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Published: October 1st 2006
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Bruises
Hours after we left, I noticed that my shins kinda hurt. I bruise easily as you all know, but these are special O-fest bruises from dancing on the benches, falling forward, and ramming them into the tables. And it was not always my fault either. I'm better now though so don't worry. Still hanging in there in Germany. Not too much has been going on, a lot of teaching preparation, and figuring out TWS stuff. I am going to do my unit in Math over Number Sense. So it shouldn’t be too bad. I hope. We have hung around H-berg lately, and are working on planning other trips. We went on a Volksmarch a few weekends ago, and it is an organized hike up the hills and around the city. AO and I went with two of the upper elementary teachers from my school and we had a good time. We walked the 11 K and got a cheap beer stein out of it so it was fun. We’ve been downtown a bit, hanging out at cool places and checking things out. This week we went with my teacher out for “kucken and cappuccino” at this wonderful place Carol calls her English tea gardens. It was a very cool place with wonderful cake. Then she showed us an excellent Indian food restaurant, and a candy store. The guy that worked at the candy store was a very cool German with a sweet Mohawk goatee. They had lots of gummies and sour candies and
AO, Grace, and I
Us at the cool bar where the Germans sang Beatles songs... in German. Grace is so cool. we got some shaped like Smurfs, fried eggs, frogs, and fish. He also plays a dice game when you buy something, rigs it so yow win no matter what, and gives you more free candy. The Indian food place is wonderful. They had this mango yoghurt smoothie drink that the owner gave us and it was sooo good. We’ll definitely be going back there. Then we met up with a friend Nate, that we met from the University of Heidelberg that’s from New York. We saw where the students live and had some wine and went to a pub. It’s nice to meet new people to hang out with! Saturday, one of the Reading Strategists daughter, Grace took us out to show us cool places not downtown. We went to a very cool chill bar with a live band and couches everywhere. The band was sweet, even though we couldn’t understand them, they were still entertaining to watch. They did sing the Beatles song Drive my Car, but in German. I got all of the “beep beep, beep beep yea!!” parts though! Next we went to a billiards room (where they play by the American pool rules 😊 and then
Mostly empty masses
Us girls finishing off masses. It was so hot in the tent! But the beer made it better! to our downtown Irish pub, The Dubliner. One evening that week we had Grace and Nate over for a dinner party with wonderful food, and we even hooked Nate up with some American stuff that you can't get in Germany.
This weekend was the infamous trip to O-fest! We got cheap train tickets, meaning we left at 6:30 am, on Saturday, and got back at 7:30 am on Sunday! No hostel for us!! Michelle, AO and I were on the same train, and we hung out the whole time together. We get to the train station early, to catch our supposed train to Mannheim at 7:11. Nope, our train FROM Mannheim left at 7:11, the people at the train station didn’t book us a train from Heidelberg to Mannheim. (Remember the Mannheim train station?? The one AO and I were stuck at when we first got to Germany.. yea. We love that place.) So, turns out if we catch the next train out of H-berg, we will have ONE MINUTE to catch our train to Munich! If not we will have to buy tickets to get there, and that would be a lot of money. So we got on
O-fest grounds
This shows how crowded the grounds were, and also two of the beer tent tops. All of the tenbts had cool stuff on them so they stood out. You can also see a big statue of the queen who's wedding started the Oktoberfest tradition. (I think thats how the story goes, either that or a birthday) and hopped for the best. When we got to Mannheim, we booked it off the train. Even with having problems with the train door, and our phone flying out of my purse as we run from Platform 1, we still made it to Platform 5 with about a minute to spare! The train must have actually been early! We were stoked, and it was a great way to start our trip to Oktoberfest.
We got to Munich, and it was freezing, so we stopped in a café for a cappuccino before heading to the grounds. Which were HUGE. Holy cow, I don’t think we made it around all of it. It was like our wine fest in Worms, but like 10 times bigger. It was awesome. There was soo much to see, and eat and do. Actually all 11 of the interns went, but we hung out the three of us until the train home. It was a good thing to have a small group, so you don’t get lost. We walked around the grounds for a few hours, and then decided we needed a mass, so we started looking for a tent. A mass is a liter beer,
The tent
All the decorations were really pretty, and you get a feel for how busy it was. Plus people are standing on tables and such. Good times. and you have to be in a tent to get one. And by the time we started looking, you had to have reservations to get in a tent. Enter Michelle and her cunning ways. Background- Michelle is married to a guy in the army, and after she got placed here for student teaching, found out that he was going to be stationed here in like February for a few years. So she has been checking out things to do when they are here for good. Back to the story. So Michelle goes up to this security guard at a tent, and asks how to get in one. He replies that you have to have reservations, and that the tents are probably all full by now. So she asks how to make reservations for next year. The guy stammers, and finally points to the back corner of the tent, and says there is a reservation desk, and to go check it out. AO and I followed her in a hurry, and we were in!! Now, finding seats was another matter. We ended up sitting by these cute older Munich couples that rocked. They knew how to party!! They bought us some
Mamma Josephina
Us with our kick ass waitress. Can you imagine her carrying around like 8 masses of beer? She did. beer and were all around cool. The locals all dress up in authentic German gear and they looked sweet. Then we had the coolest waitress around, Mama Josephine we dubbed her. She shooed all of the drunken German guys away from us! Plus she was dressed up really cool and carried a crap ton of beer at once. Ahh, beer. It was soo good! We were in the Spaten tent, so they only served Spaten beer. Fine by me! Not sure how much I had, but we were in the tent from about 3 to midnight when they kicked everyone out. They had a band in the middle of the room, and tables all around. The band played kick ass music, the traditional German drinking songs (I’ve learned most of I’m proosting! To proost is to cheers!) and a few other songs. They also played silly American songs like Achy-Breaky Heart, YMCA, Ring of Fire, Won’t you be my girl (from Dirty Dancing?) some Queen, and various other songs that I don’t exactly remember. It seemed like the night ended too quickly, and we were back at the train station to wait for our 3:26 am train. We got home
Fake socks!
So, while sitting at our tables, AO goes "Oh man, that guy is wearing fake socks! So we of course took stalker pictures of it, and then he ends up sitting with us! He was super cool and sang and danced with us, and even bought us a mass of beer! Yay Germans! Sunday, showered and slept for about 3 hours before getting up and having a BBQ with the neighbors. Definitely hung out and procrastinated with them when I should have been doing homework, but you know.
Coordinator/Professor Janey comes this week on Wednesday, so we are hanging out with them and I am getting observed on Friday. I started full time teaching today, and I think it went well. Transitions are definitely hard with 1st-graders! It’s hard to believe I only have 4 more weeks with Carol. She’s great and I am definitely going to miss them all!! Okay, it’s late and I don’t think I’ve caught up on sleep from this weekend yet so I am hitting the hay. I love you and miss you all! Proost!
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Mom
non-member comment
Beer Goggles??????
Hummm, looks like you are having WAY too much fun here. I thought you were over there to teach! I'm glad you had a good time and think that maybe you deserved the bruises? Oh well, you only live once, right? Have fun in London this weekend. Love ya