I spent a good deal of time recuperating from the Americans. You know, watching junk tv, knitting, vegging out, the whole deal. And then, suddenly, I realized time was almost up. So I took off. Spring finally came to Germany (in its own little European way), and I was in Berlin when I feel like it finally happened. One of the kids from the youth group here works for a popular German band, Tocotronic, and got me in free to their concert in Potsdam. It was pretty cool, but I'm admittedly not the hugest Tocotronic fan, and so it was also a little awkward. Most of the people there knew all the words, and apparently they're more alternative than I had gathered from their music, b/c although I showed up all cute in my bright yellow dress, everyone else had on black. Exclusively. With the minor exception of the lime green screen print on their just-purchased merch. Nice. Anyway, I was basically there by myself since Katha had to work, but I made friends with a couple guys while I was trying to just find the damn place, and so at least the waiting for the concert wasn't totally lonely (but once the music started, Martin went off to mosh and I stuck to the outsides). I've developed a little bit of claustrophobia, it would seem, and I can't do crowds the way I used to. Maybe it's something about not being certain of how to express panic, but I really need to feel like I always have two ways of walking out of a situation, and that is simply not possible at a concert once people get going.
WARNING: I feel like this post is semi-picture-heavy. But I had a ridiculously hard time deciding which pictures to put up. Please see my flickr page for more.
Anyway, I stayed with Uli (my first-ever host sister from Bavaria) that night, and spent the weekend wi
th her and her roommates. Since I was not really excited about the Berlin I had experienced so far, we decided not to do anything touristy, but rather find something to make me feel like it was a pretty cool place. We ended up in the trendy hipster neighborhood (still can't figure out the name of it?) where everyone was gorgeous and I wanted to buy all the clothes they were selling but couldn't afford the air in those stores. So we ate ice cream and took off, with a quick stop at Sonnenallee, the famous street that ran straight into the Berlin Wall, but weren't sure exactly where the wall was, so didn't exactly get to that point... Oh well. Then we headed back and while Uli baked a cake, I cut Felix's hair with a rusty pair of scissors he found in the back of the kitchen drawer. Brave soul. But he was pleased with the outcome and I'm not too embarrassed to say that I am responsible for it. Saturday night we went to a party that was nothing remarkable.Sunday I got up and went to the only Quaker Meeting in Germany, which was nice but made me miss my Friends (ha! get it?) in Columbia. Saturday afternoon, we sat up in the park in Uli's neighborhood, Kreuzberg, with a cheesecake, coffee, and no silverware and just... chilled. It was nice. I really liked Uli's roommates, and not just because I miss young people and not living alone. They were genuinely awesome. I was really sad that I had to come back to Eisleben that evening, but it was okay because...
First thing Tuesday I got on a train to Regensburg, and seven hours later I got th
ere, and hung out with my old host parents and Uli's sister, Maria, who I don't think I ever met, honestly, before then. It was nice and Bavarian, but considerably colder than it had been in Berlin which was sad. We went and wandered around downtown Regensburg on Wednesday, and although I confirmed the fact that I do like the city, I don't know if I'd keep it on my top five favorite German cities list anymore. I think I was mostly excited about it that summer I was there because I was seventeen and had never been to Europe and it was big and exciting but not so crowded and touristy as Munich. What I mean is, it's cute, and I could live there probably, but I'd much rather hang out in Erfurt. Then again, maybe I just can't get over how much money they have in Bavaria and Phillipp has been getting to me with his East German propaganda.[mom and dad, I'm sorry, but I didn't take a single picture of the Schäfers. However, they got these knew "garden gnomes" and I thought you would like them, ma.]
Uh-huh. Well, Thursday I went on a 13 hour train ride to Rome to visit Audra, who lived in Preston with me and is an awesome girl. Her exams started on Monday so it was another laid back weekend, but I did all the main things, some with her - Vatican, Trevi Fountain - and some while she was in class or studying - Coliseum, Palatine Hill, the Parthenon. My general feeling on Rome, however, was indifference. The phrase that kept coming to my mind was "TOO MUCH!" There was so much stuff to see, but Rome is infuriating with its lack of 
explanations. Even though almost everyone who works anywhere public in Rome speaks English, all the museums were exclusively in Italian, and there are few directional signs for the major events. Don't even get me started on the way everything is built like a maze that has no right or wrong directions, so that you can wander and wander and have no idea where you are until you think "I've been here before," but don't know which way you left so you don't know where to go this time. I liked Palatine Hill, mostly because it was largely an outdoor park and I have gotten to where I really like places where people lay around in the grass, but I apparently missed an archaeological dig site b/c it was Roman and confusing and I didn't know there was a way into that part. But the Coliseum is significantly more impressive from the outside (except, of course, for the idea that people stood there so long ago - but that's true of the whole damn city), the Vatican Museum looked like some grandma had shoved as many of her trinkets into one room as possible, even though they rarely made sense next to each other (and I was so frustrated that we waited 4 hours and paid 8euros for the damn thing with so few actual important pieces of art that were usually hidden behind some other, equally old but significantly less well-known), and the Sistine Chapel was over crowded and smelly and even though they obviously don't use the space for worship anymore - it's an empty room with an undressed altar - they kept trying to make people be quiet. What for? So everyone can hear themselves think, "That's it?" in their own heads instead of letting them say it out loud? Alright Vatican City, you got me on St. Peter's Basillica. I don't think I had my mouth closed the whole half hour we were in there. It's huge and ornate and oh so catholic, which is only a little sad because the Pieta gets lost because of its simplicity (it, too, was smaller than I imagined). But my all-time favorite thing there was what Audra and
her friends had decided they weren't going to go see at all - the Mouth of Truth. Old movie fans will definitely know it from the Hepburn film Roman Holiday. It's basically an old stone tablet with a giant face on it, the mouth and eyes of which are holes. Legend has it that anyone who lies with their hand in the mouth will have it bitten off by the stone jaws, but either my skin is green or it's not true. So that was a cool thing to see, a little more off the beaten path, but then the exit takes you through the church, which has the relics of St. Valentine, and it's just a cute, smaller chapel that looks, unfortunately, like all the money got spent on the cathedrals. The frescoes around the tops of the walls were in disrepair, the ceiling was raw and didn't look like it was very well taken care of. But something about it was more real than the rest of the city. Then, of course, they went and proved me wrong by putting a souvenir shop in the damn corner. Whatevs. I had a good time being with Audra, reliving the good ole days of Preston gossip and politics and eating gelato (every day! shh...). But now I miss that place and those people more than ever.I signed my contract for Border Servant Corps today, though, so hopefully that roommate situation will work out as a good substitute for being on campus. I'm starting to get really excited about being out there - I found a couple forums and such, and have been getting good tips on yarn shops, book stores, and farmer's markets. There's if not two at least one Quaker Meeting, and I simply cannot express my excitement about that, and three Jazzercise centers. I can't stand myself.
Well, I've got less than two weeks here now. The only place I haven't gotten to travel to that I thought would is Prague, but Franzi can't go, and I don't think I want to go alone. People keep telling me to just suck it up and go alone, but I don't want it to be a half-ass experience because I'm by myself. Also, maybe it'll be more incentive to come back if I don't make it there. I'm also quite simply worn out from spending the last two weeks on the road, and there are several parties going on here, so I think I'm just going to hang out in Eisleben until it's time to go home, unless I run to Köthen one more time. Because I thought I would see Franzi again, I didn't really feel like I said goodbye to them, and I didn't even see most of my other friends last time I was there because I decided so last minute and they were all out of town. hmm...
Anyway, I will probably post again early next week since this weekend should be exciting, but if not it'll most likely be when I get home...
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