So the weather has finally started getting nice again in Germany. The trees are becoming green and the flowers are starting to bloom. This change of weather reminds me of how beautiful Germany is and how lucky I am to be living here. Even the malls in Remscheid decorate for the spring and upcoming Easter holiday. It has been a nice change to sit outside during my lunch break and then after work enjoy a beer sitting on the Rhine and watching the sunset. Easter in Germany isn’t quite as extravagant as Christmas but the beautiful weather makes up for not [View Full Entry]

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My parents had planned on coming to Germany to visit in March during my sister’s spring break since I left the US and the week finally came. My parents came in on a Friday morning and I had made plans on what we would be doing during the nine days they would be in Germany. My boss at my internship was nice and gave me the week with my parents off from work. As soon as my parents got into Germany we planned to drive to Munich for the weekend. I set up all the hotel plans and car rentals before [View Full Entry]

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It had been a while since I had seen a new town. Since lots of my friends have moved to a new town for internship I thought I would start my visiting. A good friend named Lori moved to a town called Röttingen. It is a tiny town in northern Bavaria near the Romantic Street. It is about a 4-hour train ride to her town but I always enjoy a nice train ride through Germany. I left on Friday and Lori told me I would meet her host parents in Würzburg since her town doesn’t have a main train station. I [View Full Entry]

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So if you have been reading my blog for a while you might remember one about a big festival in Cologne on November 11th. This blog is about the actual celebration of Karneval in Germany. So every year in the end of February Karneval is celebrated. It is the time before Ash Wednesday when people go crazy before they are supposed to fast. It starts on a Thursday they call Altweiber or Old Lady. This day kicks off carnival with women dressing up and cutting ties off men. At my job in the city hall the mayor threw a party [View Full Entry]

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So the school phase has finally ended and I have started an internship in Remscheid Germany. Finding an internship, even unpaid, was no easy task and I did not find it until the end of January and we had to start beginning of February. My job is working for city marketing for the city of Remscheid where I have lived for the last 4 months. City marketing is basically event planning for the city. We plan events like an auto show and organize the weekly farmers market. My office is in the main government building and is only a 20 minute [View Full Entry]

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A strange place to celebrate a 21st since nothing is illegal So after travelling for almost 2 weeks straight you would think I would need a break but the weekend after Dresden and Berlin was a good friend’s birthday. She was turning 21 and what better place for that than Amsterdam. Before heading to Amsterdam during the week we met up with another group having their midyear seminar in Bonn. It was fun to catch up with some other people I had not seen since Radolfzell or Washington DC. We met up with them in Cologne and had dinner and drinks. [View Full Entry]

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It officially is 2009 and to kick off the New Year our program has us go to a different city with 25 other participants from my program and have a midyear seminar. The seminar that I was attending was in Dresden, Germany around the first full week of January. The seminar was mostly to talk about how the program has gone so far and give constructive feedback. Also you had to work with a group and create a presentation on a current German issue. My group all happened to be in North Rheine Westphalia and that helped us a lot since [View Full Entry]

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I would like to start off hoping that everyone had a great Holiday season. My program asks that we do not go home for the holidays but instead stay with our host families. So this Christmas I got to experience a real German Christmas with my family and their 4 kids. It started on the 24th with going to church at around 4pm. They had a very nice Christmas Eve service with great Christmas music. Normally after church my host family likes to talk with the other families but this day the kids already had their coats on and were asking [View Full Entry]

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So I have mentioned the Christmas markets some in other blogs but I thought they deserved their own blog entry since I spent a lot of time at them this Christmas season. They started towards the end of November and went until around Christmas Eve. Almost every town has its own Christmas Market and each one always seems to claim it has the best of something. My first Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) I went to was in Dusseldorf. It is a bunch of little booths that are decorated to look like little huts or gingerbread houses with lights and garland. Often times [View Full Entry]

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So I went to school the 2 days while Steve and Julie where in Paris and got some stuff finished up before heading off to London. My flight going to London had a layover in Paris but only for like 2 hours. I got to the airport a little more than 2 hours early which was really lucky since I got to the counter and the woman said my flight was cancelled. She then told me that I was in luck and another flight was leaving in 30 minutes and I should be fine. So I quickly went to my gate [View Full Entry]

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