstairs so she could meet some of my international friends. We had a girls night, and ended up making plans to visit Salzburg next weekend.

 

Overall, a very successful and fun Saturday!

A Tutoring Job and The Afternoon Off!

Herr Veit gave me the number of a hotel owner in the area who is looking for an English tutor for his son. He suggested that I call the man as soon as possible, and today was the day. I ended up getting in contact with him, and he will be calling me over the weekend to see when we could set up an appointment to meet. The pay would be good, and it would be great experience for me to be a tutor.

Once that was completed, I spent my morning assigning Tandem partners and emailing the student's their parings. This is a rewarding job, since all of the students voluntarily apply and are excited to be paired with someone who can help with their language skills, along with making a new friend.

The office seemed empty without Karin in it - she has gone on her holiday and will not be back for a few weeks.

I asked Brigitte and Claudia about any work that I could do for them - Claudia had just a small task for me to complete, and then it was my lunch break.

I had a nice, relaxing break where I ate some lunch and browsed social media and current events. This time that I spend doing this type of "research," if you can even call it that, has become such a wonderful part of my day. Through Twitter, Facebook, and news sites, I am keeping up with what is going on in Europe, back home, and everywhere else around the world.

When 2:00 p.m. rolled around, I was back in the office and ready for some work. To my surprise and excitement, I was told that I could go home early since no one was in the office but Brigitte, the office was closed to students for the afternoon, and there was nothing else that she could think of to have me do!

It is the little things, like an afternoon off, that make life wonderful.