die Friseurin

Today I finally got the nerve to go and seek a hair cut. All my life I had been going to the same stylist (who is very service-oriented and named "Mom"), but now that I'm out in the world on my own, I had to find someone else to do it. So I google.de-mapped some places and found one that I thought seemed decent. Well of course I ventured off to find it and couldn't, so I was a bit more than agitated. While finding my way back to the S-bahn, I passed a different hair place and thought it looked OK enough. So I went in and got my hair cut, well more like just trimmed, and it turned out pretty alright actually. Pic. -->

But anyway, there is a point to this story. I had never heard of this kind of place before. They wash and cut your hair, but you dry it yourself. If you have the hair person dry it, then it costs twice as much. To me, I don't think this would pass in the states, but maybe they exist? I have no idea really, but I think it's a good concept though. Instead of cutting time by making a sadder haircut, save time by just not drying it! There ya go, and besides I don't have a problem with it since I usually dry my hair anyway.

So yeah go me for speaking German to hair people and being successful (more or less) with getting what I wanted.

Oh and on a side note, I passed a Middle-Eastern store on the way back, and Turkish delight is very yummy! :)

Thoughts on German food

This week I haven't really done anything exciting, but I did consume a good amount of food, bringing me to todays topic: snacking.

When I think about the snacks here, one name comes to mind: HARIBO!!! Not only do they make the tastiest gummy bears I can think of, they also make a wide assortment of other gummy wonderfulness. Their black licorice wheels are another favorite of mine. While they do sell Haribo brand gummies in the states, don't be fooled into thinking they are the same. The ones in the states are way squishier and for that reason just don't taste as good. This can partially be remedied by sticking those things in a fridge or freezer for a bit, but it's just not the same.

The next obvious thing to talk about would be wurst, but considering how I haven't consumed a single sausage since I've been here, I can't really talk about them.

The bakery. So yeah there are lots of those here. To get an idea as to how many, I'll use an analogy. The bakery density here rivals, if not surpasses, the Starbucks density in Manhattan, so there you go. I don't think you can go down any block really without running into some kind of bakery, which is fine though, since baked things are yummy. I have really come to love this one whole grain bread that's covered in like pumpkin seeds or some other puffy seed that looks like a pumpkin seed but maybe isn't. But I can't think of what else they could be anyway, so bread + pumpkin seeds = a good thing. Also good from the bakeries are their hot fresh Brezels and pastries.

Another thing that they have a lot of here is cheese. And luckily, I also love cheese. Most of my experiences with cheese here have been in the form of mystery on my sandwich. They're good, but then I never know what to go to the store and buy for home consumption. :( I guess this means that I have to improve my German some more so that when I ask the bakery people what kind of cheese is on the sandwich, their response will sound intelligible.

And now we come to my most favorite thing: chocolate! I don't think this really needs much explanation, but Lebkuchen (gingerbread--the soft kind, not the hard cookie kind) covered in dark chocolate reminds me of Christmas and is sooo good. And then there's also how when you go to the grocery store there is almost always a chocolate aisle separate from the candy aisle, 'nuff said.

All this talk about food has made me hungry, so I'm going to go make some spaghetti since that's still the only thing I can actually "cook" right now.

Meersburg & Bodensee

Yesterday we took an excursion to Meersburg, Lake Constance, and the Zeppelin Museum courtesy of the IZ. It was very scenic and pretty. The bus ride was about two hours to get there and three hours to get back. I really like Meersburg; it was a cool old German town. They took a lot of effort to keep the town the way it is with many building restrictions and the like, but I'm glad since it was all cute and pretty. I would rather have stayed there longer and skipped the Zeppelin museum, maybe hang out down by the water some, but I didn't want to pay for my way back, so I stuck with the group. Anyway so I made an album of the trip, so follow the link below!

Meersburg & Bodensee

Things I have noted during the trip:

1. Drinking a half liter of beer really isn't all that bad.
2. Vanilla ice cream (gelato is what they serve in Germany) with strawberry sauce and white chocolate sprinkles is really tasty.
3. old people : tour buses :: flying insects : bright lights
4. Dark chocolate with the chili mixed into its dark chocolate cream filling = very very very happy Catherine.
5. Germans are tall, and I am not.

So that was that. Today was boring since all I did was go to class and then later try to cook dinner. It didn't turn out very well...

Braueriefest

So today I actually left my room and ventured some more into Stuttgart. It was me, Massey, Mike, and Constance (not a Rose nerd.) So we started off with the flea market, which was pretty cool. They had a lot of neat stuff, but considering how I am moving in like two weeks, buying crap I don't really need probably not the best idea. Next we moved on to thrift shops. Most of them were closed since it was Saturday, but the ones that were open seemed to be mostly junk. After that we wandered around for a bit and then happened upon an Asian market somewhere down by Schwabstrasse. I was so excited because they had Indonesian food! So this means now that I'm going to attempt in the next couple of days to cook real food. The things I will try to cook will be nasi goreng (fried rice, and not too difficult I'm hoping) and opor ayam (this involves cooking poultry, so this is potentially scary for me.) So we'll see how that goes, more updates on that later...

So anyway later we needed lunch. So we found the Braueriefest, and we got free beer. Maybe because it was free it tasted pretty OK to me, but I drank all of mine and didn't have the urge to empty my stomach into the nearest waste receptacle. Go me! But yea we got three different beers, one was a pilsner, one was some sort of other beer that was like different and stuff (yup I know absolutely nothing about beer), and the last one was alcohol free. The alcohol free one was all sorts of nasty... So yea there was a terrible band called "Pink Plane Party," and they played a lot of 70's and 80's sadness. But the crepes I had for lunch were pretty tasty. OK pictures. That there to the right is the wall of empty beer bottles that I'm assuming they had gone through during the free beer sessions. And next up we have a picture of happy college students experiencing beer in Germany.

...And that's all I have to say about that for now...

Mos Eisley!

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So today I found the Mos Eisley Cantina of Stuttgart. How friggin' sweet is that??? I didn't get to eat there since they were closed at the time, but I'm going to go back there. And when I go back, they better have some blue milk, or somebody is going to have their ass handed to them. So yea, that was pretty awesome.

Oh! And today I got "controlled" for the first time. Too bad though the Chinese people sitting across from us "forgot" their tickets and had to pay a 20€ fine each, which is lucky for them. The Kontrolleur was nice to them since it's normally 40€ per person if you're caught on the train without a ticket.

And on a finishing rant note, finding jeans here that fit nicely is just as impossible or more impossible than in the states.

Erdnussbutter

All I have to say is WTF. So apparently the Germans don't seem to understand the concept of peanut butter very well. Of all the fattening food that they eat, you think they would have discovered the joy that is peanut butter. Most grocery stores don't carry it, and if they do, it's most likely in the organic section for whatever reason. Maybe they think that only crazy hippies would be interested in consuming a product that has taken an already tasty roasted peanut mashed it into glorious splendor.

Anyway, I only bothered to write about this since I got a really bad craving for PB&J last Thursday that couldn't be satiated. Nevertheless, I finally found some PB by accident (next to the Almond Butter, eww) in the BioMarkt in der Hauptbahnhof on Saturday night. I also found some 70% dark chocolate complete with chili pepper infusion, which has become one of my new loves. So when I got back to the apartment I was really excited for my PB&J + chocolate find. However to my dismay, this peanut butter was blech. I mean it was still peanuty and decent enough when combined with the jelly, but on its own, it was not at all the amazing I had hoped for. Granted, it probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was natural organic peanut butter, but still very sad. I guess I will just have to ask my mom to send me monthly shipments, alternating between Regular Jif Creamy and Regular Jif Extra Crunchy. Or if you love me, you will send me some PB. I am feeling the desperation already, so I would settle for Peter Pan, Skippy, or even Goobers at this point.

Fun with Hostels

So this is the part where I rant about how we stayed in three different rooms before we were allowed to move into our apartments.

Room Eins

So the first hostel we stayed in was called Alex30 on Alexander Str. and conveniently the owner was also named Alex. Anyway, so when I had booked the reservation I told the guy that I wasn't sure how long I would need the room, and he told me to book a shorter reservation then try to extend it because if I had to shorten a longer one, then I have to pay like fees and stuff. So I was like, OK.

We got there Thursday afternoon stayed there the first night, (and here is the view from our room there, yea that's a pretty hot tram stop, isn't it?) But anyway, so it was a nice place, everything was clean and it didn't seem like crazy people were around and it was about 27€ a night. Friday morning I go to see the Hausmeister if I can move into my apartment, and of course I can't. Oh, and this is also when I discover there is a limit as to how much you can withdraw from an ATM at one time. My limit is 250€ /day. So me and Kelley had to pool our money to be able to have enough to pay for one of our room deposits. But anyway, so when we got to the Hausmeister's office, he pretty much stared at me a bunch then finally said, "Nein. Das Zimmer ist nicht frei. Montag." Well OK, fine I'll just stay in the hostel until then I think to myself.

So we took the tram back to Olgaeck with the hopes of extending our reservation until Monday, and this time we actually paid for it. When we took the tram to the Hauptbahnhof the first time we thought you paid on the tram. Turns out you have to buy your tickets ahead of time at the machine thing that they put at pretty much every stop except for, naturally, the tram stop at Olgaeck. Turns out they are doing away with the 15 tram and converting it to a U-Bahn. Whatever, anyway. So luckily we didn't get caught riding the tram for free that one time, because freeloading on the train system in Germany is, I guess, like a really big deal. Not only do you have to pay like a 40€ fee, but supposedly you get publicly humiliated.

Anyway, so we get back to the hostel and they tell us we can only stay one more night since they are all booked that weekend. Great. But it was all good, as we had found another youth hostel that wasn't too far away, and it was cheaper (21€). Our adventure there makes for another great/sad/pathetic story.

Travel to Room Zwei

So we decided to save money and walk there. According to Google Maps, it wasn't all that far away and the roads seem clear enough. Turns out that the route we picked involved about of quarter mile of stairs (the hypotenuse distance I guess is what I mean). Now this isn't too bad when you've got just yourself, but add our probably 250+ pounds of luggage, and the stairs become a nuisance. See to the right, how they're labeled there. Yea, Staffel = stairs, and it was too bad we didn't make that connection before we set out on our adventure. Yea the tram takes like 5ish minutes to get around that area. We took 2.5 hrs to get all our shit up those two sets of stairs. Pictures and possibly even video will come later if I ever get them. So yea, it was a fun adventure, and I was sore for like three days after that. Anyway, the new room wasn't too bad and things seemed like they would be working out. And next comes the "but;" there was a mistake in our reservation so we only have the room for one night instead of two. Oh joyness. We decided to wait until the next morning to see if they had any cancellations, and I didn't really care at the moment since all I wanted to do was sleep.

Room Drei

So they did end up finding a room for us, so that was good, except the lock kinda didn't work so well. But oh well, right? It was a plus that we finally got a chance to explore the area called Bubenbad; it was quite scenic.

Proof:
So yea, that kinda made it worth it and stuff. So that marked the end of our adventures with the hostels in Stuttgart I guess. Now I'm all moved in and things aren't so bad. Class is boring, but when is it not, like seriously.

The journey begins.

If I remember correctly, the journey from the states to here was long and drawn out. But it didn't kill me, so I guess that's good. Basically this is how it transpired: Columbus, Chicago, Dublin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart. Everything was on time, so that was nice. The only things I have comments about really is that O'Hare is a sucky airport, and so is Dublin. O'Hare's international terminal basically lacked in terms of everything, especially food. Dublin was just confusing as hell. However, the Aer Lingus check-in counter thing was cool because it was all green and sparkly!

It was in the Dublin airport that I got to use the Euro for the first time! I bought a smoothie, how exciting. And there were a lot of Irish people in the airport, it was really too bad we couldn't have hung out in Ireland for a couple days. Oh well, right?

Everything until after we got to Frankfurt was pretty boring I guess, but after we got our bags I guess is when the fun began. Let's see, so I had with me: a large suitcase, a large duffel bag, my Rose backpack, and my purse; all of course jam packed with as much shit as possible. Kelley also had a crap ton of stuff with her as well, so we got lots of stares while wheeling our stuff around Frankfurt airport. And that wasn't even so terrible, but things got more fun with the train ride.

So the train comes, and we're all like, "Woo!" Oh, but first I even remembered to take a picture of the terminal. So here it is. Yup there are like all the German people and stuff. Yea that wasn't our train, but ours looked just like it. But anyway, so we were all excited for the train until we realized we had to get all our stuff up the stairs and then put it somewhere once we were on the train. The train ride was about an hour or so, and I think we spent about 15 minutes actually sitting down and about 45 minutes moving our stuff around so that it wouldn't piss off other passengers. But yea, so apparently the train people don't like it when you have two tickets but you use four other seats to put your stuff in, haha. Nevertheless, we made it to Stuttgart. The taxi drivers weren't too happy to see all of our luggage either, but we found a guy with a nice station wagon (and yes, it was a Mercedes) to take us to our hostel. The taxi drivers spoke a little bit of English, but we knew enough to be like, "Take us here," and "Thanks. Here is your money." But anyway, so he dropped us off in from of our hostel, and so begins the next chapter: "Fun with Hostels."

So today I start my blog.

I decided today that it would be good for me to document my experiences in Germany. Hopefully, I will actually keep up with this blog because in a long time it would probably be nice to go back and look at this and be like, "Oh, wow, that was neat." I have been here for a little more than a week and already a metric crap ton has happened, so it will be fun to try and recount all that's happened since then.