Half way around the world… and back

I’m back in Germany now… my “weekend trip” to Canada went smoothly. I got in Thursday night and spent some time with my parents before passing out at 10:00pm… it was around 6:00am in German time. The next day I was able to get a great workout in, which helped deal with the jetlag. I spent the rest of the day getting ready for the interview and what not. I think the interview went pretty well. Definitely not my absolute best, but I’m happy nonetheless. Spent the rest of my time there hanging out with friends and getting used to the -20 degree weather again. On Sunday, my parents and I met my brother, cousin and aunt in Calgary for awesome lunch then it was time to board the plane back to Frankfurt. After the obligatory few free beverages, I was actually able to sleep on a plane for once. Although I had direct flights both there and back, which was very nice, and enjoyed my time in Canada, I am still quite glad I will not have to get back into a plane or airport for a while.

Whether it’s just the traveling or jetlag, I still have a hazy surreal feeling since getting to Calgary. I don’t think my body has really established a new sleeping pattern since. I’m sure going out several times this week+weekend may not have helped either. Coming back to Marburg, I was able to run to class from the train station with my bags, and make it with little time to spare before I was to give a presentation on “the Third Reich” with a classmate. It all ended up working out.

We’re getting busier at school now as we not only have the entire morning of German language classes, but now have afternoons of either German culture class or German conversation course. My trip to Canada somewhat interfered with my student-visa application, so I had to go deal with that at the city hall the other day... this is where I’m starting to see that the extremely small amount of German I know is definitely better then no German. Looking ahead, my friends and I have been looking towards traveling around Germany, with possibly Hannover this weekend, and Hamburg the next. Later on in April and afterwards, I’m planning on bouncing around Europe quite a bit if my class schedule allows. If it works out the way I hope, I will only have two days of class a week. Suggestions as to where in Europe would be welcome.

I’m already pretty sure I’ll be heading to Holland in April for “A State of Trance 500”. My friend Joe from New Zealand is really into that music and from what I expect, it’ll be a wild time. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get tickets for the event though… if not I plan on just going to Amsterdam with some other friends the same weekend. Other then that, I’m interested in Greece, Poland, Spain and some of Eastern Europe… not really ruling anything out. Also, my younger brother David (aka Dirty D) will probably be coming to visit sometime in April, another thing to look forward to.

After a long weekend and a severe lack of sleep, it’s time to get some rest.

Ciao!

Settling in here in Marburg

School is going great! We usually have around 4-5 hours of German language class in the morning then 1-2 hour break where we eat at the “mensa”(cheap subsidized meals for students) then return for either culture or conversation class for 2 hours. I’ve been using public transit and walking a ton here.
Bad news=Buses don’t run too late at night so you usually end up taking a cab home if you go out at night.

Good news= At studentendorf (student residence) there is a bar called SchwarzWeiss (Blackwhite) which is only a five minute walk from my room. They have the cheapest beer in town (1 euro for a half-liter of beer) and it’s full of students, with quite a few of them being international. This is a awesome place to go out at night.
Marburg is built around a far-sized hill, which has a castle at the top. It’s really cool to look up at it, especially when it’s lit up at night, and you can usually find out where you are using it as a reference point. The city is full of students and those in university related jobs and real easy to walk around. Another thing is, there are blind people everywhere here as they have a school for the blind. I’m amazed every day seeing certain things they are able to do without any sight.

I have a single room with a small bed, desk+chair, closet and a little sink. It’s nothing fancy but good enough for me. I’m definitely not complaining as some other students are living further away where it takes around an hour to get to school, compared to my 10 minutes. I have only met a couple of my room mates, but expect to meet the rest when their “holidays” are over in the start of April. I haven’t found a gym yet but have been just running and doing workouts that require no equipments… I think this will be my routine for the rest of my stay here.

I made somewhat of a last minute decision to go to cologne this weekend, as it was the last weekend of one of the biggest festivals in Europe, call “Carnival”. It is pretty much like Halloween, with everyone dressed up, but everyone is walking the main streets and squares drinking. One very large outdoor party. After walking and partying in the streets and actually walking in the parade for a while, we made our way back to the train station where we thought we’d make a train home.
In our state of intoxication, we thought we would be able to make a train around four in the morning or earlier in the night. We didn’t bother considering the fact that our passes wouldn’t work for the high-speed ICE trains. Without any beds left in town due to Carnival, this left us with the interesting opportunity to fend for ourselves…
After a very long night filled with some very odd events, our stay in the train station was done when our train left around 7:30 in the morning. The train was not a direct route, making a 2.5-3 hour trip into one that didn’t get us home until noon. We made a full circle back to the train station where we stood 24 hours earlier. All of us ready to collapse from a lack of sleep and serous hangovers, we all went back to our rooms after a quick donair, and slipped into self-induced comas.

Recapping the trip, it was an awesome event to be a part of, but we all agreed that this might be the type of experience you want only once. No more, no less.
Other then that, I’ve been settling in still here and spending most of my time either studying or hanging out with friends. Last night I was out at the student bar for my friend, Alex’s, 21st birthday. It was quite a late night and many of us were quite groggy all day.
Tomorrow I’ll be heading back to Canada for a quick little trip. I was offered an interview for the Dentistry program and the UofA and there was no possibility of delaying it to another time or doing it over the phone. I’m looking at it as an investment that hopefully cashes in. If not, the experience of an interview will be very valuable.

Let me know if anyone has any questions!I'm sure I'm forgetting some things as my brain is still half-asleep

Pictures

Germany again! Berlin

Blog 1

Hallo everyone! Looks like I’ll be doing a blog again, seeing as this way I only need to write down what I’ve been up to once for everyone who keeps asking.

Before I left to go to school this semester, I spent a couple weeks at UBC in Vancouver and Carleton University in Ottawa. I had a great time at both places and visiting the universities there made me want to study somewhere else then Edmonton.  Looks like I found the right place, the city in Germany where I am studying, Marburg, is an awesome student city an hour or so north of Frankfurt. I won’t go on too much about the city and school here yet, as I’ll probably write about that in weeks to come. I will talk about the trip we just made to Berlin though.

Before this trip, I always said Berlin was my favorite city in the world I’ve ever been to (I was there last July for about 4 days). This trip did nothing but reinforce that idea in my head. I’ve told people before that no matter what you enjoy doing when you’re traveling or backpacking, I feel like you could stay busy doing that for a month in Berlin. I’m not usually overly interested in history, but the history of this city is so recent that many people that you meet can give first hand memoirs of what they witnessed over their lifetime. The fall of the Berlin-Wall was only a little over twenty years ago and they do an amazing job of telling the story. Seeing remaining parts of the wall, hearing about successful and failed escapes and all the other crazy stories that resulted from having a city walled in for decades. That was my favorite “history” aspect of my stay there, but you also see/learn an absolute ton about the world wars, third reich, Prussian empire and god knows what else. There are a ton of small little interesting things in the city as well. For example, on the drive in, you pass a old run-down grandstand that appears to be set up just to watch traffic go by. That portion of the road actually used to be part of a F1 track which was later shut down and moved further out of the city.

If you felt like partying for a month straight, I’m sure you would have no trouble doing that in Berlin. The first night we went out to a club that was in a huge warehouse by the river. These clubs often don’t open till midnight or later and stay open well into the next morning/day (up to 10am). This club had a typical disca/club on it’s main floor with a bar/dancefloor where we spent most of the night. Later on we found the techno/rave-like party they had going on in the deep basement. The music was pretty much so loud that you forgot you had the ability to hear anymore and pretty much the only lighting there was strobe lights. As my friend said the next day “ My friend with epilepsy would’ve died instantly down there”. Although this place definitely made you feel a little less sober, it was the best part of this club. This place also had a little sit down pub on one of the middle floors if you could find it, as the size of this place mixed with intoxication could make it difficult to find your way around. We ended up leaving at some time early in the next morning all happy with our night.

On one of the next nights, we started our night off at a super interesting wine-tasting bar in which you pay 2 euros to get your wine glass, which you fill yourself with the assorted wines at the bar, then pay what you feel the bar deserves when you leave. These are the types of places I feel I would never find back home in Canada or in the States… I love Berlin.

I’ll write down some of the things we did in Berlin over the next few days in no particular order:

-Toured the city seeing all the must see places= Brandenburg gate, Reichstag, Jewish Memorial, Berlin-Wall sites, museum island, the TV tower, Alexanderplatz and most other sites you have probably heard about in Berlin.

-Grabbed a couple beers and walked through this abandoned building that is now full of squatting artists which put their artwork on display. This place was very cool, all the windows were boarded up, staircases were covered in graffiti and posters and artists working right in front of you. A local German told us about this place.

-Walked around a district called Kreutzberg which is very “flea market-type” part of town.

-Went to the Sunday flea market

-Went over to Potsdam and saw much of the palaces which were remnants of the Prussian empire.

-More going out at night

-Stopped at a former Nazi prison, which was turned into a KGB prison during the cold war. The conditions were incredibly harsh for the KGB prison, which would near or even parallel those of the Nazi concentration camps in some cases.

I must be forgetting some other things, but I still feel like it would take absolutely forever to everything there is to do in Berlin. I don’t think you would ever leave that place thinking you did everything there is to do. It also had an amazing amount of “green-space” for a city that size.

Although this might not be the longest post, I’m quite tired now and am still settling in at my residence and getting things in order. I’ll try to post again soon with whatever I missed and a little more on my new “home” in Marburg., although it may take a while as I don’t have internet set up in my room yet.

On a quick side note, I will probably be making a short trip back to Canada in the next few weeks as I have an interview lined up at UofA for the dentistry program. It throws a big wrench into my plans, but I’m just hoping it turns out for the best. I am sure of one thing though, my sleep pattern will be absolutely destroyed in those few days of crossing 8 hours of time zones and then back as soon as I start to get over the initial jetlag.

I’ll also try to throw some pictures on here later as well.

Tchuss!