Guten Tag!

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Greetings from Deutschland! I've been in Germany for exactly a week now with my Mom, visiting an exchange student who lived with us while I was in high school. His name is Arjang.
We are staying with Arjang and his two roommates, Tim and Stephen, in their apartment in Hamburg. It looks a lot like a typical college age guy apartment, except maybe a little better decorated, with lots of furniture from Ikea.
Arjang is really in to film and graphic design. He even has his own T-shirt collection at revolushirt.net. Check it out! Tim is really into music and plays is guitar or bass a lot. He even wrote a song that is in the background of one of Arjang's short films. Stephen, well, I'm not really sure what Stephen is in to, but he seems really cool. He works at a large outdoor equipment (camping, hiking, all that jazz) store nearby.
We've met and spent some time with Arjang's parents, especially his Mom, which has been really nice.
We've walked around the main downtown area of Hamburg, which has lots of people and shopping. The Rathaus, or city hall, is a really beautiful building! I will definitely post a picture of it!
The central train station is really interesting too- very large!
We walked around a beautiful botanical garden in the city last weekend with Arjang's mom and I took lots of pictures of all the flowers! The next day, mother's day, we had dinner at Arjang's parent's house. Arjang's parents are both from Iran, and his mom made some absolutely spectacular Persian food! It was so good we brought it home and ate the leftovers for dinner the following night!
Though we haven't made it to a beer garden yet, we've been enjoying some of the city favorites, including Becks. We also drank some beer especially from Köln, called kölsch (I think that's the spelling).
On Monday Arjang took us on a tour of his favorite part of the city, which is the more alternative culture area. There was a lot of Graffiti and small shops. It's a very young area of the city (as in the population is young). There were lots of posters announcing concerts and political protests everywhere. It was interesting.

Last week we took the train from Hamburg to Köln and stayed from Tuesday through Thursday.
We went with Arjang and his mom and stayed at a friend of his mom's house. The friends were also Iranian and we were greeted with another HUGE Persian meal, which was again, awesome!
It was interesting to be there, everyone was speaking a mix of German and Persian, and since I speak neither, it was hard to understand a lot of what was going on. But I feel like some of the German I studied in high school is coming back to me. At least enough to ask and answer basic questions.
In Köln we saw the MASSIVE cathedral and walked around the city. There is a TON of shopping in Köln. We also went and played some billiards later in the afternoon.
Thursday morning we went to the Chocolate Museum, which was all about how chocolate is grown and produced and its history. It was really interesting. Plus, there was an awesome chocolate store at the end in which we bought many tasty treats, including some chocolate beer and chocolate tea. Thursday afternoon we took the train back.
Friday, yesterday, we went downtown to pick up the visa I was having processed at the Egyptian embassy for my next trip and ate dinner at a German restaurant in the central train station. It's really the only "German" restaurant we've been able to find so far. Actually what seems to be everywhere is falafel and Dönner, which is like shawarma if you've ever eaten at a Middle Eastern restaurant, like Oasis in Ann Arbor (my fav!!) Here, you get the meat either in a pita or in a box which looks like a Chinese take out box, and add salad and fries. Interesting, but good.
After dinner, Arjang and I traveled to the other side of the city to visit his friend. We went to an area located along the Elbe river. It was gorgeous! Probably the most beautiful area of Germany I've seen to date. I can't really describe it, so I hope we have time to go back so I can take some pictures (I didn't have my camera with me yesterday). The train ride home was really interesting because it was like one in the morning and there were a lot of drunk young people going to the red light district in Hamburg, which is apparently famous around the world. We are going to take a walk through that just to see what it's like later tonight.
and that pretty much brings me to today!

I've really loved Germany so far. I think I've felt the most at home in Hamburg, maybe because we arrived here and spent time here first. My German is getting better and I feel like if I had to, I could navigate my way around the city's trains on my own. We are going to spend this weekend in Hamburg and then take the bus to Berlin next week, which I am REALLY excited to see!!
Now I'm going to work on uploading my pictures to my computer, then I'll post some here!

Tschüs!

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