Still catching up... April 14-19: Easter with Em, and Berlin (again!)

I had an awesome Easter weekend, starting on Friday the 14th when Kola arrived in Göttingen for a visit! We had an Ostermarkt in town, which turned out to be rather similar to the traditional Weihnachtsmarkt except with more animatronic bunnies:
Actually I haven't really heard about Ostermärkte outside of Gö, so I think it's a local thing... another chance for folks to set up a booth and sell crazy crafts and foodstuffs while kids run around and ride the seasonally-themed carousel and gorge themselves on sweets. I wonder why it hasn't caught on everywhere else...

The highlight was some kind of hard-core Christian youth group whose members were handing out flyers and postcards, mostly because it was completely outrageous: they had a guy in a santa suit and a large wooden cross to which was tied a poor innocent stuffed bunny... near as I could tell, they were staging a protest of sorts against the secularization of Christian holidays. Right, because that's exactly what you want to have to explain to a 5-year-old at the Easter fair. I do think the message has merit, but the venue was a little inappropriate. I also mentally docked some points for a feeling of anti-ecumenicism I got speaking to some of the members... I was asked if I understood the true meaning of Easter, and I responded that I darn well better after 15 years of Catholic school, but they didn't seem to think that counted for much. I got invited to their next meeting with the explanation that they were against all those hoity-toity rules, traditions, and regulations that some less-hip churches adhere to... Again, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I'm just addicted to the incense, though... I saved the flyer anyway.

Anyhow, I picked up Kola at the Bahnhof and we checked out downtown and saw some of the festivities (and had the best ice cream in town) before heading back up to my place. I pointed out the Planetenweg landmarks we saw along part of the way... there are a series of metal signs representing the solar system along a westward artery from the train station, with distances and size supposedly to scale. I've seen the sun and all of the closer ones, but haven't had the chance to find the outer planets yet. Suffice it to say, I recently found out that I live pretty darn close to Uranus. (Insert "your mom"-type humorous response here, guys! I'm looking at you, Ricebag!)

We made a fabulous stir-fry and spent the evening catching up and of course mooning over all things Kenyon, especially the Cornerstones. What a great feeling to be able to share those memories with someone who knows them all as well as I do! I still wish I could've gotten a visit in sometime this year, but thank goodness I had such a fabulous alternative!

Saturday morning was sunny and gorgeous, so we went back into town and were happy to find everything open on a holiday weekend. We had pizza for lunch at Arul's, and then went shopping for dinner supplies (quesadillas, which is no small task over here. Thank goodness for the "international foods" section in the supermarket!) and baked goods for Easter morning, including a chocolate-covered bunny cake and a pair of Osterlämmer, little lamb-shaped cakes.

We walked our groceries home and then I called my host family to wish them a happy Easter... and hopefully get invited over for a visit, which was indeed the consequence. We picked up a flower to bring them and wandered up to Weende for delicious homemade Küchen and lots of conversation, which was great fun. Every time I go back for a visit I'm pleased to realize that my language skills are actually improving. It's still strenuous to try and listen to 4 conversations at once in a room full of native speakers, but I remember going to bed every night completely exhausted from simply talking to Christina and Wolfgang over dinner. Things are much better now.

We went home and cooked our fabulous pseudo-mexican meal and then stayed up half the night listening to Cstones and some Chamber Singers music and discussing school, life, and all the big stuff.

The next morning we ate our Easter treats and then headed once again into town, although it was overcast and things were mostly closed. We stopped in at the Jacobikirche and Johanniskirche to look around, found the Nikolaikirche locked and ducked into a cafe for lunch... mmm, crepes! Since it was drizzly out we stayed there until it was time for the evening service at the Michaelkirche. I hadn't been to Mass there before, and although it wasn't too full it was nice. Then we headed home and finished off our leftovers, and got ready for the next morning's trip to Berlin!

The original plan had been for Kola's friend Ashli to come to Göttingen, but after Kola had to make a surprise return to Tübingen (after her wallet was stolen in Rome!) plans got shifted and Ashli and Em were going to reunite in Berlin. I decided on the fly to tag along for the first couple of days of their visit since I didn't have much else going on. Our reservations at the hostel were already made, but we weren't scheduled to check in until midafternoon on Monday, so we had a few hours to kill after our arrival. Since we were at the Zoo Bahnhof I recommended the zoo or the aquarium, both of which I had seen during the March conference. The lines to get into the zoo were humongous (I guess since it was a holiday weekend) and since we didn't have the whole day we opted for the aquarium.
Oh no! Kola's about to get eaten by the creature from the black lagoon! Luckily some other tourist taunted it and the monster ate him instead. We made it out alive...

I also remembered this time to get a photo of the placard with the German name for White's tree frog:
Coral finger?? Is coral particularly sticky? I certainly don't think that's a visual reference. (Awww, but he's still sooooo cute!)

After the Aquarium we went to check into the hostel and meet Ashli. As a Douglas Adams fan, I can heartily recommend the Heart of Gold to any hitchhikers that find their way to Berlin... and even if you forget your towel, they've got you covered! They will also lend you sunglasses (??) and reading material for a small deposit.

I sent a message to Andrew, another friend from Kiel, proposing dinner and a movie on Potsdamer platz (where they show many films in the original language.) As it turns out he and some other folks were already planning to see The Inside Man there, so we made plans to meet them either at the movie or after, depending on what movies were available. We had a lovely dinner and thought we were going to miss the start of the film, but Andrew and Jen, who was also in town, caught us and we got tickets just in time. I'm actually glad that I saw the movie in English, because I think I would've gotten pretty lost in a German version.

We hung out a bit after the movie and then Kola and Ashli and I decided to head back to the hostel, since it was a moderately long walk and it was already dark. We did pass the Brandenburger Tor on our way back, which I hadn't ever seen at night. Very pretty!
We planned out Tuesday and hit the sack, since the crux of our plan was a major 4-hour walking tour of the city. I'd already seen many of the signs on previous visits, but I still learned a few things along the way. I was actually glad that I'd heard about Berlin's historical landmarks previously, because it's quite a bit of territory to cover and our guide was rather new... so we got a smattering of factoids and anecdotes with no overarching story to tie them together. Not exactly the best introduction to the city, but at least we saw all the important stuff.

And like I said, some things were new to me as well, including the supposed site of Hitler's secret underground bunker. There are no signs of any kind because nobody wants to create a rallying point for neo-Nazis and sympathizers. Now it's just a little playground behind an apartment complex.

We headed back towards the hostel and found a nice Thai restaurant nearby for a late lunch. The waiter was really talkative and wanted to know where we were from, what we were doing in Germany, what we studied... We had him take a couple of pictures since he was so nice. I need to get a copy from Em of one that I'm in!
After our meal we stopped back at the hostel, and got free t-shirts. Cool! We decided to wander to Alex and check out the Fernsehturm (TV tower.) I'd never been up to the top and the view had been highly recommended on our tour, so we decided to check it out. Unfortunately the day had turned overcast and rainy so things were a little hazy, but it was still neat:
Of course, it had also been a long and full day and we were understandably exhausted:We did find the World Clock after a little bit of wandering, and then Andrew met us again with a restaurant recommendation for dinner, this time a Vietnamese restaurant. Lecker! He had to leave the next morning to catch an early ferry for another adventure, so we found our way back to the hostel yet again... with a bit of map consultation. I'm still fairly proud of myself for maintaining the role of navigator with minimal panic and a reasonable degree of competency, considering it was my fourth visit to Berlin!

I had to catch a train the next morning back to Göttingen, so we made plans to wake up and do our goodbyes then. My sleep was disturbed a little bit by a snoring hostel roommate (nobody in our party, of course) but I still managed to bet back with plenty of time for the Einstufungstest for second semester... and like I already mentioned, I managed to get Oberstufe, so I must've slept well enough!

I still want to cover last weekend's Geburtstag escapades before I take off on my next adventure tomorrow morning (visiting Kola and Ashli in Tübingen!) so I guess stay tuned!

Catching up... April 7-9: Bonn & Köln

I have to go back in time almost three weeks to chronicle my recent adventures, but hopefully I won't make a habit of this... Anyway, I spent the second weekend of April at a Max-Kade-Haus reunion with Meghan and Patrick, the other Kiel Fulbrighters who lived in my dorm there. I arrived in Bonn on a gorgeous Friday afternoon and dropped my stuff off at Meghan's super-awesome lab (highly jealous!) and then Patrick and I wandered around the city while she finished up the day's work.

Bonn is apparently Beethoven's hometown, which I hadn't realized until I arrived! Anyway, with this shot and my Leipzig photo with JS Bach, I now have a budding collection of photos with awesome composers. Now to track down Mozart, or Mendelssohn or Brahms...

We stopped in at St. Martin's Basilica (Münsterbasilika), a gorgeous 13th century church, and went to see part of the University. While we were around town, we tried to track down Beethoven's birth house as well. This proved to be slightly difficult, as at least one of the handy tourist-friendly streetsigns was pointing entirely in the wrong direction!
We did find it, eventually, and got some quick photos outside before heading back to meet Meghan. She took us on a bit of a guided tour, including the Kufürstliches Schloß, an 18th-century Bishop's palace which now serves as the main University building. We stopped in at Bärenland, a gummy bear shop, and then Chocoladen, which is exactly what it sounds like, a chocolate store! I could have stood inside all day just inhaling the smell... since the day had cooled off a bit, we had gourmet hot chocolate outside and then headed down towards the Rhine.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I love cities with rivers! I feel instantly at home somehow, probably since I find it much easier to navigate a new place with a large aqueous landmark. Across the Rhine from Bonn is Beuel, which is more of a suburb nowadays than a separate city. Anyway, Meghan took us to see the Kennedybrücke (subject of the single worst German pun I've ever heard: "Ich kenne die Brücke") and pointed out the sculptural adornment seen below:

Closer inspection reveals this little guy, wagging his bottom across the river towards Beuel:
Apparently the financial support for the building this bridge was a source of contention between the two cities, and in the end Bonn had to foot the bill for its construction... but they certainly got the last word in!

The three of us headed back to Meghan's and recreated our fabulous Max-Kade dinners together in the classic fashion... stir fry! We also planned Saturday's day trip to Köln.

Of course I had heard about the magnificence of the Kölner Dom, but guidebook blurbs are no preparation for the apogee of Gothic architecture. It is the city's dominant landmark, and the cathedral's north side is the very first thing one sees exiting the Hauptbahnhof. All the pictures I took from that perspective wound up horribly backlit, so here's a panorama from the southern side of the building:Of course there's nothing to do but pay the €2 (€1 for students) for the opportunity to climb some 509 steps to the top of the south tower. Whew! We caught a good time, though, and managed to get to the top without any major traffic jams in the narrow stone spiral staircase, quite a feat since over most of the distance the traffic is two-way. The Stau (traffic-jam) we passed on the way back down was awful, and made even more horrifying in sections when the waiting climbers gravitated to the outer wall where the handrail is, forcing us on parts of the descent to take the much steeper inner wall. I came very close to chewing people out auf Deutsch right then and there; sadly I'm not German enough to really pull it off, although I did manage some very pointed whimpering and the occasional polite yet hopefully guilt-inducing shriek of abject terror. All that notwithstanding, the view from the 157-meter spire is breathtaking:
We did manage to make it back to solid ground unscathed, and then set out through the Innenstadt in search of lunch. After a couple of side trips and map consultations we found something nice, and then set off again to check out a museum. Köln has a fairly well-known chocolate museum, but since I'm coming back with my folks and Meghan had already seen it, we ended up going for the art in Museum Ludwig next to the Dom, including a Dalí exhibit centering on La Gare de Perpignan ("The Perpignan Train Station") and a really amazing photo exhibit called "Für Immer und Ewig/For Ever and a Day?" which contained pictures from "the world's most photographed" including Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Elvis, Muhammed Ali, and Ghandi.

We headed back to Bonn to meet up with some of Meghan's roommates from last semester for dinner, and she and I ended up learning how to roll sushi! I haven't tried it yet by myself, but I've bought about half the supplies and certainly intend to give it a try sometime in the near future. We got plenty of practice!
After gorging ourselves we played a few games, including a 20-questions variation in which we wrote the names of famous people on post-it notes and adhered our new identities to one another's foreheads, and then tried to guess our own character. Then there was a quick and crazy game of Pounce, which I first learned from Grace at Kenyon... although it was played with special decks of cards that were color-coded and only numbered through 10, and was called "Libretto" for some strange reason.

I had to head back to Göttingen on Sunday, but the three of us decided to fit in a little bit more sightseeing in Bonn that afternoon. On the bus into town, though, I was once again mistaken for some kind of preteen... I attempted to buy my fare, and the driver disbelievingly asked if I needed an adult ticket... less than a month before my 23rd birthday! I swear, if that ever happens again I'm totally taking the discount!

We ended up going down the "Museum Mile" past the Palais Schaumburg, the previous home of West Germany's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Here's his head, which is also along the way:
Okay, it's not his real head, but it is a pretty creepy-looking representation thereof. To make matters worse, the sculpture also has reliefs of symbolic objects on the back. Adenauer is another of Bonn's favorite sons, since he is responsible for bringing the seat of government to the town during the east-west split... He got elected and decided he didn't want to commute. Berlin is once again the capital city, but there are plenty of reminders left in Bonn, many of which are now ministries of various sorts. There is plenty of political history, though, which is why it's a fitting location for the Haus der Geschichte. This museum is basically a walk through modern German history since 1945... and is there ever plenty to see! It was really cool to associate objects, images, and sounds with my understanding of Germany's development since WWII, and the exhibits provided a great sense of the massive scope of political and societal change here in the last 60-odd years. Plus, they have an actual moon rock!

I caught an evening train back home in anticipation of a day back in lab! Sadly, monday wasn't much of anything... I tried to look busy for the visiting deans whom I never even saw, and didn't get any further in terms of getting back on the project for this semester. Granted, now that classes are starting up again and given that I'll be distinctly less available when my folks and Mike and his family arrive in about a month, I've rather resigned myself to *gasp* a semester without lab work... although I can't say for certain that I wouldn't drop all sorts of other stuff and head off to Erlangen if things started looking promising... sigh. I can always dream.

Additional posts forthcoming about my Easter and travels with Kola and my birthday weekend, hopefully before I head out on my next adventure on Friday!

da da da da da da da da BACKLOG...

(Title to be sung to the tune of the Batman song. Y'all know the one.)

Aaaaah! I actually had to jot down NOTES from my Bonn/Köln trip of two weekends ago so it doesn't all fade away into the bottomless memory pits of my mind (although at least the pictures are already uploaded)... and then there's Easter weekend with a special visitor and some amazing food, followed by a spontaneous and out-of-this-world return to Berlin...

But all that will have to wait, you see. Since yesterday, I am on a quest. It is a quest of utmost importance, and is both dangerous and difficult. Also, I kind of suck at it. Nevertheless! All 3.7 of you will just have to anticipate the continuation of my adventures with bated breath until AFTER I succeed!

This may take weeks...

Especially since this weekend is my Birthday (23! Ah! Maybe people will finally stop mistaking me for 12!) and classes resume Monday. Oh, holy mother of pop-tarts! Before I forget, the biggest news of all! I did it, I really did it! I tested into OBERSTUFE! Grammatik II, here I come!

And now back to my regularly scheduled questing... And to anybody who takes on the challenge themselves and beats the dratted thing in under 5 hours (consecutive or not): feel free to gloat in the comments section, but I reserve the right to accuse you of making out with monkey bottoms and enjoying it.

Frohe Ostern

I promised myself I'd write my Bonn/Koeln post BEFORE Kola got here, and then completely and totally failed to get around to it in a timely fashion. But it's COMING. I promise!

Meanwhile, she arrived Friday afternoon and we're having a ball! Today we have plans to eat Osterlamms and chocolate bunnies, and then get ice cream in town. Sounds like my kind of day! There's a Katholisches Hochschulegemeinschaft service tonight as well. Tomorrow morning we're going to Berlin, and then I'll come back Wednesday morning... hopefully in time for my 1:00 Einstufungstest for second semester German classes and my 7:00 audition for this semester in the Uni choir.

So I guess more details will have to wait until later next week. I've realized this morning that after the next two weekends, I have plans ALL THE TIME until my family arrives on May 23. So maybe Italy won't happen this year... unless Mike wants to go to Rome some weekend while he's in Europe. He leaves at the end of June, and then two weeks later it's already time for me to head home. Wahnsinn!

Now that Em and I are (gloriously) reunited I'd like to hit Tuebingen and the surrounds for a visit, too... maybe the weekend after next? Wow...

Aber Deutschland hat ein Superstar schon gefunden...

*****UPDATE: I've been informed that the embedded player doesn't work for everybody (yup, that would be MY family still using friggin' Windows 98...) so go here if you don't see anything below. If that doesn't work, sorry! Also, I'm travelling again this weekend, this time to Bonn and Köln (Cologne), so more adventure updates are pending!*****



Ho...ly... CRAP. Queen of the Night, at that. I'd say it speaks for itself, really.

But Ricebag, how do you find this stuff??

Deutschland sucht ein Superstar...

That's the title of Germany's American Idol equivalent. I think last night's mondo-Karaoke session was plenty of practice and I'm ready to sign up for the next round of auditions. Ich wird Superstar!

Okay, not really... but why didn't we think of this in college? My friends totally got on the Dance Dance Revolution train (some folks from my circle more than others) and it made for some great parties. Plus, most of the folks I associated with could actually sing, including those who thought they couldn't... (I'm looking at you, certain someone who still owes me a duet, whether it be Sir Elton & Kiki or or Huey & Gwyneth.) So that's it. Five-year reunion comes around, I'm totally bringing a Karaoke set. Right here, right now, I'm throwing down the glove: Kenyon Reunion 2010 Idol. Who's with me??

In other news, this same someone seen above has also seen fit to bestow a miraculous cure for my nascent Protestant tendencies. How can I keep from rejoicing in Catholicism, when this exists??

My goals for the day... convincing my laundry to dry itself in a timely fashion (main tactic: squinting meaningfully at pants) and getting on the German equivalent of Facebook... Dear Lord, how far I have fallen!

Pub crawl, Opera, Lutheranism... oh my!

I am once again remiss in my posting duties... I've been back from Leipzig for several days now, but stuff keeps happening. For example, I was hijacked by my dorm-mates for an hour and a half last night during prime blogging time to test out Katha's new Karaoke system, which she got for her birthday yesterday. More on that later...

I suppose I should go all the way back to last Friday night... The Gö-team met up once again, plus Claire, for a nice sushi dinner in town. Somehow, a glass of wine or beer with the meal turned into a ginormous pub crawl, and we went to three other places for drinks afterwards. The triumph of my evening, though, was finally sampling the much-coveted Amaretto Sour at Villa Cuba, the one place in all of Germany that I've found the drink actually the menu. It didn't exactly match up with my expectations (the ones at the Grill basically taste like liquid Sweet Tarts candies, but this version must've had grapefruit juice in it or something) but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. And regardless of how I look in the photo, I wasn't drunk!

These guys, on the other hand, I can't exactly vouch for...

I eventually got home after 2am and still had to pack for my trip to Leipzig, and my train left the next morning before 9am. It was a great night, though. I met my first German trekkie as well! It was a surreal moment; folks exchanged contact information, I saw his email address... "Locutus. Like, Locutus of Borg??" and we spent the next five minutes quoting at each other and laughing hysterically. Nerd heaven! I'd say it was an all-around success!

Of course on Saturday morning I missed my original train and had to catch the next one, but I still rolled in a little after noon. A second umbrella had to be sacrificed to the gods of "Alaina can't possibly keep track of all her crap on the train," but otherwise it was uneventful (if a bit delayed.) Jen (from Kiel) and Elizabeth, a musicologist from Arkansas whom I met at the Berlin conference, were there at the station to meet me. I dropped my stuff off at Elizabeth's place and then got to see a little bit of the city. We met up with Jen again at the Thomaskirche, hoping to catch the usual Saturday afternoon Bach cantata (every Saturday afternoon! How cool is that!) but it turns out they had an organ vespers on schedule for this particular week.

We paid the €1 fee and were treated to an hour of fabulous music from Max Reger, good ol' JS himself, Franz Tunder, and Olivier Messiaen. I had to have my picture taken with the statue outside, as the man himself is buried at the front of the church (sorry that the photo is kind of upside-down!) I thought the Uni-chor in Göttingen was hot stuff with our twice-semesterly cantata schedule, but that's nothing compared to the Bach-lovin' that's all over Leipzig. Want to hear every single cantata and possibly most other pieces of music the man wrote over his whole lifetime? Simple, just live here for a couple of years!

We stopped for Kaffee und Kuchen, did a little shopping, and then Elizabeth and I went to see more of the city. The Nikolaikirche is most famous as the original site of weekly peaceful protests, or Montagdemos, at the end of the DDR era in 1989, since the church was the only place where the Stasi police didn't hold sway.

As awesome as it looks from the outside, the inside is truly stunning, with massive columns topped with green palm fronds. It was closed by the time we got there on Saturday, but I finally got some pictures of the inside on Sunday morning. But as for the rest of Saturday, Elizabeth and Jen and I made a lovely pasta dinner with snickerdoodles (gotta get the recipe!) for dessert, and hung out until Jen had to leave in order to rest up for the following day's performance. Elizabeth and I ended up chatting until the wee hours of the morning, which was great fun... well, until we realized that we'd have to get up early the next day!

Despite it all, we woke up on time and I was treated to a fabulous experience... we went to church at the Thomaskirche! I haven't been to a Lutheran service since high school (it was part of a "world religions" class project and the assignment was to sit in on another Christian denomination's worship.) Elizabeth's family had actually converted to Lutheranism from Baptist a while ago (fascinating story, and part of the reason we were up so late talking!) and I'm completely jealous that she gets to attend these services every week! For starters, the Thomanerchor, one of Europe's most famous male choirs, provided most of the music. These guys first got famous under JS Bach's direction between 1723 and 1750, and they were AMAZING.

A quick rundown: Introitus was Hugo Distler's "Gott ist unsere Zuversicht" from "Der Jahrkreis" op. 5; the Kyrie was a glorious (if anonymous) setting from the 10th century; after the first reading was a piece entitled "Wer sich nach seinem Namen nennt" by E Mauersberger, who was also Thomaskantor from 1961 to 1972; after the homily we heard "O Jesu, nomen dulce" from Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) with a glorious alto solo (I can see why this boy-choir thing was so popular); the service was concluded with a JS Bach organ piece, I. Allegro "aus dem Concerto a-Moll nach Antonio Vivaldi BWV 593." Of course we stayed for communion and heard yet another organ piece, "Jésus console les filles d'Israel qui le suivent" from Dupré's Stations of the Cross. It was completely beautiful, and it totally didn't matter that I hadn't even heard of any of this stuff beforehand... Good thing I'm not living in Leipzig, though, because if I could hear music like that every week I might just go Lutheran! (Kidding mom...)

It was a royal Luther-fest of a morning, though. Our next stop was Wittenberg, as the Mitteldeutsche Kammeroper presentation of "Hänsel und Gretel" was put on at the Wittenberg opera house. It's officially known as "Lutherstadt Wittenberg," since it was here that he taught, preached, raised his family, and on October 31, 1517 nailed a certain famous piece of paper to the door of the city's Schloßkirche. Of course they have all 95 theses on display at the side door... click here for a hopefully readable (English) image of the accompanying plaque.

Elizabeth told me it's a hoot and a half to see the city during the annual "Reformationstag" celebration, with folks dressing up like Luther, his family members, and his compatriots and generally having a fine old time. I missed this year's celebration, but it probably wouldn't have been in the best of form to heckle at the burning of the papal bull which threatened his excommunication in 1520. Hmmm... I'll still be around for the next annual reenactment of his wedding in June...

Oh, and here's the man himself, entombed since his death in 1546 at the Schloßkirche where it all started. Across the way is his good buddy and supporter Philipp Melanchthon (not pictured). Sorry about the fuzziness, I guess I'll just have to go back some time to get a clearer picture! We also had time to check out the Marienkirche, with another famous altar from Cranach (the elder). Elizabeth was a great source of Luther-lore and info, and apparently at this church he converted the entire congregation with a single sermon.

We had lunch in town and then headed off to find the opera house for Jen's performance. She filled a dual role as the Sandmännchen/Taumännchen (Sandman/Dewdrop fairy?) who puts the kids to sleep out in the woods and then wakes them up again only for them to stumble upon the evil Witch's tempting abode. The Witch was one of my favorite characters in the end... not a sympathetic role, of course, but the actress was just so deliciously evil. Jen told us on the train ride back to Leipzig about the performances they had done for schoolchildren, and how the most vociferous (and charming) audience response was always enthusiastic boo-ing for the böse Hexe.

We got back and cooked a fabulous dinner for six (myself, Elizabeth, Jen, another Kiel friend Andrew, James who studies Oboe in Leipzig, and a visiting friend of his from the U.S.) consisting of yummy homemade mac and cheese and salads (plus more snickerdoodles and of course homemade brownies for dessert!) and I made plans to run over to Dresden the next morning to see the Frauenkirche... but I ended up staying up too late once again and decided to spend another day in Leipzig. Elizabeth continued to play the role of the fabulous hostess, and showed me even more of the city. We met up with James and his visitor (her name is unfortunately escaping me at the moment) at a café, then made plans for additional sightseeing.

One of the big items I had read about is the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, a memorial to slain German soliders in the 1813 Battle of Nations against Napoleon's forces. It's huge, imposing, bombastically nationalistic, and as Elizabeth so aptly put it, "a fabulous example of everything that was wrong about the 19th century in Europe." A huge basin in front of the ziggurat-like building is used as a skating rink during the winter.

The sandstone-colored figure on the front of the building is St. Michael, who is depicted glowering down over his slayed enemies and basically telling the world not to mess with his 'peeps. Of course Hitler and his ilk ate this kind of stuff up with a spoon and capitalized greatly on the sentiment.

Inside, if possible, is even creepier. Even on a warm spring day the stone walls shut out the heat completely so it felt like walking into a huge refrigerator. The main chamber, with the imposing arched windows, contains giant symbolic statuary, massive mercenary figures with gigantic muscles which are supposed to represent the inherent strength and power of the "Volk." Unfortunately the reconstructed panorama I put together rather fails to convey the scale of these herculean dudes (and at least one dude-ess, symbolically breastfeeding some monstrous babies) but the informational display panels under the windows were at least 10 feet tall, if that provides a sense of the size. I was about ankle-high to the statuary.

The view from the top, however, is pretty nifty. Also much warmer than inside. We paid the €1 fee for elevator service to the middle level (that's below the green-covered scaffolding) and then skipped the tip-top since we had arrived just before closing time (and it would have been quite a few stairs). Still, we could see basically all of Leipzig.

Elizabeth and I split up from James and his friend and headed back into town to see if the Mendelssohn-haus was still open. It was, luckily. Several of the rooms were restored to the period of his residence, and the others contained exhibits which included letters, the family silverware, and an actual lock of his hair. (I was probably a bit more excited than was warranted at the chance to use Mendelssohn's bathroom... unoriginal of course...)

We grabbed leftovers and headed over to James' apartment for dinner with the same crowd as the previous night, and as I had decided to take a train out the following morning I once again had a fabulous, if late, social evening with Elizabeth. I have to go back in May when Jen and James and some other folks have organized a Fulbright recital, so I already have plans to check out the Stasi museum in Leipzig, finally see Dresden, and maybe even make an excursion into the nearby Sächsische Schweiz if time allows... And Elizabeth needs to come to Göttingen to do some research, and we both seem to have the travel bug at the moment, so hopefully we'll get to do more adventuring together in the near future!

I got back to Göttingen uneventfully on Tuesday afternoon, and things have been relatively quiet. Well, except that Katha got that Karaoke machine for her birthday which had to be set up and tested last night, and of course I had to participate. I'm at a bit of an unfair advantage since all the songs are in English, although Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" was tricky enough even in my mother tongue! There's also some kind of party in the works for tomorrow night. You need a can of mace and a big stick to keep me from making a fool of myself when there are 80's pop tunes to be had, so I anticipate a fun night.

Oh, and I need to call Christina (my host mom) since I bumped into her at the bank yesterday but we were too busy to really catch up... Spring cleaning bug has hit as well, plus there's laundry to be done... I don't have any specific travel plans hanging over my head at the moment, but after the whirlwind last two weeks I hope to rectify that soon! I'm also still not sure what's up, if anything, with lab stuff for 2nd semester... but I find that I'm not particularly worried at the moment. Blame it on the sunshine, I guess, and the fact that I really do feel like I'm in the homestretch! Developments, as always, to be posted as they... um, develop! Also, this is the second post today AND I updated the Dortmund trip post with photos, so enjoy!

I love my alma mater!

Okay, humongo-awesome Leipzig post is on the way, I promise. (Something about being kidnapped by my dorm-mates for a couple hours of Karaoke last night made it difficult to make the time to finish it up... hmm...)

In the meantime, the thing that I most love about Kenyon College is the unabashed willingness of the community to engage wholeheartedly in wonkish dorkery... and have an awesome time in the process. I have a million examples, from the annual Catholics vs. Protestants kickball game, to Prof. Shutt's halloween ghost tours, to pizza-fueled friday afternoon Psych department jam sessions, to campus-wide performance art contests, to the 24-hour mass reading of Ulysses on the Kokosing (and I have the T-shirt to prove it!)

But I think this one takes the cake.

But the most important part is definitely the original video.

Sigh... Farewell, old Kenyon, fare thee well!