Great Weekend

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Yep, another good weekend in Trier. Fri. afternoon I went shopping in town with Katrin. We both had to find b-day gifts for our sisters. Later Matt, Jaime and I met at the train station to pick up Graham. We then hung out in the city for a while and ate dinner at Astrix... they have very good pizza and it's pretty cheap (really student friendly). I tried an apple wine for the first time (Veize)... never again... yuck. At least I can say I tried it though. In the restaurant there was a poster that I really really wanted to take a picture of, but there were too many people sitting in front of it. In large captions it said 'US World Domination Tour' then under it is a picture of the world colored in stars and stripes. Underneath the picture it says, "Bombing a country near you" and then has a list of countries and dates the first one being China, the last being Iraq. Under the list it says, "To be continued..." It of course is repremanding the US. Here's a link I found of the same thing on a t-shirt. Unfortunately it's not very bit, but if you wanna take a look, here it is: U.S. World Domination T-Shirt

Anyway, after dinner we came back up to campus and met up with Nils (one of Grahams German friends) and Dennis (his friend from Italy). Both of them live in Tarforst. We spent the night drinking wine and watching 'The Royal Tannenbaums'. It was an interesting movie. Sat. I went to Eltz Burg and Bernkastel-Kues with my group (and others). lt was a pretty fun trip and luckily we didn't get rained on. It only rained while we were in the bus =). It was such a gorgeous area where Eltz Burg was built. Unlike other Burgs (castles) it was built in a valley instead on top of a hill or mountain. A river flowed right next to it and there was absolutely nothing else except forest surrounding it. Was gorgeous. It's privately owned and still partly inhabited so we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. It was really neat to see tapestries, paintings, furniture and so forth from anywhere between the 12th Century and the 19th century. The original family still owns the Burg (in fact the owner is now the in the 33rd generation of the family).

We didn't have a lot of time in Bernkastel-Kues, but it was still neat to spend time in the town. It's such a beautiful town right along the Mosel. I just can't get over all the old houses. Most were build in the 14-1500s. Sat. night was the Erasmusparty here on campus (party for the international students). Was a lot of fun. Before we went to the party Dennis cooked spaghetti for all of us. Of course there was no store bought sauce, Dennis made the sauce.... mmmm...was very good. We also sat around drinking wine for a while before heading off to the party. It was a great night =)

Sun. of course we were all dead from being up so late and just kicked back. Matt, Jaime, Graham and I went into town for a while and just walked around. We stopped at 'Lousiana' for lunch. We had talked earlier in the weekend about how bad service is in Germany. It was very obvious at the restaurant. When we got there we had to wait a while before our waitress came over to get our drink orders. Another waitress then brought us our drinks and immediately walked away. We of course wanted to order. After that I think all the waiters and waitresses dissapeared. We probably sat there trying to get someone's attention for a good 20 min. before our waitress finally noticed us and came over to get our order. Not once while we were eating did she stop by to see if everything was good or if we needed anything. Then when we were done it took quite a while to get her attention again to let her know we wanted to pay. We've decided that the idea of customer serfvice just doesn't exist like it does in the US. In the States service is very much focused on the customer and its pretty much expected that whoever is helping the customer will almost bend over backwards to make the customer happy. Here, however, it seems like whoever is serving the customer has an attitude like the customer should be very very thankful that they are doing anything for them and that the customer really isn't important at all. (This observation is not based solely upon what happened in 'Louisiana' but is just one example). Good customer service just doesn't really exist in Germany (and I think it's getting worse). Just an intersting observation.

That was pretty much my weekend. Graham left today and now it's back to everything else. Gotta study a lot this week to get ready for the exam in a week. Thur. I'll be heading up to Stockum for Oma's b-day... really looking forward to that. =) I've also gotta pick out my classes this week. I'm now thinking about taking 5 or 6 classes, not sure yet though. That's kind of a lot (especially since they're all in German), but I think they'll all be intersting classes. (I've also decided to minor in poli sci since I'll be taking for at least 3 political science classes here). We'll see.. got more thinking to do about that. Even if I take all of em, I'll still only have classes Mon. - Wed. and only one is on Tue. Not too bad. Anyways, I'm gonna get going. Hope you're all doing well. I posted new pics, so feel free to check them out. Miss you all! Ciao!!

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Photos

Saying on a building in Bernkastel-Kues
The heavenly Father did not want good wine to go to waste. That's why he not only gave us vines, but also the necessary thirst.