Lauschaer Kugelmarkt

On Saturday, Ingrid and Matthias Weiß (a teacher at our school and her husband)took us to a small town called Lauscha for the Lauschaer Kugelmarkt. Lauscha is famous because they make those amazing handblown Christmas balls - the kind you can buy cheap knock-offs of in Wal-mart for fifty cents but really cost 20 Euro each. It was amazing. Every household in the entire village makes their own decorations. They spend all year making them, and then they have only the month of December to sell them at their own market or at one of the many markets around Germany. Obviously, they also ship them around the world.

There was also a glass-blowing factory where you could watch them making the glass balls - and if you felt like spending the money, make your own Christmas balls. We weren't into that - also we had to leave quite quickly because Dave was going to be late getting back to Ilmenau to do his private tutoring with the students for the TU.

Dave also bought this disgusting giant slab of bacon. It comes on a string so you can just hang it up on the wall. It's nasty - although it smells quite good when it is cooking. He says its ridiculously salty so he has to soak it in water for at least fifteen minutes before he cooks it. He has this little jar he's been keeping the bacon grease in (since we can't throw it down the sink) and it is nasty. I am fairly certain our roommates are quite disgusted by this unidentifiable jar of nastiness that is now sitting on our countertop by the stove.

Winter Concert

Last Friday was my school's Christmas concert, in which all of the choirs at our school perform. The concert was really good. At the end, during all the bowing, the conductor was having all of the instrumentalists come out of the choir and bow separately - and then he pointed at me and Dave and had us come out and bow. Apparently, the school wants to show off their two Americans - although it is fairly true that without us the Lehrerchor (teacher's choir) would have not been nearly as good. Our friend Rich took some pictures - but most of them came out terribly since he was all the way in the back of the church and the lighting was quite terrible. He did make a nice recording of one of the songs though - although the video quality is terrible. The recording can be found at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjpsjj_Ro_M
Here is a link to the newspaper article and picture in the Freies Wort, the local independent newspaper: http://www.freies-wort.de/nachrichten/regional/ilmenau/ilmenaulokal/art2447,745367

We have another concert this weekend with just the Kammerchor (chamber choir) in Manebach. Hopefully we will get some better pictures this time.

Sweetness!

A good week in Ilmenau:

Monday: no school! apparently there are "variable" holidays in Thuringia. The schools can just randomly decide to have a holiday, so my school took Monday off. I had a fight with my roommate, went swimming, went to Russian and then got a cut and color at the local place. I almost thought it was going to be a disaster at first, but it turned out really well.

Tuesday: I taught five FULL lessons in a row. Usually I only teach fifteen to twenty minutes of a lesson - but I taught all five lessons all the way through. It was exhausting. In three of the classes, I was teaching about Thanksgiving. The funniest part is the copious amounts of notes being taken by the teachers in the back of the classroom so that they have something to teach their students the next year. After that, we had teacher choir (where the choir teacher FREAKED out as usual since Dave was not there - especially since we had only one guy at rehearsal (who really has difficulty staying on pitch unfortunately).

After choir, I went to Ingrid's house to have tea before going off to the university to enroll. Ingrid, her husband and I went in on all together in order to make sure everything got filled out properly. Since the university here is a technical university (and because it's already two months into the semester) it was a bit complicated to become matriculated. I have to have an official invitation from a professor to enroll. Good thing Ingrid's husband is head of the Maschinenbau department, because otherwise I would not have been able to enroll as a mechanical engineering major. And we even got Dave enrolled as well - which is amazing.
The reason to enroll in a German university is not necessarily because you have any desire to take classes, but because of the Semesterticket you get for the train. We can now travel to Erfurt, Meiningen, and Saalfeld for free on the train. In the case of Saalfeld, that's a two hour train ride. One way to Erfurt costs 4.80. The semesterticket, which is good until the end of August, only cost 61,50.

Wednesday: Off to Erfurt for a working day with ThILLM, the educational wing of the state of Thuringia. I am now the voice of the directions for the listening exam for graduating seniors. I also got to correct and edit the written exams for German high schools in the rest of the world. But mostly I sat around and talked to people and ate free lunch. Oh, and I got paid 15,00 an hour for this. It was quite funny because one of the guys doing the listening was from New Zealand and his accent is obviously quite strong and quite different from any of the other accents. They made him record over and over and over because his pronunciation was too difficult.

And Dave came back from the United States on Wednesday! Poor Dave had the longest flight ever from the US, and then he had to take the train back to Ilmenau, and then he had to teach our university class all by himself because I was eating cake with the English teachers. It was good cake too.

Thursday: Dave got a for real job!!!

Today: We have no water for the entire middle of the day because they are fixing the plumbing. And tomorrow eight of us teaching assistants are going off to Leipzig to the Weihnachtsmarkt.

Bremerhaven

(trip to Bremen, con'td).








On Saturday, we went to Bremerhaven. Bremerhaven has a bit of a unique status in Germany. There are sixteen Bundesländer in Germany (states). Three of them are cities: Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. Bremen does not have a coast, so a long time ago, the ruler of Bremen bought the town of Bremerhaven from the surrounding territories. The two are not connected by land, but belong to one government. It takes about an hour on the train to get to Bremerhaven.

We went to Bremerhaven to visit the Deutsche Auswanderer Haus (German Emigration House). Bremerhaven is sort of the opposite of Ellis Island in New York. A huge amount of the immigrants to the United States from all over Europe went through Bremerhaven on their way to the New World. The museum was incredibly well done. It was designed to let you see what it was like to travel on board a steamer. Each exhibition room was redone to look like different parts of the boat. At the end, you could research any of your ancestors that may have immigrated to the United States. Unfortunately, I didn't know we were going to go to the museum beforehand so I didn't get to look anything up about our family.

Bremen

Last weekend, I traveled to Bremen, in the northwestern corner of Germany, to visit a former rowing coach who is currently living there (and grew up there). The train ride was nice and quiet and uneventful. The train from Ilmenau was late (as usual), but it was okay because I had a twenty minute layover in Neudietendorf. Neudietendorf is a stupid little hole in the wall station, but you often have to transfer at it in order to go somewhere to the west of Thüringen. I caught a regional express train from Neudietendorf to Göttingen, and then took the ICE from Göttingen to Bremen. Apparently the ICE that run on the Munich to Bremen line are the first generation of ICEs, so they’re quite old school. In terms of the actual niceness of the train, the regional express train was much nicer.
Mark (also known as MOK from his initials, Mark Oliver Klages) picked me up at the train station and then we went on a tour of the old city of Bremen after dropping the stuff off at his mother’s house. Bremen is a quite cute little city, full of little tiny narrow alleyways and cute old shops. Most of the buildings along these little alleys are just stores, but some are houses. According to MOK, they are very expensive and ritzy, but the tradeoff is that you have to deal with tourists wandering by all the time.
Bremen is famous for the Bremen Stadtmusikanten – that old legend about the four animals who decide to travel to Bremen in order to earn a living as street musicians. They come to a house along the way and decide to spend the night there. Little do they know, but a band of robbers has made this house their headquarters. The animals (a donkey, a dog, a rooster, and something else) pile on top of each other in order to see in the window. The robbers are so scared of this strange four-headed beast, they run away and never come back. The four Bremer Stadtmusikanten decide they like the house so they just stay there and live there and they never actually make it to Bremen.

First Snow in Ilmenau

Today was officially the first real sticking snow in Ilmenau. There was snow on the ground yesterday morning, but it melted by the time I went to school. Today, we probably got at least four inches and it was fairly blizzard-like at times. In Frauenwald, which is more in the mountains, they got half a meter last night. It is going to be a long winter, especially since last year it apparently didn't snow at all the entire time. One of the things Dave and I were talking about the other day was that it must be a pain to shovel all the sidewalks (since they are mostly cobblestone). It's not. They have little mini-plows that plow the sidewalks. They are nice, except then you have to walk around them in the road.

Last Saturday, we went down to the new ice rink here in Ilmenau (which is beautiful) to watch an Eisstocksport Tournament. Eisstocksport is curling - but it was German curling, meaning no brooms and it's not such a precision sport as the Canadian version. Instead of pushing the stones across the ice, you bowl them. The Ilmenau team was pretty bad. They kept throwing their stones and they would land crookedly and sort of wobble across the ice. Most of the time they didn't even make it into the target zone. Oh well. The stones are different as well. They are smaller and lighter and have interchangeable bottoms. It would be my guess that the different bottoms have different coefficients of friction.

And now I need help from all of my readers out there: I am teaching one of the German social studies classes in two weeks. They are about to start learning about the United States. I have been asked to do a short introduction. One of the questions that the teacher wants me to address is: Why are Americans so proud of their country and of being America? Please write me a comment and tell me what your answer would be. Your own personal opinion, please.

Yesterday it snowed for the first time (for real). It actually snowed a couple of weeks ago, but only a bit. But it snowed just about all day yesterday - big, heavy, wet flakes. Nothing stuck here in Ilmenau, but I can look out at the mountains and see lots of snow. Every once in a while you see a car riding around with six inches of snow on the top, but nothing is really on the ground here still. The woman at the library definitely sounded depressed when she said, "There's going to be five more months of this," to me yesterday while I was checking out some movies.

On Wednesday, I, along with all of the other Fulbrighters in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia got invited to the US consulate in Leipzig. It was sort of silly because we didn't do much - but it was nice to see everyone from our training course and to meet more Fulbrighters in my area. There are quite a few research scholars in Jena and Weimar who I didn't know about. First we had a little mix-and-mingle over tea, coffee and bagels (I haven't had a bagel in forever). Then the consul general for Leipzig, the Cultural Attaché in Berlin and the Public Affairs guy for Leipzig talked to us for a bit about various things. Then we all headed over to the Museum for Contemporary History of the DDR for a nice English tour.

I finally have a fairly consistent work schedule going on, now that we've actually been back in school for a few weeks. Although apparently Germans freak out if they don't see a holiday coming in the future because we are having a random floating holiday weekend on Thanksgiving weekend so that we have four days off. Too bad I didn't know that before - could have made the trip home for Thanksgiving. Oh well.

I am teaching 5th, 6th, and 12th grade classes at the moment. Depending on the teacher, I either get used appropriately or not. I'm giving it another week in order for us to get comfortable first before I push for a little more autonomy for those who don't give me any. One teacher just uses me for reading exercises in her 5th grade classes, but in her 6th grade class she gives me a lot more responsibility. Last week, I talked about class schedules in America for a bit and this week I am supposed to talk about sight-seeing attractions in London. (Because obviously I am British). Oh well. At least I have been to London. The other teachers for 5th and 6th usually just write me a little note about what they are going to cover in class, and then sort of let me cover it in my own way.

Die Zuge fallen aus (and I ran a marathon)

Yesterday, I ran the Dresden Morgenpost Marathon. The weather was terrible. It rained or poured the entire time. The temperature was maybe 40 degrees. I finished with a time of approximately 3:44, but me finishing the marathon was just about the only thing that went right the entire weekend. Let's start at the beginning, with the train trip to Dresden.

Dave and I are cheap, so instead of taking the ICE/IC trains (aka express trains) to Dresden, which would have taken about just under four hours and cost 104 Euro round trip for the both of us, we traveled on a Thüringen Ticket. The Thüringen Ticket allows you to travel on all regional trains in Thüringen, Sachsen, and Sachsen-Anhalt for an entire day for 26 Euro (for both of us). All started out well, until we got to Erfurt. We had a half hour wait until our next train, so I decided to go take some money out of the bank so we would have cash (We only had about 50 Euro with us and had to pay cash for the hostel.) However, my EC-Card (debit card) was declined. Apparently, the bank had frozen my bank account after I added Dave to it on Tuesday until I brought my passport in. So we couldn't get any money out since I didn't have my American debit card and Dave's isn't international.

The train rides to Dresden actually went farely well. We went to the marathon to check in and discovered that I couldn't run with a chip because we didn't have enough cash to pay for one. This is why my time is only approximate. Luckily, they said I could run without one. The next step was to make sure we could buy a ticket to get home from Dresden on Sunday. If the machines wouldn't take credit cards, we were SOL and would have just taken the train back to Ilmenau on Saturday night and abandoned the marathon. Luckily, we found a machine that took credit.

Next order of business, get to the hostel before our check-in window expired. The directions provided by the hostel said, take the S2 to Grenzstraße. Unfortunately, every single S2 had my least favorite German sign: Der Zug fällt aus. AKA the train has been cancelled. This was the time for our first of MANY trips to the DB service points during this trip. After the DB man had a large altercation with an angry German woman, we figured out how to get to Grenzstraße. We get to the hostel, check in, and everything's good. Ah, but now we are hungry since we haven't eaten all day. The disadvantage about this hostel is that it is near NOTHING. We had to go all the way back to Dresden to find somewhere that would take credit cards so we could have something to eat for dinner.

Dave said he would pay for dinner. However, after two of his credit cards and his EC were declined, I ended up having to pay. Luckily they took my card - otherwise we would have been doing dishes for our dinner.

Next morning: marathon. It went as marathons do. I ran a lot. Dave hid from the pouring rain and never saw me until the very end. Afterwards I was cold and took a shower.

Now for the epic odyssey home. We got to the train stop just as the S-Bahn we needed to the main train station left. Unfortunately, since the S2 were STILL all cancelled, we had to wait for a new train, which meant that we missed our first train. Instead, we decided to get on the train to Leipzig. We should have gotten off at Riesa and switched to Chemnitz, but apparently missed that, so we ended up in Leipzig. In Leipzig, we waited for two hours for the next train connection to Ilmenau. Finally the train came, but as we were about to get on, the announcement came: This train has been cancelled for service reasons. We run to the DB service point and get a new printout (second one of the day) for our new connection. This one takes us to Halle where we are supposed to switch to a regional train to Eisenach. Unfortunately, we arrive in Halle to discover that the regional train to Eisenach is also out of service for some reason and we are instead supposed to take a bus to Schkopau and then get on the train to Eisenach. We wait for half an hour for the bus. They only had ordered one bus - for at least 100 people. Luckily a second bus showed up. Otherwise there would have been a small riot of German people. After twenty-five minutes on a bus with three bicycles, a crying baby, and an overcapacity of at least thirty people, they dump us off somewhere in the dark. We can just barely make out the train tracks in the distance. Finally, we are safe on the train. This however, is a regional train, not even a regional express. This means that it stops at EVERY SINGLE STOP. Eventually, after various Verspätungen and other mishaps, we arrive safely in Ilmenau and have an uneventful trip back to Ilmenau.

Total travel time Saturday: probably 6.5 hours. (including S-Bahn travel to and from hostel)
Total travel time Sunday: nine and half hours.

Total number of trains Saturday: 11 trains
Total number of trains Sunday: 8 trains and 1 bus
Number of cancelled trains: too many to count

I have now completely lost faith in the German train system However, we did get 16 hours of train ride for only 52 Euro total. How much would it cost in America to go 16 hours on the train? According to the Amtrak website, to travel from New York City to Elkhart Illinois takes 16 hours. It costs $100 per person.

Amerikanische Konversation und Landeskunde

Wednesdays, 17-18:30 pm, Room 1220, Ernst Abbe Zentrum:
Amerikanische Konversation und Landeskunde class taught by Frau Corey and Herr Nacmanie.

I am now officially (with the help of Dave) teaching a university class on American culture and conversation. Our first class was yesterday. Yesterday was get to know you day -- everyone had to tell us one cool thing about themselves. Some selections of cool things:
- I can eat AT LEAST six hamburgers at a time - Ki or Kevin from China
- I like steaks A LOT. ("What kind of steaks?" we ask, "Beef, horse, whale?") I don't care, as long as they're BIG! (as he makes a hand gesture approximately the size of a small table).
- I am a woman. -- Now of course, this one sounds a bit strange, but she qualified it by pointing out that she studies computer science and so she is an oddity in the field. The Technische Universität Ilmenau, like many other technical universities, has a high gender imbalance.

Visitors from Blue Ash, Ohio and other experiences

Two Wednesdays ago was a holiday from school since it was Tag der Deutschen Einheit (aka Day of German Unity or Day of German Unification). It also happened to be the day that visitors from Ilmenau's partner city, Blue Ash, Ohio, came to visit Ilmenau. Because I am the only American in Ilmenau, I got invited along on their morning excursion to help them feel more at home. Guess what the morning excursion was? Free rides down the Ilmenauer Rodelbahn - aka the Ilmenau summer luge track. Normally, each ride costs 1 Euro (which is really not worth it). It was quite fun though. There was also a semi-professional luger who would go down the real track (we only got to go down the recreational track), which was more than twice as long as the section we went down, and he still only took oe second longer to go down than we did. That was sort of embarrassing. One of the male teachers from my school apparently used to be a coach and he was trying to teach me how to steer to go faster. He was completely unsuccessful.

After the luging fun was over, we went to the restaurant at the Rodelbahn and had some real German food. I got to be the official translator for my table. That was amusing, especially since I was sitting at the table with our semi-pro luger and it was sort of getting past my limit of ability to translate. On the bright side, I finally had my very first real Thüringer Kloße. Kloße are these large potato dumpling things (about the size of a large apple) and they have a very fluffy but heavy texture. They definitely need a sauce or gravy or some kind. Everyone else had duck and some kind of duck gravy to put on their Kloße, but I had to make do with the sauce from the mushrooms. The next day in school when I told one of the teachers that I had eaten Kloße with mushrooms, she and the entire class laughed at me. After the main course, the restaurateur came around to ask if we wanted dessert. I said yes of course - when have I ever passed up free dessert? Out comes the dessert and it was an eight inch tall giant puff pastry full of ice cream and whipped cream. It was incredible.

Later in the day, I dragged Emily along to the opening of the new dance center at the new Eishalle. They had two free workshops/classes so I spent four hours of my afternoon learning how to hip-hop and Latin dance, both of which I am absolutely terrible at. Thank god I had at least taken that modern dance class last year in school - because at least I had some idea what was going on.

Since it was also my last night as a single person in Ilmenau, I went out with Rich to a new bar in the area, Cafe Bohne. It was a Wednesday night so no one was there, except for one couple who sat at their table and made out the entire time we were there (approximately two hours). The only time they came up for air was when Rich and I decided to go play a game of Foosball (Kicker auf Deutsch), and they immediately leapt up and challenged us to a game - which we proceeded to lose by a score of 10-2 in about five minutes. It was highly embarrassing. On the bright side, Rich says he has been back there since with other people, and the same couple is there every night doing the same thing - so they probably deserve to win. The last time I played Kicker was probably six years ago. Although we've got one in the apartment so I'll practice up before I go off to Cafe Bohne again.

Pencil Cases

I think that just about every country outside of the United States has a tradition of using pencil cases - but I think the Germans may take it a little to extremes. If a German kid showed up in an American high school with the type of pencil case they use here, they would get laughed out of class.

Things that appear in German pencil cases:
- at least two black/blue pens and two pencils
- fountain pen with extra ink cartridges
- a complete set of colored pencils
- glue
- tape
- protractor
- compass
- colored pens
- ruler
- eraser
- white-out
- etc....

And the thing is: they USE all of these supplies. If you ask them to make a table with two columns, they will take out their rulers and draw super straight lines. They will use their rulers to underline things. They underline in different colors. Their notes are marvelously straight and colorful. Some of them will even take their rulers up to the board to underline things on the board.

It's a far cry from the traditional American school child whine: "Mr/s. So-and-so, can I borrow a pen/pencil? I lost/forgot mine....."

Issaquah, Washington

In eighth grade, the students in Ilmenau (and I suppose, all of Germany) learn about a town called Issaquah, Washington.

A few facts about Issaquah, from the Green Line textbook:

- Only 8,000 people live in Issaquah but many more live outside, quite close to town.
- There are 53,000 people in the Issaquah School District.
- There are 200 miles of hiking trails in the forests around Issaquah.
- Lake Sammamish State Park is ideal for swimming and other water sports, and picnics too.
- And if you want to ski, there's the Snoqualmie Pass Ski Area just 40 minutes from Issaquah.

But why, you may ask, as I did, why would anyone want to learn about Issaquah? Why pick this town?

Because --- Issaquah is where Twin Peaks was filmed!!! My new obsession - Twin Peaks - was filmed in Issaquah!! No WONDER they learn about Issaquah! It also explains why all the teachers here have heard of Twin Peaks even though I had never heard of it before.

random things

1) I was running through the woods today, listening to my iPod, when suddenly I thought I heard music that was not coming from my iPod. I took my headphones off and looked around - and lo and behold - there on a path below me - at least 2,5 km from anywhere - was a trombonist practicing his music. He had a stand and everything.

2) I finally figured out where the tofu was in the grocery store.

3) I joined the choir at school today. We sang Joy to the World in German which threw me off like crazy.

4) I have a part time job at an after school tutoring center. Amazing how much easier it becomes to find jobs like that when the headmaster at your school is the husband of the woman who runs the tutoring center.

5) I also got Dave a job at the tutoring center.. and he will be here in two weeks amazingly enough. It's been four months since I've seen him. That's a long time.

6) If you're reading this blog, you should leave comments... so I don't feel like I'm just typing out there in cyber space. I changed the settings so anyone can comment without being registered.

7) Coming soon... a historical and artistic tour of the lovely town of Ilmenau... and perhaps a visit to the capital of Thuringia, the Vasold homeland, Erfurt.

No substitute teachers...

One of the weird things about German schools - which could definitely be improved - is that they have no substitute teacher system. That in itself is not really a problem - substitutes in the United States don't really do much usually - but the problem is the way the system they have instead works.

If a teacher is absent, then another teacher - any teacher who has a free period - covers for that teacher instead. It isn't necessarily the same subject though - so the teacher will just teach whatever subject they normally do. This means that if the English teacher is absent, maybe you have an extra chemistry lesson that week instead. If the class is early in the morning or in the afternoon, usually the school will just cancel the class instead and send the kids home early.

The PROBLEM with this system became apparent to me when I sat in on a lesson today. One of the teachers just came to school for the first time this year (she had a broken arm) and this is the third full week of classes. For this English class, it was the first English lesson they had during the entire three weeks. Something seems wrong with this picture doesn't it? Also, the whole culture of sickness is different here... apparently there is no limit on the number of sick days. There are two English teachers who I have still not met because they have been out sick for the entire time I have been here (again, that's two whole weeks).

There must be something that could be done differently.

At least the school is not trying to pull what they do at some schools and use the ETA (aka me) as the substitute teacher to fill in for any missing English teachers. That would be diastrous.

Crazy Swimming

The indoor swimming pool here in Ilmenau (Schwimmhalle am Stollen - it's a very creative name - it's the swimming pool on the street named am Stollen) opened last Saturday. I've been a few times, but it is really a crazy pool. Let me give you an idea of what it's like to swim there.

Picture your normal twenty-five meter pool that is about four lanes wide. There are no lane lines up. There are about thirty people in the pool, most of whom are swimming laps and all doing breaststroke. Why only breaststroke? Because it's basically a free for all. You have to dodge people right and left, and breaststroke is the only way you can possibly swim without causing a major pileup. At the same time as you have thirty people randomly swimming laps, there are the inevitable twelve year old boys jumping off the side into the pool, horsing around, swimming back and forth (not in the same direction as the lap swimmers of course), swimming underneath you and squirting each other with supersoakers. Then there are the teenagers who are just soaking in the pool, making it even harder to find a place on the wall to turn around - especially since they are usually making out so you can't really go in between them. It's really quite adventurous. I've never swum so much breaststroke in my life.

Other than the utter chaos of the pool scene, I really quite enjoy it. It's cheap (8 euro for a ten visit card) and clean and only a twenty minute walk from my place (everything is a twenty minute walk from my place). The website has a section called Fotos where you would think they would just have pictures of the facilities. Instead they have a series of pictures which in America would probably be construed as mild softcore porn. Quite interesting.

Radfahren

Apparently I should remember that it is not a good idea for me to drink a lot of caffeinated tea before bed since it is now 1:30 am and I am not even remotely sleepy. Also, I shouldn't start watching Season 1 of Twin Peaks (which I have never seen before) right before bed. Probably if it had been in German I would have fell asleep a long time ago.

The exciting news of today was that I bought a bike. A Trek 3900 hardtail mountain bike. It cost €349, but I think it will be well worth it. I was so excited that I decided to go for a ride and ended up riding for six hours and about 50 miles. Unfortunately, it has been a month since I have ridden a bike so now I am a little sore from sitting on a bike seat. There's a Radwanderweg that passes through Ilmenau and goes all the way to Weimar and a little beyond, as you can see from the map. I rode to Kranichfeld, had some lovely German Pflaumkuchen and then rode back. It was a lovely day, probably the nicest weather we've had. Good thing I didn't have to work.

Afterwards, I was laying around in the apartment and the doorbell rang. I answered the phone thing and a random English voice came over the intercom. It so completely floored me that I didn't know what to do. It turned out that it was another English Teaching Assistant from London and his Betreeungslehrerin. I had written him an e-mail, but he never replied. I forgot that I put my address down so I was completely freaked out for a bit that he knew where I lived. They came in and we talked for a bit. Apparently he has nowhere to live and they had spent the entire day looking at apartments. He seems like a nice guy. I think he is quite a bit younger than me (most of the British ETAs are only 19 or 20, but that's fine with me. It will be nice to have someone to hang out with. I really enjoy hanging out with Achim around the apartment at night, but he's always so exhausted from this super intense course he is taking that he doesn't want to go out at night or anything.

I was going to go start looking around for part-time job opportunities and visit the people at the university today - but it was such a gorgeous day that I decided to take advantage of it. Who knows when it will be this nice again? Of course, now that I gave in and bought an umbrella, I'm sure it will be gorgeous every day.

Becoming a Legal Alien

I finally took care of all of my paperwork yesterday. It was incredibly easy. At orientation they went through this whole long talk and elaborate step-by-step procedure that we would have to do, but apparently in Ilmenau they have streamlined the whole thing so I just had to show my passport, answer a couple questions, and then everything gets automatically sent off. One of the teachers from school came to help me out but it was completely unnecessary - but then we had Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) which is really my favorite part of Germany. I'm going to have to be careful that I don't spend TOO much time having cake - but it is SOOO incredibly good. Even the packaged cakes on the train are excellent - especially since they warm them up on put them on real plates with silverware.

I have to say that one of my favorite things about school in Germany is how there seems to always be food in the teacher's lounge. Today there was an elaborate breakfast (not sure why) with mountains of bread and sandwiches and coffee and etc. Granted, most of the bread had really disturbing looking meat products on it, most of which I don't even want to think about what they are - but that's ok. I like bread and tomatoes just fine - and it's free so who's complaining?

This week I've been continuing with my Hospitation period - which is fine although a bit boring. Next week, all the English teachers and I are having a meeting so we can talk about what I want to do, what I'm allowed to do, what they want me to teach, etc. I think I definitely want to work with the older students (since I have NO patience with younger children), but we'll see how it works out.

Exciting news for all you Hausers out there. I have been talking to Sue Rohrer about the Vasold family history and where we come from in Germany. Apparently we come from a town called Rudolstadt. Rudolstadt is a smallish town located 35 km east of Ilmenau. Yes that's right. Of all places I could possibly be put in all of Germany, I was placed in a town only 35 km from where we come from way back when. Unfortunately, it is hard to get to Rudolstadt because there is a mountain range in the middle. But I will be going there as soon as I figure out the best way to get there (it takes two hours on the bus or train). Stay tuned for pictures etc.

Another Rainy Day

Ilmenau's slogan is "Ilmenau, Himmelblau" (Ilmenau, Blue Sky), but to be honest, except for the first day here I have not seen one single blue sky. It rained yesterday - it rained today - I think basically it has rained here every day since I got here. It's okay though, because it's not really a heavy pouring down rain, more the light, misty, slightly annoying type of rain. I've basically decided that if I wait for it to stop raining outside, I will never do anything, so this morning I got up bright and early, got dressed, and went on a hike to Schmücke.

What is Schmücke? Well, according to something I read very briefly the other day, it's a cute little town. Ha. Ha. It is actually a guesthouse/inn located 981 meters above sea level. There's a little grill and a bar and some little Ferienhäuser - and that's it. Sort of a let-down after hiking 15 km to get there, but oh well. At least there was something to eat because I was starving. Schmücke may be the highest "settlement" around so it is exciting. Not really heartening place to start on a 15 km hike back to Ilmenau - especially when the temperature has dropped and now its literally pouring. All in all though - a nice hike.

Today was also Tag des offenen Denkmals - which is supposed to translate to Day of Open Monuments - but in Ilmenau that apparently means churches. St. Jakobuskirche was open so we could look around and you could go up into the church tower and look around. That was nice because it's really the tallest thing in the Stadtzentrum so you can get a better idea of how the town is laid out. There was a trumpet and organ concert also - but I didn't know it cost money and hadn't brought any with me.

It's amazing how tiring 30 km of hiking can be - even if it's relatively flat like this hike was... so I'm off to bed a little early. I don't have to be at school until 9:15 tomorrow morning - staying until 2 - and then off to take care of my residence permit and work permit and other such things.

First Day of Work

I started bright and early at 7:45 this morning. I went to four class hours today and I'm going to four on Monday - theoretically that means I am already one-third of the way done with my required work. Apparently this job is really what you make of it. It can be a total joke and you don't do anything - or it can be a really good experience and you really learn a lot about teaching and all of that. Luckily, my Betreeungslehrerin really seems excited about me being here and really flexible about what I am going to do. We're supposed to sit down on Tuesday and look at all of the English teachers' schedules and figure out what classes I want to work with and when. I'm really hoping that I can get two days free. They're required to give us one day off per week - but if I could get two days off - like Friday and Monday or Monday Tuesday or Thursday Friday that would be FANTASTIC. Just think how much more travel time I will get. And really - if it is going to keep raining here EVERY FREAKING DAY - I'll need to get out of here at some point. Other than the stupid rain, I like Ilmenau a lot.

The first class I went to today was a double period of twelfth grade Leistungskurs (these are the top English kids in the school). I did a little introduction of myself and then I answered questions. The amusing part was that they had gotten to see my transcript and course lists and CV type thing that I had written - so they started asking me about why I had taken Japanese. So I basically ended up teaching an entire lesson about the three different Japanese writing systems. And then of course, all the students in the next English class heard, and so on, and so I basically taught people Japanese for four hours. Funny how I thought I was going to be teaching English here.

In the second half of the double period, I did a little "teaching". Not really. They were doing some vocabulary work and they wanted me to read the words out so they could hear the American English pronunciation of them. They are learning about characterization so they have this 280 word list of words to do with talking about people. I got a copy myself - which was very useful because I don't know the German equivalents of most of them myself. They are reading "The Old Man and the Sea" in class - which I actually have never read - so I helped out a little bit with that as well.

The second class was an 11th grade Leistungskurs - and they spent a period and a half asking me questions. One girl was definitely asking the hard ones. I got asked "What do you think of George Bush?", "What do you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger?" and some other exciting ones like that. We definitely got a bit of a lecture at orientation about sort of sidestepping those questions - so it was lovely to be asked them on the first day.

Famous People in my Classes: Max's father is both a world and Olympic champion in the bobsled - and now he does skeleton. Impressive eh?

Einfuhrungstagung in Altenberg

So I spent the last four days in Köln learning how to be a teacher. Or something like that. The extent of learning to teach was that we prepared one lesson each with a group of three or four people. The first day was actually more useful since we learned about how the German school system works, got to meet the other people from the areas that we are in, and ask all those questions you never got to ask during German class in high school/college.

The trip started out poorly. The SudThüringerBahn (the train from Ilmenau to Erfurt) was late, so I missed my train connection in Erfurt. The next connection didn't leave for an hour so I ended up not going to Cologne until 4:05 (we were supposed to be there at 3:30), so I missed the bus out to Haus Altenberg. That sort of sucked. I had to take a taxi - which cost 30 euros. They did tell us that it was going to cost 50 - so at least that was a nice surprise. We ended up following the buses all the way to the place, so I just got out of the cab, paid the guy, and blended right in so no one knew I hadn't been on the bus. Other than that, the trip went well.

The train in Germany is just so much more relaxing than trains in America. In Germany (usually) you get on the train for a six hour train ride and you KNOW that you will be arriving at your destination in exactly six hours. On Amtrak, as we all know, it's much more, "I'll be on the train for maybe six hours, or maybe seven, eight, nine, ten...."

Haus Altenberg was pretty cool. It used to be a Catholic monastery and now its used for church youth group meetings and things like that. It's also a "big" tourist attraction so there are random people wandering around all the time.

On Thursday, we got back to the train station just as the train I had wanted to take was leaving - which was actually nice because I got a chance to see the Kölner Dom (which is super famous). Unfortunately, there was a mass going on at the time so I didn't get to see much inside. Surprisingly though, they do still let people inside during the service. That means that there is an entire congregation sitting there listening to a guy give a sermon - and then in the back are random people milling around pointing and talking and yelling about this or that frieze or pillar or whatever. The flashes are making the place look like a freaking disco and the priest just keeps on going. If I was in charge, I would just close the whole thing...

Arnstadt Stadtfest

Today was the third day of the Arnstadt Stadtfest so I took the train up there to check it out. The first frustrating thing was that the ticket machine at the train station doesn't take money, only EC cards - which I don't have one of. Luckily, a nice guy explained to me that you can buy tickets on the train in the machine there - and luckily that one takes cash. Arnstadt is about the same size as Ilmenau, but I think it had a little bit more going on during medieval times. It has a castle (or at least the ruins of a castle) and some nice churches. According to Wikipedia, Arnstadt is one of the oldest towns in Thuringia and is known as the Gateway to the Thuringian Forest. Johann Sebastian Bach also grew up in the area - his family lived here for generations. He supposedly wrote the famous Toccata and Fugue in d minor here. There's a trail that connects Ilmenau and Arnstadt and not surprisingly it is called the "From Bach to Goethe" trail. It's 28 km long though. I wasn't quite up to it today.

Street fairs are really funny - they are always exactly the same no matter where you are. They always have the same crappy stuff for sale, have the same type of entertainment, and mostly people just go to eat food. The big difference between the Arnstadt fest and any festival in America is that there are a LOT more beer tents/stalls here. There was one guy who sang along to American country music for four hours (non-stop). Another guy played the accordion. He was up on stage having a grand old time, but I couldn't figure out who was singing along. It definitely wasn't him, and it wasn't a recording. Finally I noticed a guy with a microphone sitting down drinking at one of the beer tents. In between sips of his beer, he was providing the vocal portion of the music.

The most amusing part was the big competition for strongest man and woman in Arnstadt (if not Thuringen, Germany and the world). The contestants all had shirts that said "Trabiheben 2007", because they were lifting not weights, but that favorite old car of East Germany, the Trabant, or Trabi as it is more familiarly called. This special renovated Trabi was outfitted with a bar coming out from underneath the trunk, so that the aspiring strong men/women could lift the back end of the Trabi off the ground. Since all the contestants could lift the Trabi, they then added more and more weight to the trunk of the car. Apparently last year's winner lifted around 485 kgs (1,069 lbs). I didn't stay too long to watch this because Germans are too damn tall and I couldn't see a thing. But it was probably pretty cool.

Yesterday I took a little hike through the woods around Ilmenau and found the luge track. Ilmenau is the WORLD CAPITAL of luge. More Olympic champions have come from Ilmenau then anywhere else. This is a random thing to be famous for - but still pretty cool. They have a summer luge thing - sort of like the alpine slide at Bromley and the kids were sliding down on it. Next weekend is the FIL Sommerrodel Championship something or other - aka world class luge competition right here in sleepy little Ilmenau, Himmelblau. Stay tuned for pictures - it's supposed to be quite the party.

Settling In

Today I finally moved into my actual room. The landlord told me yesterday that Achim (who lives in the room I have been staying in) was coming today, but Maksim told me he was coming tomorrow. He showed up right when I was on my way out the door to go meet my mentor teacher (again) so I had to quickly pack everything up, throw it in the third room, and then run all the way to school.

I finally got around to opening up a bank account today. It was your everyday normal bank account opening except that the bank employee opening my account thought it was hilarious that I have an American passport, two German middle names and a phone number from Great Britain. Also, apparently they don't require you to actually put any money into the account when you open it. The whole thing was over and she asked me if I had any more questions and I said, "Um, can I put money in? Don't you require that?" Apparently not. The other random question that I got was whether I smoke. You expect that when your landlord asks you or maybe your employer, but not your bank. However, it has to do with the cigarette machines. They still have cigarette machines in Germany, all over the place (sort of like Japanese vending machines). The way they prevent underage kids from buying cigarettes is that you can only pay with your EC-card (debit card) and it has a little chip on it that has your age information. If you don't have a little chip or you are not old enough, you're just SOL. It's an interesting solution I think.

One more thing that I had forgotten about Germany... they don't have worms that come out when it rains, they have GIANT SLUGS. When you step on a giant slug, you can feel it squish and then it's nasty and yellow-orange and completely creeps me out.

Sleeping In and Misunderstandings

I got woken up in the middle of the night and then I couldn't get back to sleep until almost five. Needless to say, I was a little groggy in the morning. I got up around nine, had breakfast and went back to sleep until 11:10. That was sort of a problem because I had told my mentor teacher at the school that I would meet her at 11:15ish. This is where we find out problems with her English. I swear she told me that she was getting to school at 11:15 because she didn't have any classes until then and she would be around - so I figured that it was okay that I was a little late. I thought this was a little confusing at the time so I asked her about five times to confirm that - but apparently what she actually meant was that she was done at 11:15, so by the time I got there, she was already gone. On the bright side, everyone (aka three people) that I talked to were very nice. The principal of the school, Herr Kuchorz, gave me a tour of the school building and explained a bit what I was going to do.

Interesting Things About the School
1) They apparently have a fantastic art program. The kids are only 5th to 8th grade - and I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing anything that good when I was in 5th and 6th grade art.

2) They also have an excellent music program - especially the choirs - and I'm pretty sure that he said there is even a choir made up of just the teachers. I'll have to look into that one.

3) When the school was first built, they had approximately 1200 students. Now they only have about 700. Why? Because after the fall of the wall, people all left for the West (because they didn't have jobs here anymore or they wanted to reunite with their families or all of those other reasons that people left for West Germany). Apparently it is such a problem at some of the other schools in the area that they have trouble staying open because they don't have enough students. With everything that I've studied about East and West Germany, school/education for younger students is one thing I never really considered.

4) The walls are covered with paintings and drawings and everything done by the students. There are murals celebrating different Abitur years and all sorts of things. In the wing for the oldest students, this is especially so. Besides the fact that it looks cool, apparently it's a way for the school to save money on painting and renovation since they don't get so much money for that. The policy is that if the students want to paint the walls, they pay for the paint - and as long as they pay for the paint, they are free to do whatever they want.

I met my landlord today also. He speaks fairly good English, which he of course wants to practice. I was very impressed actually, except for one mistake. I was downstairs talking to his mother (who lives underneath us) and he was running in and out doing some errands. At one point, he starts talking to me about spoons and I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. It wasn't until he told me that he was going to show me how to get into the apartment if I had forgotten or didn't have my spoon that I realized he meant key. I'm not quite sure how he mixed those two words up - but I'm sure my German is just as silly sometimes. Two that I used to mix up a lot are aufwachen and aufwachsen (which at least are very similar words). The first means "to wake up" and the second "to grow up". Now I understand why I used to get strange looks when talking about what time I got up that morning.

The mother of Herr Kobe, my landlord, was interesting. She asked about my parents and I told her that my father had died and so we started having a conversation about whether or not my mom had to work now. I explained that mom had already worked before. Then she asked about whether we got a pension or anything like that (which I wouldn't have known what she was talking about if I hadn't gone to the movie the night before where I learned the German word for pension - Rente). She explained that her husband died when she was 48ish right around the time of the fall of the wall. There she was with four children, no longer any form of social support, hadn't worked for years, and suddenly the state tells her, "There's nothing wrong with you. Go out and work - you're not eligible for a pension or anything yet because you're not old enough." And at the time, it was much more difficult to find a job as a woman.

Goethe

The famous German poet, Goethe, spent a lot of time in Ilmenau, wandering and writing and being Goethe. He wrote the Wandrers Nachtlied in the evening of September 6, 1780. He wrote it in pencil on the inside wall of a small hunting shack on the top of the Kickelhahn. However, it didn't appear in any of his works for 35 years. The day before his last birthday, fifty years later, he went to the hut again and remembered that he had written those words so long before and they were still there. Unfortunately, in 1870 the hut burned down so the original can no longer be seen.


Wandrers Nachtlied

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Wanderer's Evening Song

Over all of the hills
Peace comes anew,
The woodland stills
All through;
The birds make no sound on the bough.
Wait a while,
Soon now
Peace comes to you.

Frankfurt/Friedberg

It's now the middle of the night and I am not exactly sleeping - the phone woke me up and I am having trouble regaining sleep mode.

Before I got to Ilmenau, I went to visit Tom Aney and his family in Friedberg, which is a suburb of Frankfurt. I don't know if we've ever actually met before, but family is family right? Cecilia and Ben are great kids - they don't fight too much and have generally sunny dispositions. Ben isn't quite old enough to talk yet - but his two favorite words are "Cah" and "Ah-oh" - which both can loosely be translated as referring to cars - but ah-oh can really be made to fit all situations.

Saturday I went into Frankfurt to go to the Museumsuferfest. All the museums in Frankfurt are arranged along the shores of the river (hence the name Museumsufer) and every year they throw a big festival with food, shopping, entertainment stages, and cheap admission to the museums and their special activities and exhibitions. I got really fascinated by the multicultural dances at one of the stages and basically just sat and watched them for a couple of hours. I also got to see some dragon boat races. It was a fun time, but it's one of those things that it's more fun to have someone to go with.

Sunday I decided to hang out with the Aney-Szilagyis. Tom and I took the kids to the Friedberg Feuerwehrfest (fire department festival). The kids got to run around and sit in the trucks and bounce on a bouncy house type thing. It was your typical cute little small town festival. Later, we went to the swimming pool. Their swimming pool is in Ockstadt, another little town in the area, and the pool is fed by a mountain spring of some sort and it is COLD. The water is definitely not clear like a mountain spring though.

Going to the pool made me reflect a bit more on the differences between Europe and the United States. Think about the last time you went to a public pool. Do they allow jumping into the water? Do they allow running by the edge of the pool? How about pool toys or floats and things like that? Of course not - and there would have to be at least ten lifeguards. This Ockstadt pool allowed you to jump in wherever you liked and run around as much as you wanted. They have a giant black inner tube which all the kids fight over and hang off. And there are NO lifeguards. And of course, because you are in Germany, you can buy beer at the pool.

Third Day in Ilmenau

This is the outside of my apartment building in Ilmenau. I live on the third floor (basically the roof although I think there is actually someone who lives on the fourth floor - must be really small). Yesterday I climbed the Kickelhahn - tallest mountain the region around Ilmenau - and this is a view of Ilmenau from halfway up the mountain.

Today I decided that I would hike the Goethe Wanderweg. It's a trail that Goethe used to hike often when he lived in Ilmenau, using beauty of nature to inspire him. Then he apparently wrote his poems on whatever was available at the moment - stones, building walls, etc - early graffiti and all of that. The whole trail is 21 km long and goes from Ilmenau to Stützerbach. Usually you take the bus back to Ilmenau from there, but I decided I was cheap and it was only 10 km back to Ilmenau so I walked. 31 km is a long way. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries about twenty minutes into the hike so I only got a few pictures. That just means I have to do it again sometime.

There's a heated outdoor pool that's only open for a couple more days. I meant to go after hiking today, but I was a little too tired - plus it's really only about 50 degrees here, so it's hard to get in the mood for swimming even if it is heated. I walked over and looked at it the other day though - fairly elaborate - with water slides and everything. Maybe I will go tomorrow. There's also an indoor swimming pool, but it doesn't open until the outdoor pool closes.

This evening I went to the movie theatre. Wednesdays and Sundays it has what they call Kino-Extra - which I would term as showing indie type films. I saw a movie called "Der große Ausverkauf", which translates to "The Big Sellout". It talked all about privatization and how it has affected different people across the world - another one of those movies that makes you really uncomfortable to be an American because you feel like it is all your fault. It was a German film, but it was completely not in German at all - mostly in English, sometimes in Spanish, always subtitled. I think there is usually a discussion of the films afterwards but I was pretty tired after all my hiking so I just went back (also I don't have a key to my apartment yet and I didn't want to be locked out because my roommate already went to sleep or something).

Tomorrow's agenda:
- get a bank account
- register myself as a resident of the town
- go meet my Betreeungslehrerin (mentor teacher) - whose English to be honest is really not very good - maybe I don't speak very clearly, but she never understands what I say - I think I will try German - but she probably wants to practice her English also) - I heard from the guy at the Tourist Office that she broke her hand somehow - but it's okay because you don't need your hands to teach (his words not mine).