Scott Nikiel

3:28am: Maybe I'll write again soon, but no promises.
Once again plagued by an annoying case of insomnia, I'm up at 3:30am... Tomorrow I've got two of my four remaining finals, both of which are in the realm of Astronomy, so I'm not worried, but getting some sleep would still be really nice.

I'm very glad to be done with this semester, classes were pretty easy, but relatively annoying, so I'm looking forward to a bit of a break and then something different in the spring.

Tonight was Glenn's "Fancy dinner party" which he's been talking about for several weeks now. The turn out was surprisingly good, and so was the food (with the exception of the wheat-free pineapple upside down cake I kind of winged).

More exciting though, was the Photo Club Exhibition that was on Thursday. It was a complete and utter... well we didn't fail and I suppose that's what really counts. Mostly I'm excited for the more active roll that I'll be playing next semester. Max, our founder (and up until now president) has officially stepped down and our vice-president Christina is taking over. This means that I will most likely get promoted to vice-president and since Christina is (knock on wood) graduating next semester, I will be running the show starting in the fall. That being said, I spent a good chunk of my day running around the administrative sector trying to get information on how to get an exhibition off the ground in the University Memorial Center, where it could get considerably more PR.

Sunday will be awesome because I finally get to go skiing again. I've only been up once so far this year and it was kind of a bust because of the incredibly long lines. I'm toying with the idea of taking my camera along and pushing Andrew off some jumps to get come good action shots.

Besides that I don't have anything planned between now and Friday when I fly home. I'd like to go for another sunrise hike possibly up to the Royal Arch or just up to a nice overlook we found with a whole array of sandstone furniture. This would be a whole lot more fun with Jordan and Lizzie and maybe Zach or some other random people, but if I have to I will probably just do it on my own again. There's also the chance I may hit up a bar with Kevin, but we'll see, all in good time.

1:37am: The College experience.
So, I've been at college for more than a month now. And things are quite interesting. My time is largely taken up by studying, doing random things with friends, and going hiking. I've involved myself in a couple of clubs here, one of them being the photography club, of which I am appearently the treasurer... We'll see how that goes.

This weekend was one of the most fun (and most random) so far. I got to spend time with pretty much everyone up here who I've become friends with, almost. I got to go hiking this morning, i was down on pearl street yesterday afternoon, on the hill before and after that. Watched part of our amazing football win over Oklahoma (we won in the last 2 seconds with a fieldgoal!!!), now the 4th (former 3rd) best in the nation. I also got a chance to take some pictures, and just hang around. Sleep, as usual, was a lost cause. I took a nap today after the hike, so I'm still awake, but that was some of the best sleep I've had since I've been here.

Last Wednesday I hiked up Green Mountain to see the sunset. I was hoping to have kind of a mid sized group, but people canceled, and it just ended up being me and Hilary. It was still a lot of fun though we didn't make it all the way to the top before the sun started setting. Though the place we found near the top wasn't bad by any means.

I am now officially a Physics, Astrophysics double major and am planning on using this to the extent of its workings. I'm going to see if I can't get involved with the planetarium, and I even got interviewed by the Physics department on my views of Quantum Mechanics. And sometime this week I'm going to go see the Math adviser about picking up a Math minor (just because it's only two more classes, and having one more thing when I graduate wouldn't hurt).

I hopefully am going to get a Super Smash Bros. 64 tournament going next Sunday, which should be very exciting. Plus I've got a couple of tickets to a Mute Math concert on Thursday evening, which should be awesome!

I dunno, right now I'm kind of in that stage where I'm about ready to go to bed, but I still don't really want to give in. I've been living in this relm a lot in the last few months. We'll see how long it takes me to get to sleep.

Just so you know, I don't know how many new pictures I'll be posting on my photo bucket (I'll probably do it sparatically) but I should be posting things on the Photography website in the next few weeks, and I'll give you the link when I find out what it is, and get pictures uploaded.

-Scott

12:56pm: Alright Conny, since you asked so nicely
Alrighty, it's been a good month since I left Germany and it's really amazing all that's been going on. First off I got to spend a couple of weeks in Germany with my family (the first week being with both of my families). That, however all seems to be in another life, it's really weird.

After I got back I had the first night to sleep. The second day I started on unpacking and met up with Ellen and Tara and went bowling (I bowled the most amazing game of my life [not the best score, but the most impressive] nine consecutive spares followed by two strikes and a 6 in the last frame). The next day I spent at Jeff's playing cards, pool, listening to music, watching movies, etc. and spent the night. The next day we drove up to Snohomish to my parent's property and did some bushwhacking and then spent the night with him again. The next day Andrew came down and picked me up and we went to go watch my sister at her horse show for a little while and then we drove up (in the heat of rush hour) to his house where I spent the next two nights. We spent a lot of time back in the tree farm behind his house and discovered all sorts of things that we'd never seen before. After getting back on Sunday (and having seen that my dad had already flown to DC for work) I went and hung out with Tricia for a couple of hours before she had to go off to her grandma's birthday party and I went and hung out with Ellen again, went and saw Transformers. The next day I drove out to Ellensburg to see Katie and her boyfriend in their new apartment. I got to see a little bit of the town, but mostly we hung around Wendy's (where they both work) and their apartment. After driving back I went over to Ellen's and after debating what to do headed over to my house to watch a movie and then went out to try and find an open Denny's, but didn't succeed and ended up eating at Arby's instead and went stargazing (saw the meteor shower). The next day I focused on packing. And then I left for Boulder.

So I got into Boulder last Friday with my parents and sister. We spent the first few days looking around Rocky Mountain National Park, Denver and Boulder. On Tuesday I got to move into my dorm and start my orientation. Wednesday I got to meet some people who are in my major (Physics for those who don't know) and got to know them a little and ended up going bowling with a few of them that night. Thursday was basically registration. Here's how my schedule looks:

Modern Physics (PHYS 2170) MWF 10:00AM-10:50AM
Honors Calculus 3 (MATH 2420) MTWF 11:00AM-11:50AM
Advanced German 2 (GRMN 3020) MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM
First Year Writing/Rhetoric (WRTG 1150) WRTF 3:00PM-3:50PM
Experimental Physics (PHYS 2150) T 4:00PM-4:50PM
Lab (for physics) (PHYS 2150) TH 10:00AM

So the bulk of my classes are on Monday Wednesday and Friday. At the moment I'm not really in the mood to write all that much more, but I'll just say: so far college has been pretty cool, I've met a few cool people and my classes seem like they'll be interesting. It's just too freaking hot...

-Scott

10:14am: Home again.
After more than a year I'm now home again, but just for a couple of weeks (actually not even). Hopefully I'll get around to posting a real update in the time that I'm here, but the fact of the matter is: I'm going to be VERY busy. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm back and that I got home alright.

-Scott

12:00am: And the end has come
It's unbelievable, but my year is up. My family got here on Monday (after issues with flights and lost luggage in Heathrow partially due to the weather) and since then it's been interesting experiencing two different sets of parents and siblings. We took a look at Hannover and Burgdorf and had a BBQ at Toralf's house (which was a blast) and showed my parents what we've been playing and we visited Schloß Marienburg again. It's just been very hard saying goodbye to everyone and then thinking about how I'm doing things for the last time.

I'm now almost completely packed up. I've got my complete last year in four bags (one of which was just for my bass. I'm sitting here in my room for the last night. There are no posters on the wall, my desk is pretty much empty as well as my closet.

Tomorrow morning we're driving to Potsdam and then Berlin with Christian, Thea and Conny. Then after a couple of days we'll spend a night in Wittenberg (where Martin Luther lived and fought is revolution). After that we'll be in Dresden for a couple of nights before we head down to München for the final last 3 nights. Then we'll be flying home (if everything added up correctly that'll be August the fifth).

Then I've got my whole 11 days in Washington. I'll be Tuesday-Thursday with Jeff, Friday-Sunday with Andrew and Monday and Tuesday with Katie and inbetween I'll be with Ellen and Tara or Trish and of course my family when they're home (my sister has a horse show Tuesday-Sunday so they won't be home much anyways, though I'm going to go support her on Thursday).

Then on the Friday August 17th I'm flying with my family into Colorado a couple of days before orientation starts so we "relax" a little bit, maybe go hiking, probably take a closer look at Colorado and probably start shopping for last minute items like towls, sheets, and furnature/stuff for my dorm room. Then I've got a couple of days of orientation and then that next Monday classes start.

Rest and sleep are now something of the past.

-Scott

P.S. I'd like to thank everyone here who helped me feel at home here and welcomed me with open arms. I wouldn't trade this year for the world. If you want to keep in touch and you don't have any of my information, scroll up to the top of this page and click on the "Info" link on the left hand side, I'd love to hear from you no matter how long it's been since I've heard from you.

1:03am: "Iris" from the Goo Goo Dolls:

"And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now..."

2:08pm: And at the end comes a big: Surprise!
The last day of school came and went very quickly. We just had breakfast together, the whole 12th grade. In the last ten or fifteen minutes Toralf and I went over to the neighboring music room and hooked up an electric guitar and electric bass and just kind of jammed for the last bit before we had to go help clean up. I have no idea if anyone heard us, but it doesn't really matter anyways. After having cleaned up we got our report cards and then we were sent home. I then picked up my bass from home and rode over with Toralf to his house to hang out and play a bit. Then I rode home and we had lunch (in the time I was gone, Timo's girlfriend, Sandra, had come in from Krefeld and just before we started eating Clemens came through the door too). After a little bit of hanging out I rode over to Lisa's and spent the afternoon and evening there with her. We went swimming and had a good time. When I got home Timo, Sandra, Conny and Meli were still awake and had just polished off the rest of the pizza that we hadn't finished at lunch. We all talked for a bit and then went to bed.

Thursday moring we started off with the preperation for Conny's birthday and going away party. That pretty much took the whole day with the setting up of tents, lights, the buying of food and drinks and then setting up. The first gests arrived right about on time around 20.00. The night was fairly calm and though the music was cranked up it was pretty quiet. At around 21.00 I ended up taking a trip to the grocery store to pick up some meat for hambergers and then spent the next hour or so prepairing and griling them. Around 23.00 Lisa's mom (as planned) came by to pick her up and were quickly intercepted by Christian and Thea who conversed with her for a good 40 minutes or so, enough for a few of us to go back into the tent where there was a black light and have fun with the comination of the light, a permanant pen and a camera. After the 40 minutes had passed Lisa and her mom set off. After that we had more fun with my camera and the black light and I ended up sleeping outside in the tent.


Conny with his camera at his birthday party wearing the first gift he got: a t-shirt that Salomè made for him with "Sex, Dreads, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll" on the front and "...and remember, Meli loves you" on the back side.


From left to right: Meli, Lisa, Salomè, me and Conny


Blonde hair in black light!

Friday morning was hard. Even though the party was pretty mild, there was still a lot to cleaned up and that kept us busy for a good couple of hours. After having cleaned up to a point where we could leave the rest for the next day I took a nap and then went over to Toralf's to jam with him and Christine (which we'd been wanting to do since the beginning of the year). After playing around for a bit and printing out lyrics from the internet and playing them all through (Christine is a singer and has an amazing voice) Chrisine showed some interest in bass so Toralf and I helped teach her some of the basics and now she's thinking about taking it up and being the bassist for Senseless Reality, my replacement. At around 18.00 Christine left for home and Toralf and I just hung out for a bit, watched some Simpsons and played Worms on the computer. Shortly before 20.00 we set off because Toralf said he had to go for a meeting to plan a trip during the summer. He said he'd drop me off at home and then when he was done he'd come by and pick me up.


Christine playing bass for the first time!


Toralf giving Christine a few pointers.

So as I opened the door between the house and garage to go into the back yard to put my bike away I noticed there were an abnormally large amount of bikes and then I noticed that the yard was set up and full again... My first thought was: "Hmm... somehow someone forgot to tell me something..." and then as I looked at the faces I saw people from the Drama group and Badminton and a bunch of people from my class at school as well as my whole host family. I have no idea if anyone yelled "Überraschung" (surprise), I didn't notice that music was playing until Thea said to turn it off. I went around and said hello and hugged or shook hands (or both) with everyone and then Thea gave a little speach, more for me than everyone else. For the first half and hour or prehaps hour I was just completely winded (I was pretty tired and overall low on energy from the night before plus the surprise of everyone in my backyard) but after the initial shock wore off I had a really great time.


There were a fair amount of people from the drama group there.



and also a bunch of people from school.


and people from Badminton.


and friends of family.


There was a huge poster with pictures of me from the Thees that was hung over the baffet and next to that a smaller one from Julian and Vio with pictures of me and other people whom I'd met throughout the year. I also got a number of other gifts from everyone including a book in which everyone could write a little something to me. It was very cool to read what everyone had written.

It started getting hard again when people started leaving and I had to say goodbye. The last group left a little after 1.30 at which point I just couldn't handle large groups of people any more. At that point we were (execpt for Toralf) just people who were going to sleep there that night, that means (Clemens, Lydia, Timo, Sandra, Conny, Meli and Christian were already in bed) Toralf, Salmomè, Thea, Lisa and I were still there and evenetually DJ came too due to certain issues. We had a good time once again with the black light, the pen and my camera until around 4ish when DJ left and shortly ther after Toralf. Thereafter Thea went inside to bed and then Lisa and I both went inside because at least I was cold and Salomè held out the rest of the night and morning outside (good she had a little more clothes on and had a makeshift blanket).

Saturday morning Lisa got picked up by her mom at about 8.00 because she is helping the whole week at a kids Christian camp, but she got the night free so she could come see me again. The rest of the morning was cleaning up (this time for real including chairs and lights) and then I slept for a couple of hours and then helped Christain take the bottles and cans back to the grocery store to get the Pfand (money back that you pay for the bottle on top of the contence). Oh and Thea got the last Harry Potter book in the mail so she tried reading that, to little avail due to sleep deprevation. Then we had dinner and watched a movie and went to bed.


Saturday morning was REALLY hard.

Today I woke up at 13.30 had "breakfast" and have spent the rest of the time working on this entry. Toralf should show up pretty soon so we can hang for a little bit before I have a quiet family night with my host family before my parents come tomorrow!

-Scott

P.S. I'll try to update again before we leave Friday morning.

7:59pm: "Freunde sind wie Sterne. Du kannst sie nicht immer sehen, aber sie sind immer da."
Don't forget to check back on my last update!!! I finished it!!!

Another week come and gone, time is really flying now that it's coming down to it. Everything here is fairly quickly described, but that's just kind of how things's are feeling for me. Wednesday was my last day of classes. Thursday, Friday and Monday I helped test the 5th grade on their English by reading passages to them and asking questions or just asking questions pertaining to pictures. Thursday was very very exhasting because I read the same page long text to 50 kids an average of 2 times each... then I had to explain it because almost no one understood it... bleh, 5 hours without a break... At least Friday and Monday went better.

Friday evening I went to Sommernächte (there was a stage set up in the park where a bunch of different dance groups preformed) with Lisa. It was really intersting to see the different kinds of dance groups here in Burgdorf including hip-hop, unicycle, and something somewhat midevil. That went for about an hour and a half and then after the small fireworks show (15-20 variety boxes set off in a sqzare at different intervals) we walked around a bit and then eventually walked her home. The stars were amazing, I don't think I've ever seen so many stars outside a planetarium (or inside of one for that matter). Because it was late and I was completely exhausted by the time we got there I ended up sleeping there and taking the train home the next morning.

The rest of Saturday consisted of trying to stay cool and then getting ready for my second years end ball which almost all of the Thees visited (Timo came into town Friday evening but didn't attend the ball). This ball went pretty much like the last one except I was officially a guest and I ended up spending more time with family. I wasn't too thrilled to be there because it was in the 80's and I was sitting there in a suit and then dancing... I was very hot.


From left to right: Clemens, Lydia, Conny, Meli, Christain, Thea, me and Salomè


Hey, ya gotta have a little fun.

Sunday was just as warm as Saturday so Clemens, Timo, Conny, Meli, Salomè and I went to a lake nearby and went swimming and layed on towels in the shade while listening to music. Afterwards we watched "How High" a movie about a couple of potheads who get into harvard, pretty funny if you have the right sense of humor.

Monday evening I went to Toralf's and hung out with Julian and jammed a bit, watched a movie and then we slept there. It was so increadibly hot and impossible to sleep... oh well, I had fun.

Today we woke up at 9.00 or 9.30 and Vio was already there. We had breakfast and then drove to school where we were supposed to have a class meeting, but as we arrived we found out that it'd been moved to tomorrow. so we went back to Toralf's and hung out a bit more, then I went home for lunch and then napped a little to get ready for the party at Lukas' tonight which may or may not actually be happening. At any rate I'm going to head over to Toralf'S again to hang out.

Tomorrow's the last day of school!!!!

-Scott

3:21am: Vacation and the end of school (yes, in that order)
Ok, so I've got to strain my brain a little bit, but I think I'll be able to remember most of the details... I'm going to start out with Friday the 8th and go from there. You may find it helpful to refer to my map

Friday I was at Toralf's for a while and we just kind of tinked around with our guitars and came up with a pretty good riff and ended up turning it into the start of a song, so I felt pretty accomplished as I left. I then proceded home and showered and got dressed for the ball. Yep, since we finished 8 dance lesseons and have learned the basics we get to prove it by dancing in a ball. Around 19.00 I arrived at the dance school and met up with my dance partner and we had pictures taken and everything and at 20.00 it started. After the entrance and the first couple of dances that were just for the students (parents were also there and a number of other youth who just wanted to attend a ball and dance) everyone was allowed to dance with anybody. Over the span of the evening there were a couple of preformances from other dance classes such as the Hip-Hop dance class which is the biggest and best in all of Germany (over 300 students [and that's really something comming from Burgdorf]). At any rate I got to dance with several girls that I'd met at school and finally got the chance to talk with them a little bit. There was also a portion where the students got a chance to dance with their parents, it was exceedingly interesting to see how the kids reflected their parents (or not). That went until 12.30 and then we headed home.


Me dancing with Thea.


Me, my dance partner Sonja, her friend Charlotte and her dance partner Daniel.

Saturday I was at Toralf's for an hour or two so we could work a bit on one of our new songs. From there I rode to the train station and met up with Thea, Christian, Conny, Meli, Salomè and several members of the VVV Theater group who were in Burgdorf at the time and we took a train into Hannover for their anual bbq. In the train we had fun with my camera and we ended up sitting next to a group of men who were basically having a bachler's party (you can see them in the video, they're pretty hard to miss). When we got into Hannover and took the subway to the bbq, the Thees family (and those who came with them [including Clemens and Lydia who were there for an hour or so]) pretty much stayed in their own group on the grass a bit aways from the rest of the group. None of us were all that much in the mood for a bbq, so we ended up not staying too long, meaning we left around 21.00. After that we drove home and I got dropped off at the train station to pick up my bike (because unlike the others I rode my bike to the train station), rode home and then relatively quickly left again, this time riding to Lisa's house in Arpke to hang out with her and a couple of her friends for a couple of hours before riding an hour through the woods to get home around 3.00 at which time I proceeded to pack my bags for my big trip for a week with Thea.


Salomè made a great face and I was just able to catch it in a picture.


We pulled up our piece of lawn. (And then Meli and Salomè let out some extra energy [watch the video

Sunday morning I threw the last couple of things together and then in the car and after having breakfasted Christian, Thea and I drove into Hannover so I could experience a little bit of the largest Schutzenfest in the world. We only stayed long enough to watch about an hour of the paraide, but that still gave a very impressive... impression. Christian then took the train home and Thea and I started our drive down to Frankfurt. Sadly, the traffic was pretty bad so we didn't get into Frankfurt until around 18.00. Ok. it wasn't really Frankfurt, more the suburbs because that's where a couple of friends of Thea (Thomas, Claudia and their four kids) live and we stayed with them for our stay in Frankfurt. After having dinner I tinkered around on their piano a little before the kids went to bed. Then we sat around and talked over a glass of traditional Frankfurter sparkeling apple wine.

Monday morning after sleeping in a little bit we borrowed a better map of the Frankfurt area and drove in the sunshine down to Rüdesheim which is appearently one of the tourist towns in Germany. We arrived around noon and walked around for a while just soaking up the tourism. We were mistaken by multiple groups of people for locals. After a while we nabbed a boat tour down the Rhein a little bit to a small town called Assmanshausen where we took a chairlift up to a plataue on the hills on the Rhein. Once on the plataue we took a trail in back in the direction of Rüdesheim and found some nice outlooks and came on a monument to one of the German Kaisers. After having walked and seen enough we took another lift (this one was more like a ferris-wheel seat) down to Rüdesheim and walked to the car. On the way down we'd noticed that the clouds were coming in quickly and they weren't very friendly looking. As soon as we reached the car and Thea realized she didn't have enough coins on her to pay the parking meter and left to buy a bottle of shampoo for change it started to rain. First off it was just a little shower but it turned quickly into a complete downpour! So I'm sitting in the car (which is still blistering hot from sitting in the sun all day) in the parking and I'm watching it just rain and I could see the water flowing down the slope of the parkinglot like it was the Reihn itself. It was really amazing. And after 15 minutes it was sunny again. On the way back into Frankfurt we stopped at an abby which was supposed to be really nice and have tours and stuff, however when we got there we saw that the last tour started at 18.00 and it was 18.15... So we just walked around the grounds. It was really nicely kept up, you could see that because they were renovating... Oh well, it was still nice. Then we drove back into Frankfurt had dinner with Claudia, Thomas and the kids talked for a while afterwards and then went to bed.


Rüdesheim and the hills of the Rhein.


Assmanshausen


The Rhein from above.


Here's the monument.

Tuesday it rained. We went to a Roman museum. The building itself was rebuilt on the foundations of an old Roman camp. There were lots of different things to see like the technology of the era, the toys, the clothes, the military, pretty much everything. The day was kind of doomed to fail from the start. First off, the weather didn't play along, second Thea and I were both pretty tired and third, there were at least a half dozen school groups there with tours so where ever you went you couldn't read the cards without being interrupted by either loud kids or a guide explaining something else. Oh well, it was still interesting. We did end up making it a short day though. We got back to Frankfurt at around 15.00 and had the house to ourselfs because Claudia had gone to the pool with the kids and Thomas was still at work, so I took a nap and then read and then we Thea and I played a few games until they got home, then we had dinner and went to bed.

Wednesday (4th of July) was a little better weatherwise. We left Fankfurt with our stuff around 9.00 and drove once again southwards towards Freiberg. We got into town in the early afternoon and looked for a place to stay and eventually got a room in a youth hostel. After taking alook at the town we headed over to check in and get our things out of the car and after having that accomplished, Thea just wanted to rest for a bit, so I went for a walk on the trails behind the hostel. After about 45 minutes of just kind of going where the wind would take me I found myself in front of a small chaple on a ridge. Sadly it was locked so I wasn't able to go in, but it was still cool so see from the outside. At that point I figured I should probably be heading back so that we could head into town for dinner. While heading down (on a different trail than I took up) I found a kind of porch swing without a house just sitting there with an amazing outlook. It was very cool, I'd probably have stayed longer, but the weather was starting to tell me to move on. As I neared the hostel the clouds closed and it started to rain. I apted for a more treed path to stay out of the rain and take a more direct route. After arriving back at the hostel we headed back into town and looked for a place to celebrate the 4th of July. We found some random bar and grill with a special of Argentinian steak with potatoes and pepper sauce. That was great, my first steak in Germany. After finishing that off we headed for an Irish pub and had a Guiness before heading back to the hostel and hitting the sack.


The chaple.


The porch swing.

Thursday we packed our stuff and drove down to the Titisee. This was one of Thea's must see's because there's a really bad German folk song about the Titisee and the birds there who are always eating the stuff from the bottem of the lake so their tails are in the air... Yeah... Anyways the weather was really cruddy and the few birds that we did see were all huddeling on the beach trying to keep warm... Oh well. We visited a really cool clock store that had coockoo clocks, huge grandfather clocks, as well as modern art clocks and barock clocks. We then headed out and went for a two hour walk through the woods and then drove on to Feldberg which is the highest mountain in the Black Forrest. We reached the ski resorts, chairlift and nature museum as it was raining. I thought I'd try to make the best of it and headed out into the rain to see if I could make it to the top of the mountain with the chair lift. After finding the nature museum and then walking to the lifts I found that the rain was getting worse and that you couldn't see more than 1000ft or so, so going to the top of the mountain wasn't all that appealing anymore, plus the ride to the top costed more than €6...So I turned back and pretty soaked got back into the car. We drove farther and found the highest natural waterfall in Germany and took a walk on the trail that went along side and over the waterfall. After getting back to the car we drove to the next town and stopped at the first place that had a vacancy. It was a nice little private place. The main thing was a warm shower and something warm to eat, and we got that there.


The Titisee.


The waterfall.

Friday morning we drove down to Burg Rötteln where we were able to walk around and go through the ruins of a castle. We were also able to climb the towers. Even though the weather was kinda nasty there were a lot of opertunities to take pictures and just enjoy ones self. After having finished with Burg Rötteln we drove over the Rhein into Village-Nauf in France where Thea's sister-in-law lives with Thea's nephew. So we got there and had lunch and then promptly left for "Cité de l'Automobile - Collection Schlumpf" (www.culturespaces.com) which was a car museum consisting of the collection of the brothers Schlumpf. There were several hundered cars there including many Bugattis, the first Mercedes and much more. It was pretty cool. After coming out we drove to the first hydroelectric dam (ever?) which is still working on the Rhein between Germany and France. It's very interesting because there are two long islands that run along the length the Rhein at that point so in essence there are three different rivers. One is blocked by the hydroelectric dam, the second by locks and the third is open. We walked accross the dam and then the locks onto the large island that is pretty much in the middle of the river meaning that it's officially no man's land. Here we were able to take a nice walk becaues the weather had decided it wanted to get nicer. Then we watched a couple of ships come through the locks and then drove back to Chantal's (Theas sister-in law) house and had dinner and went to bed.


Even the first Mercedes was luxury.


Like the hat?


Chantal and Thea on the locks.

Saturday we ate a huge French/German breakfast consisting of bread, jam, cold cuts, and French baked goods and then we hit the road for Bonn to meet up with Benny, a friend of Clemens and the Thees family. Before driving back into Germany I drove into Neuf-Brisach. Yep this day being my first day as a free man (free of my exchange programs and its limitations) I got my first real chance to drive a manual car. After stalling three or four times I eventually got the car onto the road and everything went well if not a little unsmoothely. At any rate we made it into Neuf-Brisach, a town in France that is completely geometrically layed out and still lies within it's midevil city wall. Very... interesting... though I wouldn't want to live there. Then Thea drove the rest of the way to Bonn and we got the tour of Benny's frat. It's not really a frat in the way American universities have frats, but the brotherhood goes back a couple hundred years. Since not all the rooms are being used we got our own room with a couple of cots and blankets. One thing that was very interesting about this house is that on the ground floor (which pretty much acts like a basement) there's a fencing room. This isn't for the normal kind of fencing, but a more... I don't really know how to differenciate it, but there was a 10ft x 4ft x 1ft pit for it. This kind of fencing is the frat's kind of trademark. After having had the grand tour we went into Bonn and visited Rheinkultur which was a huge music festival in the park. There were multiple stages with different genres of music being played simultainiously and seas and seas of people. After a couple of hours of walking around I was completely worn out and we went back to Benny's place and went to bed.


Neuf-Brisach's city wall.


Me dressed to fence.


The seas of people.

Sunday morning we walked through Bonn and Benny showed us a few of the more interesting things in Bonn including the house Beethoven was born in and a couple of the buildings of the University where Benny is studying. Then we grabbed our things and drove home.


The house where Beethoven was born.

Today was Tuesday. School's started to wind down. Today we had one period of Math, two periods of Physics and that was pretty much it, in the other three periods I ended up playing a lot of chess. After school I had PE where my teacher had an observer in to watch how she's doing (because this was her first year) and for that reason was class a little different than usual, but still fun. Today I had all four of my classes for the last time because on Thursday, Friday and Monday I'm helping test 5th graders on their English, Tuesday we don't even have class, and Wednesday (the last day) we're having breakfast, and then that was it for school. After sport I spent a lot of time uploading pictures and videos and I taught Thea how to burn CDs. Then I watched the first hour or so of Harry Potter 4, had dinner and then Lisa came over and we hung out for a couple of hours before going to see the pre-premire of Harry Potter 5 in the theater with Christian, Thea and Conny at 0.05. I liked it better than the fourth movie, but maybe that's because I only read the 5th book twice and that's been a couple of years, so I don't remember all of the little details they left out. At any rate I liked it and now I'm at home hoping that I'll get a little bit of rest before tomorrow.


Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix.

-Scott

10:03am: Schutzenfest to Birthday and beyond!
This weekend was Schutzenfest in Burgdorf, well, Thursday through Sunday. Schutzenfest was originally a celebration of the town protectors/army/minute men, but now it's more of a celebration to recognize the people who are in the "Schutzen Verein".

Thursday evening Clemens and I met Lisa at the train station and we walked to the "Schutzenplatz" where the food and game stands were set up allong with a huge biergarten in a huge tent. After standing under an awning of a snack booth (because it was raining the whole time) for a half an hour until Toralf, Julian, Vio and Reike showed up. After that we walked around a little bit, then went for a few rides on the bumper cars and then it was about time to bring Lisa back to the train station because she had to be home by 22.00 (it was a school night). We got back to Schutzenfest and walked around a little more and soon it was time to send Reike off on her way because she too had to be home by 22.00. Julian and Vio didn't stay all that much longer and eventually Toralf, Clemens and I walked home (because we live pretty close to Schutzenplatz) to go to the bathroom and pick up some drinks because everything is super expensive at Schutzenfest (just like any of the other fests I've visited here or a fair back home). When we got back to Schutzenfest we met up with Christine and Kirsten from school and spent time with them until about midnight or so and then headed home.

On Friday, Vio, Julian, Toralf, Bambi and I met up at a grocery store at around 20.00 to pick up a few things and then headed off to "Pferdemarkt" (a large partially grassy strip of land used for a kind of farmers market) to hang for a while. After a while we decided to head over to Schutzenfest (just across the street), we met up with a few people (including an Australian exchange student) Vio and Bambi went on a couple of rides, we then continued on and went back to the Pferdermarkt and had fun with glow sticks that we found and then around 3.00 we made our way home.

Conny had invited me to come to a movie night with Meli (at Meli's house) and after hearing that Lisa had a free night with nothing to do I invited her too. So I picked her up from the train station at 18.30 and we rode our bikes to Hänigsen (a town about 8 km from Burgdorf where Meli lives) and got there sometime between 19.00 and 19.30 and started with the first movie pretty quickly. We ended up staying until 3.00 and watched NVA (National Volks Armee [a movie about a couple of soldiers in the army in the old DDR]), Secret Window, South Park The Movie, Bang Boom Bang, and a couple of episodes of Invader Zim. Around midnight we congratulated Conny because Sunday was his 17th birthday! After having finished the movies, Conny stayed at Meli's and then Lisa and I rode back to Burgdorf (she may have gone home but the trains don't run past 1.00). We talked for an hour or so and then Clemens came home from a birthday party and the three of us talked for another hour or so until Clemens got to the point where he was not really awake enough to hold a conversation and he went to bed. After hanging around a bit more and listening to music Lisa and I eventually also went to bed (so around 5.30 or 6.00).

Sunday we got up at 11.30 and had breakfast and then took Lisa to the train station so she could get home. Shortly thereafter I went to the Schutzenfest paraide in Burgdorf with Christian and Thea and got to see a lot of people in uniforms that I didn't know... I may have enjoyed it a little more if I hadn't been so tired. Then I got back and kind of slept on one of the chairs in my room for a couple of hours and then helped with Conny's birthday dinner (well at least with washing up because the cooking was already done). Then Lydia came and after we'd eaten Meli came too. After dinner we watched "Der Wixxer" which is a movie that paradies many bad old crimis (I don't know what the ganre is called in English but crimi is short for criminal... you get the idea).


That's pretty much what the paraide look like.

Monday was a very... abnormal day for me, 1. Conny went with his class to Berlin for a week (and will be back in an hour or so) and 2. all of my classes were essentially cancled, so I got to catch up on the sleep I didn't get on the weekend. Then I had my bass lesson and went over to Toralf's and hung out.

Tuesday I had the normal six periods and then went home for lunch then went back to school for PE and then came home quickly and showered and my YFU mentors came over for their last visit

Wednesday was also interesting... (this whole week has been interesting) first and second periods were Art where we finally got do do some drawing and let out our creative juices unlike the rest of the year where we were learning art history and theory. My Chemistry teacher came a good 20 minutes late and then just talked and meckered about random things (incliding our principal) until the end of the first period and then we had another 15 minute break (not normal) and then watched some random video that was kinf of geared towards Physics... and then the fire alarm went off. No fire drill, this was the so called "Abi Streich" where the graduationg class (who's been done with their classes and exams for over a couple of months now) gets to blow off steam and plan a school wide party. I'd heard about this but I didn't really know what to expect. As I exited the building I was pounced upon and had "ABI '07" written on my cheecks with lipstick and then got squirted by squirt guns. The whole school was then led to the soccer field where there was a small stage set up and music playing. For the following two hours they had a few games and things set up such as a fire hose pump contest for the teachers, a sack race for the teachers and younger students, a game where you put a potato on a spoon you're holding in your mouth and then you have to race with it, and little cars to race with. Even though it rained every once in a while, it was cool and fun.


The stage, plus graduates with squirt guns.


Christine with her potato


Jörn pusching Badde and Alex pushing Sebi.


Jörn and Badde take the lead!


Oops!

Thursday 1st and 2nd periods were canceled so I got to sleep in. Then I had German and Physics and went home for lunch then quickly hopped on my bike and rode to Lisa's and we hung out for a couple of hours before she had to go and sing for her chior. I got home around 18.20 quickly had some dinner and then went with Christian to Hannover to play Badminton. Normally I play here in Burgdorf but Christian sometimes goes to Hannover for a change of faces and energy. There we met up with a couple of girls that he sometimes plays against and gives a little advice to. It was a lot more fun than I'd had with badminton in a long time because I didn't have to wait for a court and the two girls are relatively new to badminton so we weren't playing competatively and it was just fun! Afterwards we drove back to Burgdorf and met up with Thea in the Celtic Inn to have a drink and just hang out for a bit. Through the typicality of Burgdorf we saw one of me teamers from my going home preperation thing with YFU and talked with her for a little bit and then Thea saw an old student of hers and we talked with her and her friend until we left for home at around midnight.

Today is Friday and I've only had two periods and school is now over. Just in case I don't get a chance to update tomorrow, I'll tell you my plans now. Tonight I've got my ball for my dance course, tomorrow I've got a party with the drama group and then things really get going. Sunday Thea and I are going to visit Schutzenfest in Hannover and then drive down to Frankfurt and then take the week to drive down to France and visit a couple of her relatives and just see a little bit more of Germany. So if you try to contact me in the next week, just know that I'm not going to be able to answer. After that week I've got one more full week of school, then three more days and then school's over. Then I've got a half a week until my parents come and then two weeks before I'm home again! Then 11 days at home and then college in Colorado! Time is starting to fly!

-Scott

11:15pm: Birthday party
Friday evening was a very abnormal evening. At one point we had 10 youthsin the house and no adults, and there was no party. Timo and Clemens came into town for the weekend because they decided to celebrate their birthdays together and as the planning came allong two other people decided to join up, Reike and a friend of Timo's. All day Friday there was a lot of preperation going on: buying food, preparing food, last minute planning etc. Around 20.00 Thea and Christain went into Hannover to see a play and Timo had a couple of people over to plan and hang out, same with Clemens and then Conny and I went upstairs to start our Alien marathon and eventually Toralf joined us. Sadly we only made it through the first two movies because we started late and they were longer than we'd originally thought, but except for Timo (who I think has only seen the second movie) I think everyone liked the first movie better. So I eventually made it to bed at around 1.00 or so, maybe a little later.

Saturday. I slept until 11.00 or so knowing I'd need the sleep. Pretty much the whole day consisted of setting up, except when I went out with Toralf, Vio and Julian to do some last minute shopping. We arrived shortly after 20.00 when the party was officially supposed to start and there were already a handfull of people there. Luckely after having rained a good part of the day, the skies cleared in time to let the ground dry before everyone came. Over the course of the night there were at least 50 people here, mostly in the backyard due to space, seating and the grill. I knew more than have to people there at least from sight and/name and didn't have problems finding people to talk with. Without getting into the details, some of the last people left around 3.30-4.00 and I ended up staying outside on a bench as a pillow/blanket for Lisa who had had the choice either to take the train at 23.00 that evening or wait until morning, she waited until morning. I nodded off a couple of times for a couple of minutes but then the sun started to rise so I gave up on sleep and started with waking the remaning people, having breakfast and before 8.00 there were 3 of us already cleaning up.

So I've already started with Sunday... the rest of the day consisted of cleaning up the yard and living/dining room, watching/sleeping through Alien 3 and then sleeping. I went to bed at 16.00, was woken up at 19.00 for dinner, went back to bed at 20.45 woke up awain at 6.45 for school ate breakfast and got a call saying that 1st and 2nd periods were canceled so I went back to sleep for another two hours and finally went to school at 10.20.

Today was Wednesday which means I had Art 1st and 2nd periods. For the first time this whole year we're ahead of schedule in a class. We've completed everything needed for 12th grade Art, so (after seeing our Art skills) our teacher decided she'd work on some drawing skills with us. So today we got a couple of drawing assignments to complete during the period! That was the most fun I've had in Art the whole year, and was more what I'd expected out of an Art class. Tomorrow's Schutzenfest!

-Scott

P.S. sadly I didn't really take any pictures in the last week.

3:27pm: Kirchentag (church day) (technically Deutsche Evangelisch Kirchentag)
Last week was very short for me. I was at school for Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday morning we (Christiann, Thea, Clemens and I) met at one of the curches in Burgdorf with our luggage to meet up with a group of people who were also heading to Köln for Kirchentag and we took a charter bus (Click here to find out where Köln is). After finally leaving Burgdorf at 11.00 we drove and drove and drove. Considering it was a Wednesday morning there was a lot of traffic (true it was a holliday in North Reihn Westphalia (the state in which Köln lies in) but still. A normally 4-5 hour drive took us.... a lot longer. Luckely I was sitting next to Clemens and behind us sat the rest of the youths that came out of Burgdorf including Eva and Lisa who kept themselves (as well as us) entertained by trying to communicate with the other people stuck in traffic with signs and after the traffic finally cleared up Lisa pulled out her guitar and played some tunes and then gave it to one of the young hearted adults who played some songs that a group of us sang to. It made the drive seem a lot shorter. The bus dropped us off somewhere in the outscirts of Köln at a train station because it would have taken hours until we got to the main train station in the bus. I think that was about 16.30 or so. From there we took a bus to the house where we'd be staying the four nights.

Let me tell you a litle bit about the lagistics of Kirchentag. It happens once every two years in a major city in Germany (2005 was Hannover) and attracts Christians from all over Germany and the world. In the five days there are many different planned activities that one can take part in such as different seminars and workshops in pretty much any field you can think of hosted by professors or specialists in their prospective fields (fields such as music, art, the Bible, islam, nanotechnology, etc.). There were also numerous concerts from known and unkown artists and bands. All of these things were free when you'd paid your entrance fee for the whole Kirchentag, you got a ticket with your name on it that acted as an entrance card for all of the different attractions and was also used as a train and bus ticket to get anywhere in the greater Köln area in those five days, because although a lot of the workshops and things were in the convention center (a massive 14 building complex) there were many many things that weren't really accessable by foot (or if they were it'd take a couple of hours to get there). Having 110.000 people in a city for five days isn't exactly easy. Lots of the youth groups ended up sleeping in schools or churchs, while familes either stayed in hotels, with friends, or like us with a family the Kirchentag people hooked us up with.

So now you've got a little better idea of what Kirchentag is, I'll continue. After taking the bus we arrived in the town we'd be staying in and met our host who drove us to his home where we'd be staying. He was in 60's as was his wife so their two sons had already finished school and moved out so we got to stay in their old rooms. Our hosts were very nice, though we didn't see all that much of them because we left before 8.00 and got back after 24.00 every day, but they were very nice about breakfast. After we'd arrived we dropped off our stuff, grabbed a little something to eat and then went to the train station to take a train into Köln (about 20 minutes away) to meet Timo to look around the first night (even though we'd missed the opening service that started at 18.30. After walking around and seeing lots and lots of people as well as a bunch of stands, we eventually made our way to the river where the majority of the people who were in Köln were for a little bit of candlelight singing. (I'm having a really hard time remembering which words are compound words in English because there are so many of them in German...). Then after the singing and candles were over we made our way to the train station to get back to where we were staying. Unfortunately several thousand people had the same idea (not all at the same station, but still) and the entrances to the stations were packed to the point police were only letting 50 or so people in at a time so that the platforms wouldn't get to crowded. After feeling like a combination of a sheep and a sardine we eventually made it onto the platform and waited a while for our train. The first train that came through (it wasn't heading for our town) was completely packed. People were literally standing in the doorways of the trains pushing with their whole weight against all of the other passangers so that the doors would be able to close. That's pretty much how it went every night, fortunately our train had plenty of space and the four of us (Timo caught a train back to Krefeld each night because it was only about 45 minutes away) were able to sit comfortabley together.


Clemens and/or Timo found this stone on the ground behind the Köln cathedral: "This may be a place of historical importance"


The cathedral as dusk came


They decorated one of the bridges for Kirchentag.

From here on I'm just going to touch on some highlights, because so much went on I don't want to have to type it all out. Since it was around 30° everyday, so shade and water were of high demand. One of the days Thea and I decided that we'd join a large group of people who'd decided to cool off in the large fountain next to the cathedral. As for the orange clothes/scarfs that you'll be seeing in that picture, if you donated 2€ to the Kirchentag you got a very orange cloth that pretty much everyone from Kirchentag was sporting (in one way or another). We also went to the top of the cathedral tower and got an overview of the city. One night Clemens and I went back with Timo to meet with a few of his friends and then we slept there in his appartment. I also attended a couple of concerts including "The Wise Guys" who are a funny modern Christain accapella group and Arson, a hard rock/metal Christian band (who I'd never heard of beforhand, but liked, so I bought a CD).


Cooling off (if you look in the bottem right corner there's a crate of beer).


The city seems never to end.

The last day (Sunday) we packed up our belongings and headed early into Köln for the closing service while Christian took our bags up to the bus, where for some reason he couldn't come back from... The closing service was huge. There were at least 70.000 people there on one very large lawn singing and listening to the readings and serman and then the Wise Guys afterwards. I don't know that I've ever seen so many people in one place. After that'd finished we walked a couple of kilometers up to the bus wich took about 40 minutes... There was a lot of people traffic. After reaching the bus a little after 13.00 we waited for the last couple of people to show up and then we drove off. After a relatively short 4 hour drive consisting of conversing with, playing cards with and singing with Eva and Lisa on the bus we arrived home at 18.30 to find Conny with a few friends from the school newspaper group in the backyard, some more sober than others. Lets just say that instead of showering, unpacking and going to bed I ended up spending the evening (along with the rest of us) trying to sober up certain corpses in the backyard.


I was kind of in the middle of the mass, though probably a little bit farther back. There were a lot of people.

Today I'm looking forward to an Alien movie marathon (all 4 movies one after the other) and then a birthday party tomorrow. That will be especially interesting because it's celebrating 4 birthdays: Timo (23), Clemens (20), Reike (15) and ????? (??). At any rate there are going to be a lot of people here tomorrow night. It's going to be great!

-Scott

4:13pm: Rocking in park and on the road again.
Yep, Saturday evening was Rock im Park. I suppose I should explain what it is. Yes we were in a park and yes we did hear rock music, but it was in the city park behind city hall #3 (Burgdorf has multiple city halls...) and was organized by the same people who did Spring Rock, No Sleep Until Christmas and whatever the concert in september was called. They set up a stage and a few stands with beer and pizza and allowed free entrance. It was origonally supposed to start at 16.00 but one band from Hannover said at the last minute that they couldn't come, so there were a lot of people standing around for more than a half an hour waiting for something to happen until the first band showed up and played an hour or so of Rammstein songs, some with cotumes including "Keine Lust" with fat suits, just like the music video (as seen here). After them played "No Education" then "Gauntlet", "Muff" and finally "Engelhai". At the beginning I kind of hung out with Clemens and a couple of his friends and then a bunch of people from my class showed up and we spend most of the rest of the time together until the concert ended a little after 23.00 when a lot of people left, then Toralf and I met up with Lydia and Clemens, and Clemens went off for a little bit so the three of us talked for a while. Then an old friend of Toralf's showed up and we talked with her for a while, Clemens showed up again and the five of us walked home, had a little bit to eat and drink and then Toralf brought his friend to the train station to catch her bus and the rest of us went to bed.



While Gauntlet was playing, the a couple people from the first band came up with their fat suits on and stage dived.


Patrick decided he didn't want to pay a fortune for pizza at the concert, so he brought his trusty camping pocket knife, a spoon and a half kilo can of ravioli with him and ate it cold.

Sunday we (Christian, Thea, Lydia, Clemens and I) met Lydia's family (mom, step-father [Dirk] and half-sister [Carolin]) at the Whale. The Whale is a very liberal Evangelical church near Hannover that was built in the shape of a whale. We attended the service (which inlcuded the church's own live band [electric drums, electric bass, accoustic guitar and two female singers) and an excerpt from Goethe's "Faust" amung other things. After the service we ate lunch at the church (which is normal for this church) and then went our seperate ways. Christian and Thea went back home and the rest of us went to Clemens and Lydia's new appartment! Yep, they bought an appartment and moved in together. We brought a few things with us such as bikes and dishes. We helped carry the things in and then had coffee and then Lydia's family went home. I however stayed a little bit longer and spent a little bit more time with them, then they tried to figure out how to get to work the next morning (which was a little bit more difficult because their Hannover map was in Lydia's car which was sitting in the parking lot at their work...). After not comming to the same conclusion we set out and in the process (pourposely) got me to the train station so I could get home. It was only then as I was sitting on the train that I remembered that I'd wanted to take some pictures... Needless to say, I don't have any pictures at the mement.

Monday I had school, ate lunch and then rode to Toralf's house to pick up my bass and amp and to meet Toralf and Violetta to walk to our new drummer's house, where we had band rehersal. We played a lot more than we normally do (about 2-2,5 hours). We had to end at about 17.30 so Toralf could make it to his guitar lesson and so Violetta could meet a friend. Since I had nothing more planned, Toralf suggested that I come with him and see if I could arrange bass lessons. So we had our lesson together, talked to his teacher a bit and now I've got lessons at 17.30 on Mondays in June!

One last thing to remark. Tomorrow I leave for Köln. "Kirchentag" (lit: church day) is a Wedmesday-Sunday affair for Christians (and actually anyone who wants to take part) to attend different workshops, speaches, chruch services, etc. It should be very interesting and very exhausting. So tomorrow we leave Burgdorf at 10.30 on a bus for Köln... 5 hours on a bus... that'll be great, maybe I can sleep a bit... But still, I'm pretty excited and interested to see how it's going to turn out. Well, I should get to packing and showering (I just played an hour and a half of soccer in PE).

-Scott

10:20am: Dresden
Friday pretty much directly after school with bags already packed, Christian, Thea and I hit the road for Dresden. After six hours of cruddy traffic we finally arrived at the same backpakcer/hostel as we stayed in on the first of Advent. We quickly go things unpacked, showered and then set off again for an old school friend of Christians who lives in Dresden. We were met warmly by Uwe and his partner Thomas and were quickly given soup and everyone started catching up (because they hadn't heard from oneanother for over two years) We ended up talking about a buisness idea that Thea's had for a while and since Uwe and Thomas are both bank representatives, Thea wanted to see if her idea of a vegitatian restaraunt in Burgdorf would sink or swim. To them it sounded like a swimmer so in the next couple of years Burgdorf may have a new vegitatian restaraunt.


The view from Uwe's appartment.

Saturday we started our bike tour. We set out late morning and rode accross the Elbe and then rode along a bike trail that goes pretty much from the north sea all the way along the Elbe passed Prague. Needless to say we didn't ride the whole trail this weekend. We did ride about 40 km in the southeastward direction to visit Schloß Pilnitz and a town called Pirna (chex the map for orientation). I don't know the exact figures because we didn't have a thermometer with us, but it probably got up to about 30°C (88°F) that day so when we were ready for lunch we found a speck of shade under a couple of alders on the bank of the Elbe and enjoyed being out of the sun for a little bit. I was still warm so I went wading in the river. I've never experienced a river so big yet so warm (for those of you who are aquainted with the Wenatchee River, it's about that wide, but a lot calmer and a lot warmer). I eventually decided to just go swimming which was kind of frusterating because no matter how far I swam out when I swam against the current (or with it for that matter) I always ended up hitting something with my foot and then I'd pause and try to tread water just to realize the water was only theigh deep... Don't get me wrong it did get deep in places, I just think I didn't want me. Anyways at one point we saw a rather large raft come floating down (about 10-12 people on board) and at one point while I was standing in the shallows and I casueally looked upstream to notice a white box floating towards me as if by water mail. I looked at it for a moment trying to figure out what it was and then just picked it up. It was a styrofome box (about 4x4x3 inches) with a lable in German that translated read "Canadian rain worms" I opened it up and there were about a half dozen big ol' fatty fishing worms and some dirt inside! So if you ever have to explain to a little kid where babies come from, here's proof, at least baby canadian worms come from the Elbe). After lunch we rode on toSchlß Pilnitz (for those of you who have been or are now wondeing, the "ß" is called an "s-set" and is pronounsed liked an "ss" and was origninally fromed from the two different s's from the old German handwriting style as shown here). At any rate Schloß Pilnitz was a gaming palace for August the Strong made mostly out of sandstone and painted with illusions make it look like it had fancy designs without having to actually carve or form them to save money. While we were there the weather started catching up with us. We saw the dark dark clouds comming in from the west and after taking a walkabout on the grounds we decided to make haste and ride to our next destination: Pirna. We successfully beat the bad weather to Pirna. But then through indecisiveness... We ended up ordering drinks at two different cafés to stay at least a little dry as the heavens dumped the Elbe on us along with thunder lightning, etc. After the rain had pretty much given up we headed back outside to visited the local church (which was our main attraction) to find out that it'd closed while we were in the second café... unlucky. Then we rode back the the backpacker and chilled for the rest of the evening.


That is a serious raft.


Picturesk


My computer's attempt at a panorama... Yeah, it got pretty dark pretty fast.


Yep it's time to go...

Sunday morning Thea's body wasn't too pleased about the idea of getting back on a bike, so we opted for heading further eastwards into a nature park where we were able to see the more sandstoney and elevated portion of the eastern Elbe. We drove for a while and eventually ended up parking on the side of the road´we planned on visiting "Königstein", but found a couple of hiking trails and spent the day walking/hiking around. The first trail let to the top of a small sandstone mountain where we ate lunch and enjoyed the sunshine. Then we headed back down and went farther eventually comming into a town on the Elbe where we were confronted with a trail ride (horses) through the town. Instead of going all the way to the Elbe, we decided to take the trail that lead to a nature park house by a waterfall. By the time we got there, it was getting dark because the rain clouds were rollnig in again. luckely it didn'T rain too much and when it did rain we were under cover. At this natur park house, there was a waterfall (just uphill from the building) which (if you payed €0,30) would be turned on. Upstream they had blocked it up so that it normally just dribbled, but if you payed theyed basically push a button that sent water rushing down for three seconds or so... Kind of a cheesey concept, but whateever. After seeing the waterfall we went a little bit further uphill just to look around. Then we turned back and found another trail that lead through some cool rock tunnels and small canyons and (wiht the help of stairs) let up to a lookout. What was really interesting (well besides the fact that I didn't really relaize what we were going to be doing that day and since it was warm I had warm flip flops and ended up taking them off after a while because I wanted to do some climbing, so I was running [at times literally running] around bearfoot) was that at the lookout we could hear an opera!!! There was appearently a stage in the forrest below us and there was an opera playing at that time. It was really cool to hear (and to see how people had congrigated allong the mountain tops to look out and listen in!. AFter that we headed back to the car and drove back to our room to shower and then head off to dinner at bar and grill kind of place to meet Timo who had been in Dresden visiting one of his friends who is going to college there.


This is pretty much what we hiked up at the beginning of the day


Me on the top with flip flops on


A few poeple on horseback just rode through town!


Before €0,30...


AFter €0,30!!!


We had a good time.


Here's the lookout. You can't actually see the stage, but it was easy to hear. (This time my computer was able to glue the pictures together a bit better.)

Opera in the mountains
My camera doesn't to it justice, but I thought it was better than nothing (you've going to have to turn your volume up pretty good to hear this)

Monday we packed up fairly early and drove to Schloß Moritzburg which was a summer hunting palace/lodge for August the strong. I personally didn't find it all that interesting (though I did still have a headache from the day before) pretty much every picture depicted either dead animals, dying animals or people or dogs trying to kill animals... I found it a bit much, plus I didn't find the rest of the decoration all that great. Though there was an exhibit that explained the technological advancesin the 18-19 centuries and we did take a tour of the ground floor (which was treated as a basement because if they'd dug a basement it'd have flooded due to the man made pond around the castle. After having lunch and taking a look at the grounds (and a little bit of the town) we drove home.


Schloß Moritzburg.


There was an interesting candle lit room in the basement that I found particularly picture worthy.

Tuesday sas calm. AKA I got to sleep in. Wednesday I had my last exam, so now school is a little less stressful. Yesterday we did next to nothing in school because we went over 2 exams and then discussed the class trip to München in Oktober, that I will most likely not be attending due to the fact that I'll be in college in Coloardo at the time. Then I went to badminton and afterwards to the Celtic Inn (an English pub in Burgdorf) with Christian, Thea and Andy from Badminton. Today is still young (I'm currently using my time between religion and math to finally finish this up) and tomorrow is "Rock im Park" !!! Yay!!!

-Scott

8:03pm: Ah! Hopefully I'll finish this entry before I head off again!!!
It's been another two weeks since I last updated. There's been a lot going on. Last weekend (the 11th - 13th) I was at my last official YFU function, my "reentry seminar" in Gailhof (click here for the map update), where I "learned" how to deal with leaving Germany, comming back home and realizing that things will be different. Quite honestly, they didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, and anything that was new would have surfaced before I left Germany anyways... Oh well. It was an interesting weekend even though I didn't get all that much sleep (which I desperately need).

Last week there were only three days of school because Thursday was "Himmelfahrt" (a Christian holliday celebrated here in Germany) and since we already had Thursday off we got Friday as well. In that week I had my last Physics exam, which went about as good as a physics test in another language can go. Then Wednesday rolled around.

Wednesday started off fairly normal. 1st and 2nd periods I had Art where I turned in my "Praktische Arbeit" (pretty much the only chance we've had all year to actually do some art) and then we talked about the similarities that four different painting shared (colors, meanings, techniques, etc.). Chemistry came around and we had 3rd period where we pretty much told another teacher (our Chemistry teacher has been sick since before Easter so we haven't really had any classes until recently) what we'd been learning, how far we'd gotten, etc. Since that teacher had a 4th period we got let out. Toralf, Julian and I went into one of the Music rooms and jammed a bit on the random instraments that were lying around (electric and accoustic guitar, electric bass, keyboard, xylophone, etc.) and then went to 5th and 6th period History where we learned more about 2nd and 3rd centurey Rome and the problems between the Christians and the Romans. Finally 7th period rolled around and we went to "Seminarfach" where we heard a presenation from Claas and Patrick (two of my classmates) about solarcells. After the end of their presentation I biked home, ate lunch, packed for the weekend, stole a short nap and walked to my second dance lesson. Oh yeah, I started my dance course the previous week, and so far it's going relatively well. It's kind of weird because the vast majority of the students are between the ages of 13 and 25... (because the majority of people learn how do dance around the time they get confirmed) so I'm like at least a head taller than all of the girls and taller than almost all of the guys, but that's ok, it's only for 8 weeks. After dance, I walked home, met up with Clemens and Lydia and drove northeastward to Gartow where we spend the weekend.

Gartow is a town pretty close to the edge of Niedersachsen and what used to be the border between Germany and the DDR in a nature park, so It's a rather unusually quiet portion of Germany.

On Thursday we woke up, breakfasted and got ready to go by 10.30 or 11.00 and went, the seven of us (Christain, Thea, Clemens, Lydia, Conny, Meli and me) rode off on our bikes (this weekend was spent primarily on bike) on a tour that would take us in a 40-45km (25-28 miles) circle through severy small towns and the neighboring forrest/woods. Since Thursday was Himmelfahrt, there were one or two places per town where you could see what the locals did as hobbies/jobs like bow making (archery bows), stone carving and exotic mustard making (flavors such as "curry armaretto" and "beer" in mustard). Since the whole area is a nature park, there was a lot of woods (the last 12km [8 miles] was straight through the woods) so I got a chance to take a whole bunch of pictures of people on bikes in the woods and just the woods.


Conny is pumped!


Whoosh! ("I have the cape. I make the whoosh noises!")

Explosm - Effing cape t-shirt design @ © SplitReason.com


The group except for me (from left to right: Conny, Thea, Christian, Meli, Lydia, Clemens)

The second day was kind of a day where we got to choose what we wanted to do. Conny, Meli, Clemens and Lydia slept in and enjoyed a day just at he hotel while I went with Christian and Thea for another bikeride (this time a little shorter, but not much). We rode over what used to be the boarder between Germany and the DDR and saw some of the markers and a watchtower. There was a lot of stright flat riding. Followed by lunch in ths sun near a lake, a little bit of wiggeling and then more straight flat riding. But there were also plenty of good photo opertunities there as well.


I thought this pretty much covered the emotion when we got to the lake.


We noticed this sign while riding back, we all thought that it was worth a picture. A town named Deutsch!


Me standing next to a border marker that's not on the border.


Me standing next to a border marker that is on the border.


After getting back I still had energy and since the others hadn't done allt that much we had some fun on the playground at the hotel


This picture turned out so great, I just had to post it!

On Saturday we all rode again... Sadly as soon as we got our act together and rode off it startedto rain. Good that we all had some sort of rain gear with us. It was still pretty warm so at least that wasn't a problem. It wasn't as comfortable to ride as the previous two days, but we all still had our fun. Clemens and I, for example, had fun hanging around the sheep on the side of the trail and... talking to them. Plus we rode over the Elbe (one of the biggest rivers in Germany that runs through Hamburg and in places was the border between Germany and the DDR) twice on a ferry and visited a festival in Schnackenburg (just a couple of miles northeast of Gartow, it wouldn't even show a difference on my map). Schnackenburg is famous for two things, actually three. One, it is the smallest CITY in Niedersachsen even though it can't have more than a few thousand inhabitants (I never saw an actual number). Two, it is on the Elbe right where it was the border. Three, there is a relatively well known museum that's called "<ahref="http://www.aulosen.de/grenzlandmuseum.htm">Grenzlandmuseum<"/a> (the land of the border museum) where there was lots of information about how things were back when the DDR still existed, how the border worked and how serious the security was. Just as we were about to leave Schnackenburg to ride the last 5km back to the hotel Christian pointed out a large random tower on the other side of the bay and I decided I'd ride over quickely and climb up and take some pictures (just in case you didn't notice, I took a lot of pictures this weekend. After deleting the duds I had about 230) and then we rode back. By the time we got back, the sun was comming out every once in a while, and things were pretty dry so I went for a walk through the woods behind the hotel and soaked up the peacefullness, explored and took pictures.


Clemens attempts to talk to sheep. As you can see, he wasn't all that successfull. (Unless he was actually trying to get them to move away slightly and then pretend to ignor him, then he did a gread job.)


There were other bikers underway and they tended to show pretty well that it was raining.


Schnackenburg from the tower.


The woods behind the hotel.

Sunday we packed up our stuff and Clemens drove Meli, Lydia and Conny home and Christian, Thea and I stayed behind and looked around at the local 11th annual flo market for a couple of hours and then drove home unpacked and napped.

This week has already been pretty fast moving and Friday right after school Christian, Thea and I are meeting Timo in Dresden (not where he lives) for another weekend of bikeriding and sightseeing until we come back on Monday. Then I have Tuesday off (Monday is Pfinsten, another German holliday) then three days of school then a weekend where I don't have any plans (at that point it'll have been almost two months since i've had a weekend that wasn't booked) then two- two and a half days of school and then the whole family is going to Köln (I'll update my map then) for Kirchentag which is a four day christain event which is compairable to the Western States Youth Gathering that was in Seattle the summer before last, but bigger, there's (almost?) no point where everyone is together in one room, there are a lot more people and it's not just for youth. But still workshops, speakers, singing/dancing, etc. Should be fun.

One last thing I'd like to add. Summer (as you all have undoubtedly noticed) is drawing near and that means I'm due to be comming home soon. Well, soon is relative. I lengthened my stay here. Not indeffinitely, just long enough for me to finishthe school year here, have a couple of days to party and hang with people and then spend two weeks with my family and host family here in Burgdorf and traveling through Germany until August 5th when we will fly home from München (Munich), this of course all being pending until I get my visa lengthened FIVE DAYS. That being said, I should also add that I will be flying to Boulder (for college) on the 17th of August. Yep, I'm in Washington for ELEVEN FULL DAYS. I'd love to see and spend time with as many people as possible, so try to keep a little bit of time in those 11 days free so that I can see you!

-Scott

5:22pm: Drama
My last week has pretty much consisted of drama. Wednesday night and Friday night were preformances, Saturday night was the last preformance followed by a celebration owing to the fact that we pulled it off and didn't have any more preformances. Sunday morning so 9.30-13.30 (that was after getting home from the party after 2.00 that morning) we all went back and cleaned everything up. I pretty much took care of all of the lighting, cables, and TVs, which luckely kept me busy the whole of the four hours. It was a lot more enjoyable that setting everything up because I knew what needed to be done, how to do it and it kept me busy the whole time. I find it much worse to be on a job and sit around and do nothing than actually be busy the whole time and get something done.

What really took me by surprise was that at the party they acknowledged me for always being there and doing what I could to help. I didn't even expect to say anything but they did that and gave me a framed picture of the drama group (that I'd taken the day before, unfortunately it wasn't one that was taken with a timer so I'm not in it, but still very cool) and a white butten down shirt with the drama group's logo on it that everyone signed throughout the night. Cool stuff.

Oh, Friday I got my Religion Klausur back and contrary to my first one, it was graded and I got 10 points!!! (10 points = 2 ~ A) Today I had my Math Klausur and sadly it didn't go as well as Religion. My topics were vectors and planes and somehow after studying, I still couldn't seem to understand the logic behind the three different ways you can define a plane, but oh well, hopefully I'll be able to understand in the comming weeks.

Yesterday our sunny streak ended. It rained the whole day (I think it stopped once). After school I went directly to Toralf's and we played some basketball in the rain and then studied for that MAth Klausur. It's been a long time since I've been that wet (and for those wise akers out there, I mean with the exception of showering).

Saturday Clemens came home!!! That means he's done with his time serving at the youth hostel and he's home until he finds an appartment or when he starts college in October.

Today was my first day of dance class. From now on it'll be on Wednesdays. The only people there who were older than me were the instructor and possables his assistant, but I'm not sure. Basically everyone's around 14 or 15... It's kind of a weird feeling being the tallest one there and being at least a head higher than the person I'm dancing with, but hopefully it won't feel too weird too long. There are eight classes once a week so in eight weeks I should be able to dance decently, at least better than I can now.

This weekend I have me last YFU seminar thingy where I get to learn how to get used to the USA again. Another weekend without rest/sleep.

_Scott

4:22pm: It's May!
Yep, you heard me, it's May, that means that today and yesterday I didn't have school and that yesterday there were big celebrations everywhere. Yesterday we drove down to Goslar (check my map to see where it is) because it is in the Harz Mountains where the tradition started or is at least the strongest. We left the house at around 11.30 and got into town between 12.30 and 13.00 at which time we went to go see the Kaiser's palace, however because it was Monday or because it was April 30th it was only open until 13.00... meaning by the time we got there (at 13.20) it was already closed. So instead of touring the palace we had our picnick that we'd brought with us, but since it was a bit nippy and there weren't any parking spaces anywhere near a grassy area, we picnicked in the car. Then we took a walk through Goslar which is a really pretty town. After seeing the old portion of the town we walked through the area with booths set up and then through the part of town where there were just normal shops and eventually we went to the main attraction of the celebration in Goslar, but first we stopped back at the car for coffee (or tea) and cake and Conny pulled an ace out of his sleeve, or rather pulled a sleeve out of his backpack. He'd brought his multipurpose cloak with him (the same he wore for halloween and 06.06.06) and when we found some cool light I took some pictures. The main tent had a bar and a DJ and before it got dark there was something almost like a talent show, except that it was only for a large group of kids who were from East Europe and the Ukrain and Japan, etc. and just for singing. I've never experienced anything like it before. We hung around that area until midnight where they played a special song and then we headed back to the car and drove home.


Goslar was a pretty town.


And of course it has a biergarten with a view of the church steeples.


Conny the sourcerer.

The rest of the week consisted of school and drama. We had the first preformance Friday evening (followed by a party for everyone in the drama group which went until late) and the second preformance Sunday afternoon. Both of the preformances were pretty full. I've kind of appointed myself the group photographer, so I've been keeping myself busy behind my camera (await an article about the comedy aber this time next week).

-Scott

P.S. we just had the warmest and driest April in more than 200 years!

11:44am: May the people who died at Virginia Tech. rest in peace.
Regreatabley it's been more than two weeks since I last updated. As I look back on the pictures from this time it doesn't seem like all that much, but I've been pretty busy and a bit stressed.

The first event was last Saturday (14th). Alina had her 18th birthday so she had a big party. It had a beach theme, which fit because it was very warm that day and pretty much everyone came in some sort of summer attire. There were also a couple of cocoa nuts lying around as decoration. It didn't take too long before Toralf decided he wanted to feel really tropical and summery so he poked a hole through one and drank the milk out then borrowed a hacksaw and cut the top off and filled it with a pina colada added a couple of decoration toothpick thingies and was quite proud (though it did take hime a half an hour to cut it open). The party went into the early morning and at some point a couple of guys gave up their fruit juice drinking bet. A few poeple said that they wanted to drink 8L (approx. 2 gallons) of juice (non alcaholic) at the party, but didn't make it.


Please don't cut off your finger...(or shoe)


Well done!


Alina getting one of her presents.


There were multiple cameras floating around and for the first time ever I got an over exposure because two flashes went off at the same time.

AFter surviving the first full week back from break, things started up again, this time with drama. This upcomming Friday is the premair so that ment that Friday (20th) was the day we had to transport all of the stuff from the storage appartment to the stage and get things to a point where we could finish up setting up the next day. So the next day at 10.00 we started building everything. The set had to be put together, the lights had to be set up and everything needed to be situated. I must say it went pretty well and fairly quickly with few problems. That means that yesterday the actors (inlcuding Thea) ran through the comedy for the first time from beginning to end with costumes, props and without interruptions. It's called "Erben ist auch nicht leicht" (Inherriting isn't easy either) and deals with the death of and old rich lady who has a few close relatives who are all very eager to inherrit something. After the first couple of preformances. But for those of you here in Burgdorf, there are still tickets for sale and I'd highly reccomend comming and seeing it!


The stage.

Saturday morning Conny left home for his preperation week for the USA (the same thing that I helped run a couple of months ago), so the house is a little empty, but now I can explain what the "Albatross" was. Ont the fifth day of the seminar we sent the students out for some fresh air for an hour or two while we devided into four groups of two, prepaired four different rooms and got out costumes on. Then we graciously invited our students to visit the Albatross family (who we were dressed up as). You see, the Albatrosses are a little bit different from the average German or American family. The first thing the students saw when they came in our room (each Albatross family got about 8 students) room was me sitting on the tip of my chair (with only my toes touching the floor) in a white toga with my moccasons on, my hair gelled up as high as I could and Jannin sitting on her legs on the ground in a brown toga and no moccasons and very dirty. Without talking we (primarily Jannin) instructed them to sit like us and be quiet.


Herr und Frau Albatross.

Throughout the hour and a half they were with the Albatrosses, they saw and/or took part in a couple of rituals or tradtions where the woman bowed to the ground and sweapt her hands over it while the man kept his hand on her back and also where the woman served food and drink to everyone. Then they were finally allowed to leave.

Shortly after we had a discussion about how their cultur was different and exactly what was different. So did you get it? Yep, that's it, the Earth is holy and because women are firtile like the Earth they too are holy and are allowed to touch the Earth and be dirty. The men are underlings who must stay free of dirtiness and who aren't allowed to look women (other than his wife) in the eyes and must wait for women to essentially tell him what to do. It took them a long time to catch on to that, but they eventually did it. It will be interesting to hear how (and if) that went for Conny.

-Scott

6:28pm: Happy Easter everyone!
It's been almost two weeks since my last update, however I have a good excuse: I was on vacation for more than a week. Last Thursday I left with my host family (Christain, Thea and Conny) for Buxtehude. For those of you who don't rememer where Buxtehude is, you can take a quick look at my map. You may want to keep this link in mind throughout this entry because I did a fairly good amount of traveling.

So if you remembered that Buxtehude is where Thea's mother lives, you're right. We stayed at her house for the week. She has been having problems with her health lately and is currently living at an assisted living home, so a couple of the reasons we traveled there was to visit her pretty much every day and to do a bit of cleaning up around her house, though we had pleanty of time to travel around the area and beyond.

Throughout our time there we went on a couple of walks through the woods in the area which were more natural than the ones around Burgdorf and have a little bit of elevation change. It was great to see hills again!


The woods near Buxtehude.

One day we went into Hamburg and did a bit of sightseeing. It was really amazing to see how huge Hamburg is. One of the first things we did was climb the church tower and get a view of the hole city. Amazing. We also walked along the piers on the Elbe (the river that flows through Hamburg [very roughly compairable to the Columian River along the Washington/Oregon boarder]) and it really reminded me of Seattle. A lot of the newer buildings are closer to the water and just the atmosphere on or near the piers was kind of familiar. While in Hamburg we met up with Timo (who stayed with us the whole tim and is still with us for Easter) and attempted to go into a couple of "museums" one of which allows you to experience being blind for an hour (because they take you on a tour in the dark) but they were unfortunately closed. After walking around for a few more hours we eventually drove back to Buxtehude for the night.



The overview of Hamburg

The next day we all woke up at 6am happy rested and ready for the day (almost...) so that we could drive back into Hamburg to visit the weekly fish market that this time of year runs late (7-10am). Basically a mile long strip of the shore of the Elbe is covered with different stands with people trying to sell anything you can think of. There were boothes with smoked fish (hence the name fish market) and others with Hamburg paraphernalia, and still others selling random plants. But the best part were the trailers. Every so often you'd see a semi trailer that opens on the side to reveal a booth or essentially an auction hall. The people in the trailers pretty much yelled the whole time trying to get people to buy their products(whether it be fish, chocolate or palm trees) and sometimes when the trailers were right next to one another the salesmen would start making jokes about the other and it'd go back and forth and was really entertaining. After walking around for a good couple of hours we went for a little drive and walked a little near the beach and then drove back to Buxtehude for a nap.


It's Timo and me after the fish market.

Tuesday we visited Kiekeberg (oh and for those of you who don't speak German, you can copy the url of a site and paste it here at google's translation site and it will transelate the words [with horrible grammar, but you'll be able to understand most of it]) which is a a large piece of land with 30 or so old North German farm buildings that have been turned into a museum. It is compairable to one that I saw while I was in Bayern, click here to read what I wrote about it then. At any rate it was really interesting to compair how the people in northern and southern Germany lived hundereds of years ago. To tell the truth, relatively differently. In addition to the different buildings there was a main building where you could take a look back into the 50s and 60s with little rooms set up like houses and corner stores and dentist offices and stuff.


One of the houses at Kiekeberg.


The dentist's office for example.

Wednesday afternoon we drove into Stade which is a neighbor town of Buxtehude, where we walked around for a while and eventually sat down in a pub and met with a good friend of Thea's and his wife for the evening.


As with many towns and cities in Germany, Stade is built up around a river.

Thursday Christain, Thea, Timo and I drove up to a town called Cuxhaven and visited the North Sea. We took a self guided tour on a Feuerschiff (fire ship), the Elbe 1, which was one of five ships that were used at floating lighthouses and rescue teams for those sailing on the German shore of the North Sea. This sucker used (with modern technology these ships were put out of service in the 70s) a 1500 watt bulb... wow. After finishing our tour we walked along the shore and one peir for a while and found a huge ship. I'd call it a tanker, but I can't because none of us could figure out what it really was. there were no containers and it didn't look like a oil rig and it had a crain and all sorts of weird tubes and pipes one of which ended in a vacuum cleaner-like thing... Whatever it was, it wasn't pretty and I couldn't get a good angle, so I don't have a picture of it. From there we drove a little bit south (still on the coast) and visited a national park museum. The whole North Sea coast of Germany is a national park, though not in the same sense as Yellowstone or something. But the building was heated and had interesting facts about the sealife and the salt formations. Then we sat in a restaraunt, drank hot chocolate and watched a couple of people flying a kite outside and we eventually drove back. The next morning we drove back to Burgdorf.


The Elbe 1.

Since getting home I've done a bit of sleeping and Saturday I went to Osterfest (Easter fest) and met up with a bunch of people. Osterfest is every year on the day before Easter and is pretty much an excuse to do a lot of drinking. The locals pile all of their yard waste in one place in a field and light a bonfire. This year it was about 20-30 feet in diameter and I heard that this year it was small. I got there at about 20.00 or a little before and stayed until 23.30 or 24.00 at which time the music was turned off and then went over to Lucas' house and hung out there until 3.00 and then went home.


The bonfire. If you look to either side you can see people standing in the background.

Easter Sunday was surprisingly... Normal. I was kind of expecting it to be a big day because people decorate trees and stuff with eggs weeks before hand and being that Germany is relatively Christian... I guess I was off base. Today Christian, Thea and I went for a walk around a town called Steinhude which is on a relatively large lake, so we went walking part way around the lake. Other than that we watched a couple of non-Easter movies on TV and that was it. Oh well. I don't have school again until Wednesday, so I have a little more time to chill before I have to worry about that again.


A tree decorated for Easter.

-Scott

2:34pm: Springy, springy, springy and Break!
Spring has decided that it actually does want to spring, it's once again warm and sunny, though the wind is still a little less than warm. At any rate it's quite a difference from Tuesday...


Tuesday it snowed during the night and then rained the entire day, still you could see the snow.

School thie week was a joke. So many classes were cancled it was really unbelievable: Monday = 2 Tuesday = 4 Wednesday = 4 (and two periods where the teacher wasn't there but we still had an assignment to do...) Thursday = 0 Friday = 2. So in one week 12 periods were canceld... from 34... Relatively obserd.

So after my increadibly trying two periods of Math on Friday (I literally played chess the whole time [and did pretty well too!]) I had lunch and went over to Toralf's to play some guitar and hang out for a couple of hours before I had to head back home because we had our pastor and his wife over for dinner. Five courses... Wow, that was a lot of food. Good, but a lot. So at around 22.30 when we'd finally finished dinner I headed back over to Toralf's and we played a little more, fiddled with my bass because it wasn't behaving itself and then hung out for a bit.

Chantal (a former Au Pair from France) came over for the day (she'd been traveling through Germany visiting people for a week or so) so I got to talk to her as we walked to thea's drama practice where they plawed their third (and final) act from their comedy through for the first time. Funny stuff. I'm just glad that the tech jobs shold be relatively easy because I'm one of the two techies (last time there were about 5 of us). AFter that I rode over to Katrin's birthday party and got to hang out with a bunch of people from badminton that I normally only see when we're playing. There were probably about 30-40 people there but by 0.00 a lot of people had gone home and the atmosphere was a little quieter. The last people left at around 1.45 and I got home at around 3.00 (due to springing forward). Good times.


Singing and swaying to good music.


Though picking out that music was touch.


Birte and me.

And the Easter break officially starts tomorrow, though in escence it started after 6th period on Friday. At any rate no school for two weeks.

-Scott

2:25pm: Winter had second thoughts
So I said in my last update that spring was here. It lied. It's been raining since Tuesday (I mean it literally hasn't stopped) not very hard, but ever harder. Monday afternoon it snowed a little, Wednesday it snowed as I was leaving the house and then in second period the flakes were as big as ping pong balls, very pretty, but nothing stuck and it turned relatively quickly into rain.. And when I woke up this morning there was about 3cm snow on the ground and it was rainging... The contrast with the flowers and the snow was cool, but now everything's pretty much slush.

Tomorrow is my last day of school before Easter break (two weeks long) and because Religion was canceled, I've only got 5th and 6th periiod tomorrow: Math. I doubt we're going to get anything done. At all.

-Scott

5:41pm: Weekends seem to be the trend
Not a whole lot happened last week during the week, that is other than Spring's arrival (and then dissapearence) of which I took a few pictures. Friday, however, was "Spring Rock" at the local teen center. Spring Rock is a yearly tradition here in Burgdorf. It is a two day Rock-Metal concert featuring local bands such as Gauntlet which consiste of five guys who all attend my school and two of which I have classes with. Senseless Reality attended but did not play, however it was a blast. Since Timo is back in town for the weekend (and Monday) I got to spend a little bit of time with him there.


The plumb trees are starting to blume,


as well as other plants,


and the sunsets are looking nice off and on.


Gauntlet makes the best preformance of the night.


You can kind of make out Conny there in the middle enjoying himself quite thouroughly.

Saturday was comprised of a lot of sleeping and in the afternoon I went over to Toralf's and we hung out for a few hours before making our way over to Ole's birthday party. While hanging out we jammed for a little bit while listening to music (playing along for a bit) the CD player decided that it wasn't going to be cooperative anymore. First it just wouldn't keep the CD in, it would immediately spit anything out. Then after taking my dad's philosophy to heart ("When in doubt: Reboot") we got it to keep the CD for a bit but then it wouldn't play it again so I pressed eject and it did just that: it shot the CD at me... I didn't even think that was possable. It left some interesting marks on the CD... At any rate Toralf found an old (20-25 year old) CD player in his basement that we hooked up and that worked for a while... kind of. Dispite its finicky nature it was really cool! The buttons were huge and when it decided it didn't want to work it simply displayed "no" and that was it. Fun stuff. So as I said afterwards we went over to Ole's birthday party where I think everyone had a good time. In total I think there were about twenty people there. We spent the time playing darts (at which I, by some fluke, won), listening to music and taking pictures. That went until late, the last people left at around 4am at which time I was already asleep at home in bed.

Sunday also consisted of a lot of sleeping. However we had a nice lunch with everyone (Clemens and Lydia got back from France/Disneyland Saturday night) and took a family picture.


Top-left: Thea, Bottem-left: Conny, Half-left: Timo, Top-middle: Clemens, Bottem-middle: Lydia, Half-right: me, Right: Christian

Today I visited CeBIT. For those of you who are unfamiliar with CeBIT, it is a huge computer and technology expo in Hannover(and Sydney and perhaps a couple of other cites). I got to see all sorts of crazy new things that are just comming out. Blue-Ray disks for one thing (kind of like DVDs but can hold either 25 or 50 GB per disk per side. Computers where you use your hands as the mouse point, wiggle your finger and it works. Computer screens that produce 3D images without having to wear strange glasses. Water cooled gaming computers that had upwards of 4GB of RAM, laptops with three screens and LCD screens the size of my bed. The list goes on. Since it was an expo I couldn't buy anything (probably saved my wallet from getting to empty) though I did pick up a few fliers and CDs with free trial versions of photo editing programs. I also saw my camera there, so after more than nine months on the market it's still fighting strong!!! (I picked well).

-Scott

12:59pm: The sun is shining!!!
Last week went by pretty slowly until the weekend hit, then it flew by. During the week I had my Physics Klausur, which went pretty well. Other than that, things were relatively calm. (to anyone who remembers, "Keep Clam!")

This weekend was my NVBT (Nachbereitungstagung - wrapping up unfinished buisness from the VBT that I helped lead), which we spent at Linda and Alex's appartment in Hannover (Linda and Alex are my YFU mentors). It was a lot of fun (though we didn't do anything for YUF). We went to the Hannover zoo which is really really nice. We also just spent time watching movies and talking and hanging out. We also went and did a little sightseeing in Hannover because most of the people in our group aren't from Hannover.


We had a little group picture (little because only six of the nine of us were there). From left to right. First row: Jannes, Clemens, Gunnar and me. Second row: Anna-Lena and Linda.


We got to meet an elephant!


And I got to pet a pellican!


Linda and Alex's cat liked to go into every nook and crany of their appartment...

I was in Hannover from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening and for some reason I'm a man of few words, so that's it.

-Scott

P.S. Jannine: Meine Gedänke sind bei dir.

5:56pm: Another not-so-ordinary week in Burgdorf.
This week was fairly low key. That is except for a couple of things... mainly my Math Klausur that I had on Tuesday... Hmm... I have one double period of three dimentional vectors and then am gone for over two weeks and then have to write a Klausur about it... I'm just going to say I'm glad that the grades don't decide my fate. Ironically the Klausur was over the basics of vectors and I didn't understand the terminolgy, then the next lesson was completely devoted to calculating the length of a three dimentional vector which I learned last year and is relatively easy... Oh well, you can't win them all.

Friday was Christian's birthday party. He had a couple of close friends over and we had a really nice and long dinner where we had time to enjoy the food and company until midnight or so.

Then yesterday we had band practice and surprise, surprise, Toralf came accross some free leather sofas for our band room and then we ended up getting the old stereo (with huge speakers) from his parents, so our band room is comming along! Then we had some fun with my camera and then I had to go.


Wow Toralf, if looks could kill.


New sofas!!!

Thea, Christian and I went to the Burgdorf HSV Dorfball(HSV = Heeßeler Sport Verein [Club], Dorfball = a ball/dance for the members of HSV in Burgdorf). This ment that I got to take my new suit and shoes and everything for a test drive, I just regret that I ended up not taking my camera with me (though a friend of mine took a couple of pictures and if I'm lucky I'll be able to get copies of them). So, in order to go to a ball in Europe/Germany and not feel totally left out, it's important to know how to dance. And by dance I mean real dancing: walz, fox trot, somba, etc. So 18.00 rolls around (the ball started at 20.00 and the doors opened at 19.30) and Thea and Christian thought it was a good time to call Conny down so that between the three of them they could teach me a couple of dance steps before we had to go. In the relatively short time of a half an hour they all roughly tought me the fox trot and then when Thea and Christian went upstairs to get ready (showering, changing, etc.) Conny tought me the disko fox. So I walk into the dance hall having seen, done and kind of learned two different dances... It helped... a little. First off you have to understand that there were only about 120 people at the ball, most of whom where older than me by... 10...20...30...40 years or so and the few youth who were there already had dance partners. Fortunately after an hour or so (which was mostly announcements and a show from the unicicle verein) two of the girls from badminton (Birte and Katrin) arrived. From there on it picked up and I had a good time.

After a little while just chatting I got my first real chance to dance with Katrin. Unfortunately it wasn't a fox trot or a disko fox. It was a somba. I felt kind of foolish, but not really because all of my concentration was focused on keeping my footing and trying not to look at my feet, and yeah. By the end of the song I could kind of somba. There wasn't any chance that I could do any improvisation, but my feet were (for the most part) moving in the right pattern. Afterwards we danced a disko fox which I pretty much remembered from what Conny had tought me and by the end of the song I felt a little more comfortable with it than the somba, though dizzy (I'm not sure how much you're actually supposed to turn around with a disko fox, but we were spinning pretty good...). After a little break (and the introduction to the Lütje Lage (a specialty of the Hannover culture, you have a small 4-5 cL beer and 1-2 cL Korn and idealy you're supposed to be able to hold both in one hand start drinking the beer and simultainiously pour the Korn into the beer and drink it all without spilling...). Ok, so my first attempt wasn't totally... perfect, BUT my clothes remained dry! Hopefully I'll get pictures of this because my description is pretty bad. After my first attempt I got my first chance to dance with Birte. First off, a somba (which she had to reteach me...) but this time it worked better and I felt more comfortable and could more a little easier with the music, etc. And that's pretty much how the night went. Over the almost 6 hours we were there I learned and danced the disko fox, somba and a little bit of tango (I think it was tango) and felt a little more comfortable each time. And now I'm considering taking a dance course here in May, so we'll see. *Thumbs up*

One last little tidbit, after a very short and mild winter here in Burgdorf, spring has sprung. The flowers are blooming, the sun is shining (on and off) and the birds are twittering in the trees (well at least as much as they do here in Burgdorf). Oh, and for those who have interest we had a lunar eclipes last night!!! Pretty cool. Sadly, no pictures.

Oh and one final thing, it's time to get pumped for Relient K's new album that comes out TUESDAY!!!



-Scott

12:25pm: Two full weeks of YFU
So much happened in the last two weeks that there's no way I'd be able to write it all down. We'll see how long this entry goes...

Just for a short explanation the first week I was a teamer for a seminar for German students who will be going to the US next year as exchange students and my second week I was at my mittle seminar as an exchange student with a bunch of other exchange students from all over the world who are in Germany this year. And here's my map.

So last Friday I caught my train into Hamburg where I met up with two of the other "Teamers" from the VBT (VBT = Vorbereitungstagung = Preperation Conference). From there we drove to the German YFU headquarters in Hamburg, picked up some materials, met a couple of people and headed towards Lauenberg to meet up with the rest of the Teamers at the youth hostel. The three of us (Jannes, Gunnar and I) were the first ones there (as planned) but everyone came relatively on time and we got a fair amount of work done the first night before any of the students arrived.


The snow lasted a fairly long time, it was pretty.

The first day of the actual conference the students started arriving at around 12.00 and the last came in right around 15.00. I won't go into the details of everything we did on everyday because if you're not going to be an exchange student it's not all that interesting but the main jist of the week was that the students should feel a little like they are already exchange students because they're away from home for a week and the culture is a little different and then we should prepair them as much as possible for their next year.


This was our schedule, I know it doesn't help all that much that it's in German, but still, there it is.


This is pretty much how most of the AGs went, with the students trying to write things down and figure things out on their own.

One thing that I found interesting and fun was the day that we had different stations for the history of Germany and its culture, etc. and my part as a teamer and American was to sit in a room and have a 5-10 minute conversation with groups of 2-4 students at a time and ask them "stupid" and "stereotypical" questions about Germany from an American's viewpoint. For example: "Do you live in the good or bad side of Germany?", "Do all Germans eat bratwurst and sauerkraut?" and so on. It was interesting because everyone handled and answered the questions differently.

Another very interesting day was the day we did the "Albatross". No, it has nothing to do with the bird, however I'm not going to explain it here just yet because Conny has his VBT in a couple of weeks and it's possible that he may do this to and I don't want to ruin the surprise. I'll just say it was really energy consuming for the teamers but totally worth it.

The last night that the students were there we had a so called "Bunterabend" which was a night were the students had the oppertunity to put a talent show / show together. I was rather impressed by how well organized most of it appeared and overall it was fun with a few improv games, girl who sang a couple of songs from Evenescence and a song that a few of them wrote together.

Overall in this week I learned a lot, not just about what it's like to be a teamer (staying up until 2-3am with orgaizational discussions ans things of the sort, waking up at 7:15 or so and having to be peppy so the students will also be peppy, leading conversations in German that I would have had troubles leading in English [due to difficult content] and so on). Between Friday and Friday I got a grand total of 30 minutes of fresh air when I got asked by a student if someone would go for a run with her. I also learned a lot of things about Germany, America and what it means to be an exchange student because I never had a VBT at home, so a fair amount of the information was new to me.

In my free time I tried to balence spending time with the other teamers and the students. One thing that happened during the meals here that was untypical for me was that I ended up talking pretty much the whole time, answering questions and so on. It was not uncommon for me to be the last one (inlcuding teamers and students) left eating even if my table had gotten it's food first.

Friday we sent all of the students home and packed things up and had our last couple of discussions and then went home ourselfs. I got home around 18.00 had a little bit of time to talk to Christian and Thea, have some dinner unpack and then pack up again and then fall into bed from exaustion before Conny and I had to catch our 10.30 train the next morning.


Everyone is happy that it is over and went well, but sad that they have to go home.


Each teamer got three or four students that (s)he had more often than the others so that the mix in the AGs wasn't so random as it seemed.

The next morning came all to quickly and before I knew it we were on the train on our way into Berlin. The train ride went relatively without incedence. We arrived at the youth hostel where we stayed for the week about three hours before they were ready for us so we dropped off our bags and went out to discover a little bit of Berlin on our own. Basically we just got briefly aquainted with the subway system and all its vastness. When we got back there were already a couple more people there but still relatively few, so we unpacked and just hung out until more people arrived and then went for a walk with about 20 people before dinner. Then we had our first AG (small group lesson) and then some free time before bed.

The second day was started off with a city tour in a tour bus. We got to see all sorts of things including the Brandenburgertor, the Berlin church of Scientology and the Berlin Wall. After a couple more AGs and meals back at the youth hostel we had freetime again and there was a group that was going to walk the longest remaining strip of the wall (1,3km = 0.8miles) and got to appriciate the artwork that was done in '89 and '90 on the wall as a reminder to what happened.


Berlin with a "Y"?

It was aserious piece of history and all, but who can be serious all the time?

The third day we got to see the inside of the Bundestag, pretty much the same idea as the house of representatives and got to talk to the youngest representative in the history of Germany. She is still only 23 but becamea rep. for the green party when she was only 19 and was also an exchage student when she was in Gymnasium. After that we seperated into two groups, one that went to VIVA and the other to N-TV. I went to VIVA, which is the German version of MTV or MTV2 and took part in a live TV program. We pretty much just sat there and clapped for a German band that almost noone knows, but it was interesting to see how live shows work.

The fourth day (I just realized that I was numbering the days, that's pretty much because the last two weeks were pretty much one day after another with absolutely no real contact with the outside world). So on the fourth day we visited the memorial for the Jews who were killed in WWII. The concrete blocks themselves weren't all that moving until you'd been through the museum underneath which had personal stories and pictures and more information about everything than you ever really wanted to know. Most everyone came out of the memorial more somber than they went in.


It pretty much speaks for itself


Here's almost everyone (I think)

The fifth day... We got the choice to either visit the museum on Checkpoint Charlie or a prison from WWII. As you can probably tell by my description I went to Checkpoint Charlie. All I'm going to say about it is that it still amazes me how something like the Berlin wall could happen in modern civilization. One thing that I've left out until this point is that since Monday (third day) I'd been feeling kinda sickish. After having gone through the museum I was totally exhausted and not feeling so well, so instead of spending free time with the other exchange students in town I went back to the youth hostel with the teamers and slept for four hours (through free time and the next AG). Then my roommates woke me up for dinner, which I ended up not eating, and then went back to bed until the next day.

So after more than 16 hours of sleep (more than I'd gotten in the previous 3 days...), I was feeling great, had energy, still wasn't totally healthy but ready for fun again. We seperated off into groups again this time into four groups, I don't know what they all were but I went to ARD which is a radio and TV sender in Germany and got to see a little of how they work. Honestly it wasn't all that intense, but still interesting. Afterwards we had a little free time and then we had our Stadtrayllie. We got three sheets of paper with questions about Berlin on them and a few fun/abnormal things to do. I was in the group five people that I'd been with most of the week, namely Daniel (Brazil), Lisa (Germany [host sister and she was in Ecudor last year]), Carina (Germany [host sister and will be in Iowa next year]), Louisa (Holland) and me. We had so much fun! We got almost all of the questions answered in the subway on our way to our first destination so we spent most of our time on the other things like taking pictures of as many Trabis (cars from the DDR) as possible, helping elderly ladies accross the street, taking pictures of people holding a sign that said "I *Heart* Angela Merkel" (the Bundeskanzlerin) including a soldier in a communist uniform!!! And we had to make a human pyramid in front of the Brandenburgertor. Oh, and of course collecting as many free advertising merchendise as possible and trying to trade a safty pin for something valuable (we ended up with three brand new hard-cover books!!!). That night we had some more free time and the five of us (plus Juan from Columbia who looked just like Fes from That 70's Show!) went to the other side of town (a half an hour in the subway) and found a cool restaraunt/bar and had a couple of drinks and just talked for a couple of hours then went back to the youth hostel and talked until 2.30 or so as people slowly trickled out and went to bed. At that time I was the last remaining exchange student up and tried to call home to wish me Dad a happy birthday. By the way everbody, my dad had his birthday on the 22nd!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Sadly no one was home so I ended up leaving a message that probably sounded like I was either half asleep or worse. (Actually interestingly enough we met up with a group of Hollanders in Berlin earlier this day and tried to trade with them but at first they didn't really understand what we wanted because my teammates tried to explain it in English. Then I gave it a try and I just couldn't speak in English, it was so wierd and kinda scary, I might add) At any rate that's why I sounded so strange on the answering machine.


Ha, we made a pyramid!

The sixth day was our last full day in Berlin and was primarily used to see the last bit of Berlin on our own and to prepair our Bunterabend. I've got to say, ours was a lot better than the one the German exchange students threw the week before (for whatever reason). A group of us did a whole series of spoofs on VIVA and we had dancing as "energizers" and it was a lot of fun. After the official Bunterabend came to a close at around 24.30 people started trickeling into bed but lots of people stayed up for several hours with dancing to all sorts of music and around 3.30 the last dancing finished up, interestingly enough the last five people dancing were my group. It was great. Then a few of us went into the dining room and grabbed a little something to eat and drink before one of the teamers came down to check up on how things were going. Before finding us she found two people sleeping in the room with music with Linkin Park blasting and before she woke them up she came to us and we talked for a while and then eventually everyone went to bed and I turned out the lights at 4.30.


We got a little time in the spotelight to jam to music we knew, aka Red Hot Chili Peppers.


It's really amazing that you can't find a Trabi on the side of the road, but you can find a random heap of metal that looked like it might have at one point been a printing press perallel parked in front of an appartment.......


Smile!

The seventh and final day (somehow I think I forgot a day here because it was Saturday-Saturday, but oh well). We packed up and said goodbye to everyone before leaving the youth hostel at around 10.00. Since our train didn't leave until 14.40 and we wanted to see if we could switch trains, we decided to go to the train station with everyone else, but quickly learned that it would cost a good €30 and decided it wasn't worth it. So we hung out in a cafateria with a few other people and then met a friend of Lisa's who had been in Ecuador with her and lives in Berlin. After everyone else had cought their trains, Conny and I hauled our luggage with us and took a 1,5 hour walk to see the Bundestag and the Brandenburgertor one more time and also to see the big tower in the middle of the roundabout in the Tiergarten and then cought our train and went home.

As I look back on this entry there's soooo much I left out and yet it's soooo long. It was soo much fun and I'd totally recamend Berlin to anyone who comes to Germany!