Parents Weekend...for grown ups

There is a lot about the German school system that I simply don’t understand, but there is one thing that I don’t question: their abundant vacation time. Instead of having a measly 4 days off every 6 weeks (which is how we so “generously” rolled at Washington and Lee) they get 2 whole weeks off every 6 weeks. Complaints? Anyone? Bueller?

This wonderful 2 week respite came just in the knick of time to rescue any hint of sanity I had left. I’ve mentioned far too many times that life was a bit hectic while trying to get settled into my new country/apartment, but when I finally accomplished this I rewarded myself with a trip to Tübigen to visit my aforementioned dear friend Kaci Mcallister.

My view of Flensburg thus far was mostly that of a grey, smelly, windowless waiting room in city hall, and/ or the faces of my vocational school students.

(funny side story actually: two ridiculously dressed punks in metal studded leather jackets and dyed hair were walking down the street yesterday and my dad sarcastically commented are those some of your students? Haha. I laughed before taking a closer look and realizing that the boy with the purple, green and pink hair and Dennis Rodman type piercings sits in the front row of one my upper level English classes. His name is Lars.)

Anyway, you can imagine that after that somewhat tainted view of my actually very charming and wonderful town, Tübigen seemed like a Fairytale. Literally, it kind of is as the setting for Grimms Brothers fairytales (the Black Forest) is right around the corner. The buildings are precisely what you would imagine: colorful and perfectly aged with cozy corners and coffee shops and markets on the cobble stone streets… Moreover, with a university dating back to 1477 and over 22,000 students, there are PLENTY of good looking, intellectual people to enjoy. I was in German heaven, and things only got better from there.

Yes, Tübigen was great and the university was quite fun as well (see Kaci’s blog post about some of our hysterical experiences) but being with an old choir friend was the best gift of all. I like to call it nerd paradise and it includes this: Speaking some German, discussing life and journaling, singing old choir/acapella songs while watching glee and cooking and baking all day long before having friends over for dinner to enjoy what we had made. Does that not sounds like the best day ever? I got to have 4 of them. 

It was a sad sad day when I had to go back to Flensburg, but Kaci had old German letters to translate (her Fulbright project) and Chinese homework to do (because she’s an over achiever) and I was off to prepare for my parents arrival! Yay!

The actual arrival of my parents, though a jubilant occasion, was a bit rocky. On my end, the day started with an awkward encounter with a boy who is so sweet but clearly hasn’t heard me screaming “I just want to be friends”. Ugh. I feigned a phone call to shorten our “coincidental” visit at the train station and get on my 9 minute train that crosses the border from Flensburg to Denmark. I must have been more overwhelmed than I thought because somewhere in this 9 minute train ride I lost my situation-saving phone. Probably karma for peacing out early from that boy.

Fortunately, after calling my phone several times with the cell phone of a slightly sketchy guy (but the only other passenger on the train) I got a hold of a nice lady who picked up my phone and was supposed to bring the phone to the lost and found the following monday (it never came by the way)…  But this moment of relief was short lived as the train ticket-checker guy gave me a super creepy “come here I have something grave and important to tell you” look. I followed him to another train car where he asked me “do you know that guy? Because he now knows your phone number and can track you down”… uh, gee thanks. Now I’m scared and I have to try and get his phone again to try and erase my number…

Rather than just simply asking to borrow his phone again, fake a call and actually just erase my number, I sat there paranoid, avoiding eye contact, and pondering all the sneaky ways I could get him to get up and leave his phone and I would erase my number.

The train stopped before I thought of anything cool. I booked it to the next train to avoid any potential contact with now even creepier man. Good thing I did because I managed to get the only free seat on the 3 hour train. I “sat” on a folding seat with a seat back so straight I was leaning forward with my knees somehow in the way of the door and my head resting on rattling window. Like I said: Rough.

This, however, was nothing compared to my parents rough arrival. After a slight delay in their flight (typical) they arrived in Copenhagen and waited patiently for the diligently packed carry on bags they had lugged through several airports and connections before being forced by a snooty flight attendant lady to gate check them on their last short leg of their journey. Naturally in this super short flight, the bags were lost.

I was supposed to meet my parents in the Copenhagen Marriot circa 1:45. Around 3 I spot my dad in an all black track suit and white tennis shoes and my mother dressed a bit more stylishly, but still monochromatically, in all brown with nothing but a purse in hand in the lobby.

After heart felt and excited greetings I accompanied my monochromatic, jetlaggd, empty handed, parents to our room, which was BeAuTiFuL. I could have simply stayed in the hotel for 3 days and been a happy happy camper. Our window overlooked a river (channel? Fjorde?) and a picturesque Danish skyline that was a perfect combination of history, character and grandeur.

You can see most of the pictures from our trip to Copenhagen (and the comparison on my ikea bed to the beds at the marriot) in the album that I’ve posted with this blog. Unfortunately none of the pictures do our experience justice and it mostly looks like we stayed in the same posed positions while someone changed a green screen behind us to different Copenhagen sites. I promise we changed our clothes…and had a lot of fun.

After eating our way through Copenhagen and the Tivoli we jumped on a train to head to Flensburg a day early. As the train got closer and closer to my german place of residence the knot in my stomach began to tighten. I have to admit, before my parents visited I knew very little about my “home town”. Really, I’ve been living in a town outside the city (Glûcksburg) for most of my time and had done a lot of traveling seeing as I had no real house, apartment or reason to stay.

Fortunately this means that things could only get better as we all discovered what Flensburg had to offer together.

It was also be difficult for things not to get better from the first night on because our arrival in Flensburg (like the arrival in Copenhagen) was a bit…rough. We arrived in Flensburg around 7:45 at night in the pitch black pouring rain. I had strategically picked a hotel close to the train station and my apt for my parents so they COULD walk if they wanted to, but this was NOT the night for that. The cab driver disagreed. Befuddled that we would need a taxi to go 5 minutes down hill (excuse me lady are you blind to the massive raindrops plopping on our face right now?) she told us to walk. So we did. We also walked to the restruant that night because it was “sooo close”. I could have wrung my jeans out after our walk. You can imagine how well this went over with my mother…

As this post is getting extremely long, and there is still much to tell I am going to review my parents visit in my favorite style: a list.

Thursday October 21, 2010

·        Arrival

o      Pouring rain, I almost forgot my backpack on the train.. yuck, but at least the hotel was nice and had a GREAT rain shower. Big plus.

o      Grab my roommate Wiebke at my apartment and walk to Hansens Brauerei, not to be confused for piet hennigsens (which I did confuse) which is a wonderful restaurant we went to later in the week. Hansens brewery was typical german.. I had meat and potatoes and cabbage and my mom had goulash soup and beer. This didn’t sit well with my allergy to germany (see earlier post? Or was this one of my hypothetical posts where I wrote a million things and never published…)

Friday October 22, 2010

·        Productivity

o      Took the bus to the German equivalent of Lowes and Furniture Warehouse to buy random things for my apartment including: Rugs, hanging racks, a shower holder (because all we have is the silly European hand held thing where you get your hair wet, put the hand held thing down…freeze while you lather your hair and then stand holding the water until your arm gets tired and the hot water runs out) and a washing machine.

§       My dad then spent the rest of the day building hanging racks, attempting to screw things into the wall and being generally handy while my mom and I cooked enough rice for me to eat for the next 2 weeks.

o      Dinner at Bellevue Restaurant on the harbor

§       The atmosphere was quiet but full of character. The ceilings and walls were decorated with lobster and fishing nets and other harbor like items. We could have been in any harbor town. I was proud to be in mine.

Saturday October 23, 2010

·        Tour of the city

o      This was definitely the coolest part of the trip (I think). A nice old teacher at my school has decided to take me under his wing so to speak. Last week he gave me my first cooking lesson and a 5 hour tour around Flensburg. I knew my mom would not be happy with a 5 hour tour but my dad would not be happy without one in general, so I talked to Wolfgang and we settled on a 1 hour tour around the inner city. Because it was so cool we ended up making it a 2 hour ish tour ending in tea (with rum) at his house. Some of the cooler points we saw were:

§       St. Nikoli church:

·      Built in 1358 this church tour was complete with an organ player practicing on the MASSIVE organ as we walked through the echoing chapel and THE poor little church mouse plated in silver and climbing up a pipe outside the church.

§       Johansens Rum Distillery:

·      Because of world renowned water in Flensburg (apparently it’s great) traders from denmark would stop in Flensburg on their way back from their Caribbean colonies and distill their rum here. There used to be hundreds of distilleries, but Johansens is the only original left. Lucky for us they were having a party this Saturday and let us drink some of their warm cider and punsch. My parents both tried a shot of rum on the house and I think my mom enjoyed the rest of the tour a little bit more after that.

·        Dinner at Piet Henigsens:

o      If you ever come to Flensburg: GO TO THIS RESTRAUNT. This is the famous “typical Flensburg restaurant” I tried to find on the first night but I’m glad we found it on Saturday. We ordered a feast of lobster, steak, fresh mussels, fresh fish and dessert for everyone. It was an incredible eat drink and be merry celebration of life.

 Sunday October 24, 2010

·        Glücksburg visit and the Lemkes

o      My german family and my American family finally met over a feast of Racklette—a typical Swiss meal similar to fondue but with a grill instead of pots of broth—and it was wonderful. We got to Glücksburg around 4:30 after taking a tour boat from the harbor of Flensbug and stayed there eating, drinking, talking, laughing until 10:30 at night. Pretty good considering the slight language gap (the wine certainly helped).

If you’re still reading right now—good God, you have a wonderful attention span. The promised photo album that accompanies this entry will come as soon as I get internet back in my apartment. For the time being I am phone-less and internet-less and have to go to school to post this.

As always, it was great catching up and I’ll keep you all posted on whatever nonsense happens on this side of the pond.

Love,

Mere

My New Apartment

The clever Swedes

These last few days have been a building adventure. I have been a diligent photographer of the progress and not such a diligent builder... but it's coming along.

A quick update to whet your appetite, then a longer one once I finish building my desk and can then sit and properly write (for the first time since I've been here!) and post an album of everything that is Glücksburger Straße...

First: A bit of panic in my life... in order to HAVE this apartment i need to pay my security deposit, and in order to pay my deposit I need to have a functioning bank account. I have 3 days until this account closes due to the fact that I haven't presented Visa papers, which I cannot get until I register with the state with my new permanent address... do you see the vicious cycle of this bureaucracy?

I am anxiously waiting for my official contract to come in the mail so I can go to city hall for the 6th time and finally get everything sorted out. Phew.

Secondly: IKEA FURNITURE. Wow... those swedes are clever. So clever am I not in terms of putting it all together, but all of this furniture that I had to buy is multifuncitonal, practical, and easy to pack into a car. Building it has been..fun? but I've never felt so accomplished as when I laid down in my own bed that I built with my own two hands. Wow. You can only buy that kind of feeling, at a very nice discount, at IKEA. Thank you swedes for inventing this wonder store.

That's it for now unfortunately. Lots more to comment on, and a lot more coming up, but I think I'll be a much better updater once I get my desk built. Slowly but surely...

Love,
Meredith

I HAVE AN APT!!

The update I promised for Wednesday was a bit tainted due to the fact that I STILL didn't have a place to live. Which is just, well, mind boggling and I couldn't help that everything I thought about had something to do with apartments or being homeless.

Well friends, I am giddy to report that after a month of being here in Germany I FINALLY have a place to stay. Glücksburger Straße 52 to be exact. For the observant, you might notice that I have been living extremely far away suburb of Flensburg called Glücksburg for the last month (making it hard to travel, make friends, have a life etc) and now I'm on Glücksburger street.

Don't fret, it is just the name of the street--a very nice street with families and schools and things--in Flensburg! It is actually pretty perfect as a location. It is about 15 miniutes walking distance from everything I'd need to get to (school, university, downtown) and is nice and quiet and clean. I also think its quite appropriate that I move from Glücksburg to Glücksburger Straße...it must be meant to be.

Oh and I mentioned University... Yes, I am a student at the University of Flensburg as of Tuesday! Yay! It cost me a whopping 50 euro. I think if I lived here I would be a student forever.

I have to run now though; now that I have an apartment the bureaucratic rat race begins. Paperwork awaits...but so does my room. hee hee.

More updates later.

Love,
Mere