This is what I saw when I opened the window this morning. In the night, it snowed about 15 cm.
Now if it only didn't have to be so cold out for it to be like this...
More photos here
Saturday, December 19, 2009
SNOW!!
A lot has happened in the last week: I moved into a new host family, had Thanksgiving, played in three concerts (two on one day), and last but definitely not least, IT SNOWED!
This is what I saw when I opened the window this morning. In the night, it snowed about 15 cm.
Now if it only didn't have to be so cold out for it to be like this...
More photos here
This is what I saw when I opened the window this morning. In the night, it snowed about 15 cm.
Now if it only didn't have to be so cold out for it to be like this...
More photos here
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
St. Nikolaustag & Aachen Weekend
I don't know how this happened; I sat down to write about St. Nikolaustag and the differences between the German christmas season, and ended up writing this. It just all came out.
"Saint Nick" in Germany is not an alias for Santa. St. Nikolaus has his own day here in Germany, and that was last Sunday.
But I want to back up first. Here's how my weekend went: Friday I got up at 8, feeling a bit sick, but needing to get ready for Vedashree's birthday party and the long-awaited Rotex weekend in Aachen. I packed all my stuff in a big backpacking backpack, which was good, because I had to run to the bus stop. The Pfeists, (where I am going to be living from next Saturday on, btw.) have laid out a big breakfast, from which I eat sparingly, because I am really beginning to feel that kind of everything-hurts sick and tired that forebodes a nasty cold, or even the (dun dun dunnnnnn) Schweine Grippe. But I grit my teeth, because I have resolved not to miss the chance to see all the other awesome exchange students, come hell or high temperatures. German friends of Vedashree's show up, including some I don't know- it's good we all have some different friends.
The party starts at 11, and by twelve it is in full swing, but so is my immune system. I mostly sit on the couch and take pictures. Vedashree gets a package from her family that was amazingly coordinated to come on her birthday, and everyone does some kind of embarrassing stunt. Good fun. After the germans leave, Vedashree and Signe (who had stayed the night at the Pfeists) dissapear upstairs to pack for Aachen, and I disappear downstairs to sleep; I'm not going to get much the rest of the weekend, and my body is demanding it.
Some time later, we load everything into Marcos' hostmother's car, and hit the road to Aachen. I try to nap, but no dice- Vedashree keeps getting birthday calls from India, and talking loudly to my left in Hindi or something similar, punctuated by english words and german place names. I try to read my parallel-text book, but the short stories turn out to be flat, with no recognizable plot or end, no action, no catharsis. My objective for the weekend has become to tough it out as long as possible, show willing and smile a Rotary smile for as long as I can stand.
As we approach Aachen, I am called from the reserve as a navigator. This is something I like to do, plot a course over strange roads using directions and logic. We find the Bahnhof with barely a hitch, and meet with a crowd of others. I get a water, and start to feel a little better. It's good to see all these great people again. We joke abut me having the "Schweine Grippe", and get our family assignments for tonight. Same deal as last time- first night with Rotary families in groups of three or four, second in a gym all together.
My host mother for the night picks us up. She is incredibly nice, and serves us a wonderful dinner of chicken, which I eat without a hint of reluctance. The father and daughter show up after we have eaten from their field hockey games. The program for the evening is decided: The other three exchange students want to go out on the town with the host parents but I decide to stay home, play a board game with my temporary host sister, and go to bed early.
This turns out to be an excellent decision. I have fun, and the extra sleep is apparently exactly what I needed. Come morning I don't feel sick at all! A nice, if hurried breakfast (there is nothing that annoys Germans more than running late, unless it's being made late by slow-to-wake exchange students) and we head off to the school that will be the base of operations for the rest of the weekend.
First order of business: The Aachener Cathedral's Schatzkammer (treasury, literally, but many old treasuries in Germany are now museums.) Lots of gold, and bones. Charlemagne is all over the place, literally. Here a femur, there a tooth, it seems that the highest honor that could be bestowed on someone on the Middle Ages was to desecrate their grave and scatter their bones about for public display. Our tour guide seems far more enamored with the various relics than we are. The real attraction for them seems to be what comes after.
After the tour we are let loose upon the Aachener Weinachtsmarkt for two hours. I end up with three canadians, an Australian, and a New Zealander, and we spend most of our time standing around talking about Germany in the cold. We are generously allowed to drink one (and only one) Gluhwein (a warm spiced wine that is the German drink of the season), so we drink that, and wander a bit more. I buy some gingerbread cookies, which taste strongly of anise but are good, and worry about my toes falling off. It's a wonderful 5° Celsius out, and I really should have packed thicker socks.
Somehow, in all this, we miss going into the actual Aachener Dom. It's smaller than a lot, (The Kölner Dom, for instance, is absolutely towering. Germans build cathedrals pretty simply, but imposingly massive.) but supposedly amazing inside. I'll have to go back for that. But we are all counted, and put on a bus (Rotex transportation procedure here is to use public buses with a group ticket- efficient, but I pity the others taking their daily commute when thirty loud exchange students get on the bus occupy every available space, talking raucously in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and even German.) going out on the outskirts of Aachen to an ice skating rink.
There are already plenty of people on the ice, mostly beginners and kids with parents, so things are slow. But I have barely skated before, so I like it that way. I had worked out beforehand how skating should work using my memories of roller skates, but am unprepared for the roughness of the heavily-skated ice and the fact that ice skates have no brakes. Nonetheless, I give it the 'ol college try, and manage to get effectively mobile, only falling four times. Some people are amazing, though. Reeta, the girl from Finland, for instance, literally skates circles around me. And then skates backwards in front of me. "Canada" (there are three Canadians, but only the guy from Quebec gets called that, go figure…) skates interestingly, accelerating quickly and breaking by scraping one skate perpendicularly behind him. Is this some hockey style?
Our time at the ice rink is lengthened on account of Zamboni (here's a riddle: if a watched pot never boils, does watching an ice rink make it freeze over quicker?) but eventually the fun comes to an end, and we head, exhausted, back to the Gym for abendessen and the traditional dancing and generally avoiding sleep. I hurt in places I didn't know there were muscles, so my dancing is short-lived, and I find in a corner pretty much the same group from the Weinachtsmarkt. We talk about everything: Canada, Germany, exchange students, life in Germany, the sadly impending departure of the group from the southern hemisphere, etcetera. I never seem to run out of interesting topics around other exchange students: we all share so many experiences, like being exchange students and outsiders to the German culture, that we could talk about it for days. Eventually, though, Kaya and Reeta end up getting up and starting an insane game of basketball with a football. This looks like fun, and so I join. When an American plays basket-football against a Canadian and a Finn, who wins? Everybody, that's who.
Eventually we get tired, go outside, find a mouse, and return to the talking circle. We talk some more, and it's suddenly three in the morning and everyone else has basically stopped, and our voices previously loud in order to talk over the music have become the loudest things around. This is about where I drop off to sleep, in the traditional sleepover method: waiting for someone else to show signs of going to sleep first, so you aren't the only target for whatever might seem fun after 3 in the morning.
Sunday morning is just cleaning up. We wake comfortably at nine to "Michelle" by the Beatles. (Much more comfortable than blared showtunes or metal, 5130 Rotex.) We pack up remarkably efficiently, and hang out until my host father comes to pick those of us from Bad Neuenahr up.
But I wanted, I started to tell you about St Nikolaus. I got home from this amazing weekend, showered and rested a bit, and was informed that it was St Nikolaustag, and the Großeltern were coming for dinner.
Of all the things I am lucky to have here, I am perhaps luckiest to have a wonderful first host family, complete with "Gastgroßeltern". They have been wonderful to me, helping me with my German, taking me to and from Rotary meetings (Grandfather is the Rotary member in the family) and most importantly, making me feel welcome at family gatherings. Even though I am abut to switch host families, I intend to keep visiting them on and off. They came by Sunday with another Jahnen sibling, who lives in Berlin normally, then took her to the airport and came back for a light St. Nikolaus abendessen. But before dinner came gifts from St. Nikolaus.
This is the way St. Nikolaustag works in the Jahnen household. Plates are placed outside the door, then everyone goes back inside and the readings and other festivities happen, then the kids look outside, and suddenly there is candy on the plates! I have no idea how it happens. I was able to see my hostmother and father the whole time. There must be some kind of contract with the neighbors or something.
I was pleasantly surprised by the candy assortment I got. I was expecting milk chocolate, things I don't like to eat, another unappetizing pile of generic sweets like usually happens on Halloween. But I got dark chocolate and some coconut things; candy I really like. And it dawned on me: My host mother (or father) picked those because they knew what I like. I have new family.
"Saint Nick" in Germany is not an alias for Santa. St. Nikolaus has his own day here in Germany, and that was last Sunday.
But I want to back up first. Here's how my weekend went: Friday I got up at 8, feeling a bit sick, but needing to get ready for Vedashree's birthday party and the long-awaited Rotex weekend in Aachen. I packed all my stuff in a big backpacking backpack, which was good, because I had to run to the bus stop. The Pfeists, (where I am going to be living from next Saturday on, btw.) have laid out a big breakfast, from which I eat sparingly, because I am really beginning to feel that kind of everything-hurts sick and tired that forebodes a nasty cold, or even the (dun dun dunnnnnn) Schweine Grippe. But I grit my teeth, because I have resolved not to miss the chance to see all the other awesome exchange students, come hell or high temperatures. German friends of Vedashree's show up, including some I don't know- it's good we all have some different friends.
The party starts at 11, and by twelve it is in full swing, but so is my immune system. I mostly sit on the couch and take pictures. Vedashree gets a package from her family that was amazingly coordinated to come on her birthday, and everyone does some kind of embarrassing stunt. Good fun. After the germans leave, Vedashree and Signe (who had stayed the night at the Pfeists) dissapear upstairs to pack for Aachen, and I disappear downstairs to sleep; I'm not going to get much the rest of the weekend, and my body is demanding it.
Some time later, we load everything into Marcos' hostmother's car, and hit the road to Aachen. I try to nap, but no dice- Vedashree keeps getting birthday calls from India, and talking loudly to my left in Hindi or something similar, punctuated by english words and german place names. I try to read my parallel-text book, but the short stories turn out to be flat, with no recognizable plot or end, no action, no catharsis. My objective for the weekend has become to tough it out as long as possible, show willing and smile a Rotary smile for as long as I can stand.
As we approach Aachen, I am called from the reserve as a navigator. This is something I like to do, plot a course over strange roads using directions and logic. We find the Bahnhof with barely a hitch, and meet with a crowd of others. I get a water, and start to feel a little better. It's good to see all these great people again. We joke abut me having the "Schweine Grippe", and get our family assignments for tonight. Same deal as last time- first night with Rotary families in groups of three or four, second in a gym all together.
My host mother for the night picks us up. She is incredibly nice, and serves us a wonderful dinner of chicken, which I eat without a hint of reluctance. The father and daughter show up after we have eaten from their field hockey games. The program for the evening is decided: The other three exchange students want to go out on the town with the host parents but I decide to stay home, play a board game with my temporary host sister, and go to bed early.
This turns out to be an excellent decision. I have fun, and the extra sleep is apparently exactly what I needed. Come morning I don't feel sick at all! A nice, if hurried breakfast (there is nothing that annoys Germans more than running late, unless it's being made late by slow-to-wake exchange students) and we head off to the school that will be the base of operations for the rest of the weekend.
First order of business: The Aachener Cathedral's Schatzkammer (treasury, literally, but many old treasuries in Germany are now museums.) Lots of gold, and bones. Charlemagne is all over the place, literally. Here a femur, there a tooth, it seems that the highest honor that could be bestowed on someone on the Middle Ages was to desecrate their grave and scatter their bones about for public display. Our tour guide seems far more enamored with the various relics than we are. The real attraction for them seems to be what comes after.
After the tour we are let loose upon the Aachener Weinachtsmarkt for two hours. I end up with three canadians, an Australian, and a New Zealander, and we spend most of our time standing around talking about Germany in the cold. We are generously allowed to drink one (and only one) Gluhwein (a warm spiced wine that is the German drink of the season), so we drink that, and wander a bit more. I buy some gingerbread cookies, which taste strongly of anise but are good, and worry about my toes falling off. It's a wonderful 5° Celsius out, and I really should have packed thicker socks.
Somehow, in all this, we miss going into the actual Aachener Dom. It's smaller than a lot, (The Kölner Dom, for instance, is absolutely towering. Germans build cathedrals pretty simply, but imposingly massive.) but supposedly amazing inside. I'll have to go back for that. But we are all counted, and put on a bus (Rotex transportation procedure here is to use public buses with a group ticket- efficient, but I pity the others taking their daily commute when thirty loud exchange students get on the bus occupy every available space, talking raucously in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and even German.) going out on the outskirts of Aachen to an ice skating rink.
There are already plenty of people on the ice, mostly beginners and kids with parents, so things are slow. But I have barely skated before, so I like it that way. I had worked out beforehand how skating should work using my memories of roller skates, but am unprepared for the roughness of the heavily-skated ice and the fact that ice skates have no brakes. Nonetheless, I give it the 'ol college try, and manage to get effectively mobile, only falling four times. Some people are amazing, though. Reeta, the girl from Finland, for instance, literally skates circles around me. And then skates backwards in front of me. "Canada" (there are three Canadians, but only the guy from Quebec gets called that, go figure…) skates interestingly, accelerating quickly and breaking by scraping one skate perpendicularly behind him. Is this some hockey style?
Our time at the ice rink is lengthened on account of Zamboni (here's a riddle: if a watched pot never boils, does watching an ice rink make it freeze over quicker?) but eventually the fun comes to an end, and we head, exhausted, back to the Gym for abendessen and the traditional dancing and generally avoiding sleep. I hurt in places I didn't know there were muscles, so my dancing is short-lived, and I find in a corner pretty much the same group from the Weinachtsmarkt. We talk about everything: Canada, Germany, exchange students, life in Germany, the sadly impending departure of the group from the southern hemisphere, etcetera. I never seem to run out of interesting topics around other exchange students: we all share so many experiences, like being exchange students and outsiders to the German culture, that we could talk about it for days. Eventually, though, Kaya and Reeta end up getting up and starting an insane game of basketball with a football. This looks like fun, and so I join. When an American plays basket-football against a Canadian and a Finn, who wins? Everybody, that's who.
Eventually we get tired, go outside, find a mouse, and return to the talking circle. We talk some more, and it's suddenly three in the morning and everyone else has basically stopped, and our voices previously loud in order to talk over the music have become the loudest things around. This is about where I drop off to sleep, in the traditional sleepover method: waiting for someone else to show signs of going to sleep first, so you aren't the only target for whatever might seem fun after 3 in the morning.
Sunday morning is just cleaning up. We wake comfortably at nine to "Michelle" by the Beatles. (Much more comfortable than blared showtunes or metal, 5130 Rotex.) We pack up remarkably efficiently, and hang out until my host father comes to pick those of us from Bad Neuenahr up.
But I wanted, I started to tell you about St Nikolaus. I got home from this amazing weekend, showered and rested a bit, and was informed that it was St Nikolaustag, and the Großeltern were coming for dinner.
Of all the things I am lucky to have here, I am perhaps luckiest to have a wonderful first host family, complete with "Gastgroßeltern". They have been wonderful to me, helping me with my German, taking me to and from Rotary meetings (Grandfather is the Rotary member in the family) and most importantly, making me feel welcome at family gatherings. Even though I am abut to switch host families, I intend to keep visiting them on and off. They came by Sunday with another Jahnen sibling, who lives in Berlin normally, then took her to the airport and came back for a light St. Nikolaus abendessen. But before dinner came gifts from St. Nikolaus.
This is the way St. Nikolaustag works in the Jahnen household. Plates are placed outside the door, then everyone goes back inside and the readings and other festivities happen, then the kids look outside, and suddenly there is candy on the plates! I have no idea how it happens. I was able to see my hostmother and father the whole time. There must be some kind of contract with the neighbors or something.
I was pleasantly surprised by the candy assortment I got. I was expecting milk chocolate, things I don't like to eat, another unappetizing pile of generic sweets like usually happens on Halloween. But I got dark chocolate and some coconut things; candy I really like. And it dawned on me: My host mother (or father) picked those because they knew what I like. I have new family.
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