Blogs from Coburg, Bavaria, Germany, Europe - page 2

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: I have not fallen off the face of the earth… I’ve been busy. Gasp!! As hard as that may be to believe, you all know the saying that when it rains it pours, and I have long had the premonition that my severe lack of work at the beginning of my stay would result in its coming back to bite me in the tuchus later on. So where on earth do I begin? For starters, it’s SPRING. ‘Bout damn time. We’ve had a lot of rainy days over the last 2 ½ weeks since you last heard from me… I saw some god-awful big snails, the kind that make you grimace in disgust. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera on hand, so I can’t share the face-making experience with you. ... read more

Easter. Oh, my, I never would have guessed that an entire country could go on vacation all at once, but leave it to Germans to do the unthinkable, because here, every half-way important Catholic celebration is a bank holiday, too. Translation: Good Friday everything is closed. Saturday morning, it all opens back up, from 8 am to 2pm. Then everything closes again until Tuesday morning. And *I* returned to “school” (I’ll use that term loosely) to find that… hey, I have Easter break, and I didn’t really miss any more than about 2 classes all week, anyway! Let me break it down for ya: officially, classes began on March 15th. For my particular major of Interior Architecture, that did not mean “classes,” that meant “presentations of final projects from last semester.” I don’t have any of ... read more

My, my, have I been busy. I bet you’re thinking I finally went to school… nope. What did happen was a full-fledged vacation. Yes again. Like I needed it, I know. But John came all the way from dinky ol’ Manhattan, Kansas to visit, and only for a week, so I couldn’t very well keep him cooped up in Coburg, an also relatively dinky town. Now, I have to explain here, there was a third traveling companion, and it might get confusing, because his name is Jon. Without the ‘h.’ So, there we were, John, Jon and Rachel, all ready for adventure. After the boys got their fill of Bavarian beer (the same day they arrived… ew) and a full night’s sleep, we went into town, to the Markt to partake of some tasty Coburger Bratwursts, ... read more

Orientation for school began this week, and I thought my brain was going to shrivel up and fall out my ear from all the paperwork and trying to communicate in German. All 8 of us newly arrived finally met each other on Monday the 8th where we promptly started filling out residency permits, school enrollment papers, and any manner of other forms, none of which I really understood, so I kind of hope I didn’t sign my soul over to the devil, or anything drastic like that. The eight of us hail from a nice assortment of places: KSU, of course, Mexico (Raúl, from Ikea), Italy, Lithuania and Czech Republic. And we, of course, do not have any one language in common; it’s mostly split that the North Americans all know English, and the Europeans all ... read more

oh, where to begin with it all? ...Arrival to Germany was complicated by a few things. Like overseas traveling isn't enough by itself to put someone over the edge, Melissa and I were both nauseous during parts of the trip to Coburg, which made jetlag even more uncomfortable. Then there was the ordeal of retrieving our luggage. Frankfurt airport is not a very user friendly airport, we found out the hard way, and it took us nearly an hour to claim our luggage. By that time we had missed the train we had intended to take to meet Esther in Würzburg, and we still had to get train tickets! Suffice to say it was a bit hellish. We finally made it though, to Würzburg, and then on to our new home, Coburg. It’s a lovely little ... read more