ich bin tante

22.05.09 18:11 PST 8lb 2oz
Jackson Kenneth Stevens, my nephew!

He and Jessie are healthy, which is all that matters right now. Even so, I'd like to be with them.

Oh, the intimacy one must trade for adventure.

dresden

We took an early train to Dresden and got on our way, knowing we'd travel back to Potsdam that evening.Outside the der Dresdner Zwinger palace.And inside.I believe that the Frauenkirche is the main site of Dresden. I've learned some about the church's history in architecture, which was nice for background.
Here we have the church in legos... which already had me impressed.And in real life... wow, right? The church was rebuilt and opened for service in 2005. Before its massive, and costly, renovation, the church stood as rubble from WWII. All the dark stones you see are from the original church, precisely mapped out from the ruins and set in the reconstruction.

The guidebook told us that the church was closed every day from 12 to 1, or so we read while in a gigantic line at 11:56. Turns out, we slipped in as some of the very last guests for an afternoon organ service, more for visitors than worship. Lucky girls we are.

The Volkswagen factory, which my dad just told me is the most modern automobile factory in the world at the moment. I'll take his word for it.Anaïs's guidebook had a great recommendation to go to the Pfunds Molkerei. It is a charming little dairy house with really great milk.Two glasses of milk. Check. Cheese plate for two. Check. Pause... yummm. On our way.Our path lead us through the botanical gardens on the edge of the large city park. After a while hanging out in the park, it was time to catch our train.

In our train coach, we talked to some Canadians nearing the end of their month backpacking Europe. I couldn't have told you where exactly they were from, but apparently me saying 'America' (not 'the States') and 'Cyanada' (not 'Canada,' apparently) gave me away.

leipzig

We took an obscene amount of pictures in Leipzig. And Dresden. And Potsdam. Let's just say that I am embarassed to post the number of photos from just one weekend. I've weeded through them this evening, deleting literally hundreds.

Really, though, we had a great time together! Anaïs is such a great girl and I feel really lucky to know her. On top of it all, she has helped me out so much with my German. I know for certain that she is going to be a great language teacher someday.

Leipzig was lovely. It is a trade fair city in Saxony, formerly part of the GDR.

Our tour began in the Nikolaikirche, which I really enjoyed. The pale colors and classical style are really appealing.

Anaïs and Goethe.We had coffee and a Leipziger Lerche (a little almond pastry) in the Riquethaus, a former commercial building.

Not gonna lie, we did a lot of shopping in between. It is, afterall, it is a commercial city, right?There are a ton of these passages through the larger shopping buildings on their ground floor. These semi-open malls reminded me of the Galleria in Milan.

Johann Sebastian Bach's grave was moved to the Thomaskirche in 1950, as he spent most of his creative life as cantor for the church.The former Reichsgericht, a gigantic court house.To end our tour of the city, we went up for a panoramic view atop the Mendelbrunnen high rise.

anaïs kommt!

Anaïs arrived in the morning on Thursday, a holiday here. We went sightseeing in Potsdam, which never gets old with new people. I think I'm even a little proud of this place.I finally got a good shot of the church altar at the end of Brandenburger Strasse.I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Friedrich der Grosse, or Old Fritz. He was a king of Prussia, friend of Voltaire, and a big part of Potsdam development. The portrait above is an Andy Warhol original, currently a part of the Sanssouci Palace tour. Anaïs was a rebel and snapped a forbidden picture - but I'm glad she did!

The weather was terrible. We were walking through the park, soaking. It didn't stop us from visiting a bunch of buildings though. We had a snack in the Drachenhaus, a pogoda style building that was once Friedrich's vintner's home. Now, it provides a classy little place for a cafe/restaurant - not bad.

The rain stopped, but it was still bad weather... and we were exhausted!

We checked out the Hollandischer viertel that evening before dark and had dinner with two other California students. Big weekend ahead!

zwischendurch

Believe it or not, I am actually living on weedays in between these trips :)
Class is pretty cool. We are always in this same little room with the same little group of people. Each class meets only once a week (except language skills, twice) which I'm not sure is so great with language courses. I forget a lot of the grammar that we learn, and grammar is so incredibly important.

Actually, I take that back. Class isn't too cool. I was swimming around in my head thinking of which class is my favorite, but none of them are that fantastic. Either I think the teacher is particularly good with an bland subject or the material interests me but the teacher is dull. In any case, I am getting to learn about fairytales, architecture, and the language. And more than anything right now, I want to be able to speak German. It's growing inside of me and I think I may have found something new to learn with passion. Understanding people and likewise being able to express yourself, even simple thoughts, is so unbelievably satisfying.

I forgot to mention that I was really sick in between the Milan and Edinburgh trips. I spent a couple days in bed feeling absolutely horrid and and some points, I felt really helpless. It's strange being alone with no one to take care of you. I mean, literally, I ran out of food and no one would run to the grocery store for me. Maybe I am responsible for myself? Maybe. At one point my fever got really bad and I called my program manager, knowing she had driven other, less sick people to the doctor, seeing as our health insurance cards were still en route. I was really annoyed when she brushed me off and emailed me the name of a doctor, suggesting that I take the bus for 20 minutes to the city center and walk to the doctors office from there. I instead opted to sleep the entire day and ward of my flu on my own. Later, I found out that my program manager was also at home, terribly sick. Yet again, I am reminded not to make assumptions.

One good thing was that I had a lot of time to sit on the computer and Skype chat with my german neighbor. It was really fun; we'd switch between languages and I had plenty of time to look up words on internet translators. Once he realized that I was bored cooped up, he brought me chicken soup and a bunch of german DVDs. It was really nice. He said we could absolutely hang out and speak German as soon as I was better, but since then, I've asked him to hang out numerous times... and... nothing. This whole making-German-friends thing is really wearing me out.

One Sunday afternoon, we went to a modern/jazz dance competition in Berlin. A girl from Berlin who works in our study abroad office used to be on one of the teams. I think it was a big deal because dance teams competed from various states all over northern Germany. They did some crazy stuff. We were impressed. On some weekday afternoons, we go on culture excursions relating to our elective classes in the Potsdam/Berlin area. I missed out on two excursions while I was sick, which I didn't realize was such a loss until I went with the group to Sanscouci Palace.

I was considering not going, as I have already done an audio tour of the palace with Cat. Little did I know that our guide for the excursions not only sets up private access to the sites, but also orates well. It was such a different tour than before, and I will definitely be attending all the others from here on out.

edinburgh

I spent the last weekend in Edinburgh visiting my friend, Arianna. She and I met in the dorms and lived together for most of our second year at Santa Barbara. After we moved out, she headed off to study abroad, so I haven't seen her in a while. It was great to be reuinted, albeit brief.

Edinburgh is beautiful! I could definitely never live there because the weather is so terrible, but the green hills are definitely a pleasant contrast to the gloomy clouds.

Arianna lives in the center of Edinburgh (specifically in the cow gate), which is nice. The city is small with somewhere around 450,000 inhabitants. It was cool that everything was really near her house and I ended up seeing important sites multiple times over my short weekend visit.Behind me is Edinburgh Castle, situated on a hill. I am thrilled that Hogwarts (the school of witchcraft and wizardry in Harry Potter) is based on this castle. I am a total nerd for the books. We passed by and went in the Elephant Cafe where J.K. Rowling began writing the books on napkins with a seat by the window looking up at this castle.

I really had an affinity to St. Giles' Cathedral, pictured above. There was so much character inside with vibrant stained glass windows, intricate ceiling arches, wood carvings and spirited clan flags.

We went out that night to a ceidilh (pronounced kay-lee) which was one of the funnest nights I've ever had. There was an older crowd, but it made it all the better. We did all sorts of traditional dancing - and laughing.

Pleasanton hosts Scottish games every September, so if there's a ceidilh event, I am definitely dragging some people along with me. [hint hint]

The ceidilh ended relatively early so we went out to an Irish pub afterwards which had, well, a bunch of Irish people. Apparently everyone comes to Edinburgh for stag and hen (or bachelor and bachelorette) parties, so it was typical for me to hang out with these groups of wild people. I noticed the following day tons of groups of stag and hen parties all dressed up running around the city.

We went out to a traditional Scottish breakfast on Saturday morning. This heartily includes toast, baked beans, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, an egg...

... and haggis! Yep, I ate it all.

We walked afterwards down the Royal Mile which ends down at the bottom of a hill at Parlaiment. The Parlaiment building is apprantly hated by the Scottish people because it is too modern, but I liked the organic elements.We walked up to one of the main vistas overlooking Edinburgh. Behind Arianna in this picture is King Arthur's seat, which has the highest view. We went instead to Calton Hill, which was really nice, especially when the sun started to show itself.Then we hurried down around to the Princes Street Gardens to take advantage of the sun.Behind this piper is Scotts Monument, which is situated in the center of the city.Another view up towards Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street West Gardens.

We continued walking (lots and lots of walking over the weekend) back around the city center to Ariannas house to hang out. Her flatmates were so welcoming and kind. In general, I really liked the Scottish people, especially when strangers answer questions with "aye, love" or other endearing sayings.

We had another night out, where I got to try a very interesting soda. I was told that Scottland is the only country where CocaCola is not the #1 selling softdrink. Distributed and wildly popular in Scottland alone is Irn-Bru, a bright orange soda, which I thought tasted like bubble gum...

It was another fun night, but I had to get up super early on Sunday to catch my 7am flight outside the city.

Yet another great weekend! And now for the schoolwork...

mailand

[i need to get pictures from steph - camera problems. i will write about milan later...]

moin, moin hamburg

Seeing Hamburg with Anais was so much fun! I am going to Hamburg again with other people and again to other places with Anais, so this trip really made me excited for upcoming weekends.Hamburg has the 9th largest harbor in the world. Much of the city is designed around the important functionality of water and built up from its mercantile history.First day, we started at das Ratthaus (city hall), which was one of the prettiest I've been inside.
We did a substantial amount of walking through the city. The tower in the picture above is St. Nikolai-Kirche, a church that was bombed out in WWII. The bell tower still stands and is currently part of a memorial site. Perhaps the bell tower remained intact because it functioned as a navigation point for American bombers. We were able to go up in an elevator to the top of the bell tower and look out. Next to the amazing panoramas of the city, there were large printed photos of the same view out of the tower shortly after the massive air raids on Hamburg. The devestation was astonishing. Afterwards, we found more information on the air raids and destruction in a neighboring museum. The statistics were so astounding - somewhere around half of the thousands of bodies were unidentifiable. I found it interesting that in explanations of the massive destruction from American bombings, the memorial made sure to state that it was only a response to Hitler's previous acts of violence and aggression. The tone of the statement was noteworthy.
Among other sight-seeing that day, we took a really cool trip around in a tour boat. We were able to go through the canals, shipyards, and right up underneath the stern of a gigantic cargo ship.We stopped by the hotel to relax a bit and then went out for a drink.And then dinner. A friend of Anais recommended going to the Portuguese quarter for some delicious seafood.

We had a couples special - so cute :)A view of the shipyard at night on our way to meet some friends of Anais. The nightlife was pretty hectic in Hamburg. We just stopped by a more casual bar for a drink with two of Anais's friends, but the walk there was definitely spiced up with some energetic young people. Anais and I didn't make the Fischmarkt (something I will be sure to do on the next trip to Hamburg), but we got to stroll around the area. It started raining shortly after this picture was taken, so we quickly headed to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, a large art museum near the central train station.

Claudia shared a Max Lieberman book of paintings with us back in Hanau. For many years of his life, Lieberman painted views from his garden villa on lake Wannsee, right near Potsdam. I'll be sure to visit the villa soon.It was neat; this was kind of a bridge between the classical art and contemporary art.

Sigmar Polke was featured. This piece was huge!The overcast day was probably more typical for Hamburg, so it was nice to see in contrast to the lovely weather the day before. We ate at the restaurant in the corner building in the right center of the picture above. I forgot to mention our terrible service in Hamburg... it definitely made an impression. Our breakfast the morning before took nearly 2 hours. Only after watching table after table receive their food did we start complaining. Then at the restaurant above, the waitress forgot to place our order. Again, it took nearly an hour while we sat, starving. It is so different to America, where mistakes on the servers part would surely warrant a discount or sincere apology at least.Our last stop: St. Michaelis. Our entry fee granted us access to the crypt, church, and view from the tower. Currently, the church is undergoing massive renovation. We were quite confused when we walked in to see only about an 8th of the church, with the rest behind a temporary wall. The part we saw has already been refurbished and, man, will it be beautiful!

All in all, an absolutely wonderful weekend! [I hope I didn't forget too much, as my posts are a bit delayed...]