38 posts tagged “germany”
i went up to meet madeleine in stutgart today. i can't believe time flew by so quickly! we walked around looking for a place to eat not really knowing what was good (we normally just go to hang out at starbucks and walk around). we came across this cafe+bar+restaurant deal on kronprinzstraße and i had some noodles in a mushroom cream sauce + chicken strips. mmmm. it was quite yummy, although perhaps slightly overpriced when you consider that with a 0,4L coke it came out to be €12 including tip. naja.
and then it came time for starbucks. mmm. the line was so long--i'm glad they opened up two more there, although this one (being in a more central location at the mall at the schlossplatz) seems to be sucking up people from the older location further down the street. in any case, it's nicer because it has an upstairs where you can lounge around.
by the end of it, i was surprised 4 hours had passed so quickly! *sigh* i'm going to miss hanging out with all my friends once i move back to the states!
the thing i was even more surprised at, however, was the number of people out walking around today! i mean, it's a SUNDAY and no stores are open! but i guess that's germany for you. give someone an excuse to walk (such as clear skies and the knock-knock-knock of spring at the door) and you get crowds. CROWDS. i mean, even the buskers were out in full force today! i think we have even more of those creepy living statue doohickeys now. *shudder*
you'd think it's summer! (cf. this photo, taken in october of 2005.)
wow. i'm just finishing this movie [official website] up. i just can't believe things were actually like that. i mean, i've heard stories from G (romania) and from A (poland) and others and i've been to the terror museum in budapest, but wow. i really had no idea it was that bad.
it's about the life of an east berlin playwright in the mid-eighties and how the state security (stasi) spied on him, but on a larger level it's about the entire spying thing in general and the corrupt/unethical/inhuman nature of the whole system. (and on an even larger level about humanity and blah blah all that jazz.)
i think the scary thing is that this actually took place in my lifetime, not far from where i live--although i feel so far removed from it. it made a very strong impression on me. and scares me about humanity. (sounds dramatic, but it's true.)
(the following is the only english copy of the trailer i could find on youtube, so forgive the "created with..." bit)
a cool thing, though, is that i was at some of the shooting locations during my trip to berlin (without even knowing it, natch)...i thought i spied the rosa luxemburg theater (the hostel was just across the street from it) and at the end of the movie, i was where wiesler is dropping off his leaflets on karl-marx-allee. they cleaned up the street art, i think, but it'd definitely the same place. you can tell when the taxi is pulling away.
ahhhhh the movie just ended! "nein, es ist für mich." *welling up*
i'm writing this on the train coming home from a friend's place where i had to go this weekend to finish up work on a project. the thing is, i don't know whether it's the fact that i slept 11 hours last night (the room was so dark i was wondering why i was so awake at what i thought was 7 in the morning...until i looked at my cell phone), or whether it's because i just came back from a truly magnificent time in the unspoilt nature of "up north". maybe it's both.
but traveling through the boonies of baden-württemberg is really striking me as beautiful. my friend and her boyfriend live about an hour northeast of stuttgart by train, and in order to get there (and well, in this case, to get back), you have to take the train through some really gorgeous landscapes. i have a feeling the whole area around here is like that. vibrant green pastures covering gently rolling countryside, spilling onto hillocks against where white or yellow houses with red roofs have been built. not a skyscraper in sight, no building looking oddly modern or otherwise out of place.
i really have this thing where i love it when you can feel nature, and i think that was intensified by the trip last week. growing up we lived by a canyon (ravine, maybe?) and you could often hear the wind howling throughout the night. thunderstorms are also great, especially when the rain pat-a-tat-tats on the windowpanes and the shutters are rattled by the wind, only to be punctuated with a bone-vibrating thunderclap. and well, we had all of that this weekend. utterly magnificent!
and now, the skies are the most vibrant blue with big fluffy white clouds and the sun is lighting up the greenery and it's ack--a perfect spring day! (even though it's not technically spring yet, i know...)
i wonder if the people who live in these parts know how lucky they are to have such a beautiful environment.
i think the thing that's really hitting me is that it really hits home how much we have to lose due to climate change and other damaging effects of modern society. :( *sigh* i think back at home (i.e., in california) you're never exposed to the true beauty of nature (perhaps only rarely, but never enough) so you never think about it and so you just go on with your bad habits. out of sight, out of mind, you know? realistically speaking, that's probably how i'm going to be when i get back, but alas, i hope not!
i juts can't believe how green it is! the following pictures from my shite cameraphone don't do it justice.
[via boingboing, although this video is on youtube, not myspace, as in the original]
ack! haha the strangest thing is that adolf doesn't even speak actual german (just uhh, teutonic syllables?), and the "real" german spoken in the rest of the movie is pretty much left untranslated (although summarized by the narrator). that leads me to think that one of the subconscious goals of the movie is to lead viewers to anti-german sentiments based on the sound of the language. otherwise, they could have spoken in, say, heavily-accented english (you don't want them to sound TOO much like us, right?). hrmph. perhaps at first german sounds harsh and terrible, but i guess now that i've been around it for a while, it sounds a-ok to me!
we just had a party for the linguistics department (general + computational). it was supposed to be a goth-ish party so i just wore some black. anyways, chris came in shorts and a loose, unbuttoned shirt with a dog collar and leash, towed in by a vampire-ish friend. nice. hahahahaha he just reinforces the whole canadian thing, imho. :P
and of course somehow we ended up standing next to each other and he wanted to have a picture with me (well, and with everyone else). and such is chris. hahahaha
(i'm sure he doesn't mind me posting this :) )
oh! and laura (*raising hand*) had this great idea for a "cy cake". get it? CYK - CY CAKE? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH LOL omg it took me a long time to get the joke but once i did it was hilarious. (probably because i never took parsing)
(fyi it's a parse tree, but you can't see the "russisch brot" very well on top of the cake pieces)
my parents are coming next month, right, and so they offered to take a bag of stuff home for me. i didn't have an extra bag to use, but a friend told me that i should get one of these bags that are variously called "smugglers' bags" or "immigrant bags" or "refugee bags". they're so cheap!!!! and so versatile! i mean, it took a while to find, but it turned out they were available at this tiny five-and-dime in town. only €1,50! and it's really quite large!
i have to admit it's a bit embarrassing to use but for $2 you really can't beat that! i hope my parents don't get hassled by the customs agents on the way home!
just two pictures i accumulated over the past couple of days.
1) from the cafeteria. yikes!!! hello, potato overload!
2) "only frat boys don't boycott" (the €500 tuition fee increase), outside the cafeteria
yup. a last-minute trip at the end of march/beginning of april. you won't believe how excited mom is. she was giggling like a little schoolgirl, barely able to contain herself! thanks to united's $540 round-trip cheap-ass airfare they're on their way and i'm doing the planning for their relatively-short week here.
don't get me wrong. i love planning travel and i'm excited to see my parents. but they want to see the romantic road, which according to wikipedia is nothing more than a marketing gimmick (you KNOW it's bad when there are signs in japanese! [nothing against japanese tourists, natch]).
and i have nothing against marketing gimmicks since they HAVE to be based on something, right? the problem is that it's based on "cute german-ness" and "typically german small towns" and sh!t like that. frankly, i'm a bit sick of small german towns, since i'm uhh, pretty much stuck in one. ;)
naja, it'll be fun. chin up! :)
well, it's official. i've booked my flight home. it's not for another 5 months or so, but still. i can feel it coming! although it doesn't feel as final as i thought it would feel. i suppose that will change when it gets closer to the date.
ugh. it cost €663 ($847ish!!!!) one-way! ACK!
aww! s gave me this kee-yute plant today! i'm excited to finally have a potted plant in my dorm room, even though my time here is like 3/4 up...hahaha
better late than never!
