Munich, 2008!

On Thursday, Lisa and I got our very own tour of Munich by Chaka Khan. There's nothing quite like exploring a new city with the local and it was GREAT.

First things first: Schloss Nympehnburg. Unfortunately, my pictures of this are on my other memory card so I can't show you it. But trust me, it's cool. I'll give you what my Let's Go Europe! book has to say about it:

After a decade spent trying for an heir, Ludwig I celebraetd the birth of his son in 1662 by erecting an elaborate summer playground northwest of the city. Today, the swans of Schloss nympenburg have bome camera fodder for the hundreds of tourists flocking for the perfect shot.

True, I got some good shots of the swans. Too bad you can't see 'em!

After that we went to Marienplatz to check out the Glockenspiel! I'll admit, I was excited to be there just so I could say glockenspiel a bunch of times. Tourists were everywhere (obvi) and we watched jousting knights and dancing coopers up in the tower when the clock struck twelve. (Frak! This is an aerial view of the Marienplatz and the Mariensaule (1683 monument ot the Virgin mary, commemorating hte city's surivval of the Thirty Years' War) Why Frak? Because I don't have my pictures of the Glockenspiel after all because they are on the faulty memory card! Ahhhhh!)

Post jousting knights and toursity pictures Chaka took us to the Viktualian Markt, the giant market that is filled with the beeeeest food. Chaka took us to her italian friend's stand who hooked us up with delicious paninis (in Germany we ate Italian? No prob!) and drank fruit juices and got energized for our...

Climb up the Alter Peter (St. Peter) church. DANG. 306 steps. And because I was going with Chaka the Athlete, I felt like I sprinted up it. Getting up to the top gave us a great view of Munich and the Alps in the distance. It also gave us a hot sec of exercise and a new way to view the city. (Oooh guidbeook says it's the 12-th century Peterskirche which is the city's oldest parish church. fyi.) (check out the Alps in the background!)

I like to put myself in tiny places so I did that.

We continued with our personalized walking tour around Munich, dipping into Dalmyr, Munich's super ritzy AMAZING department store. We also searched the city for a decent pair of jeans for me. The current problem is that my jeans are a little too big, as are my belts, so things just kinda slide off and show a little too much a little too often. Thus the hunt for jeans. Couldn't find any (affordable) jeans so I started wearing to pairs of jeans for the rest of my time in Germany. Turns out that when it's cold, that's a really good thing!

Um after the jeans tour we went back to Chaka's and I got dressed. In leder hosen. YAYYYYYY. I seriously looked like a lil' German boy. So here's a pic or two:

Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.

Post-tour of Munich we went to Hofbrauhaus, aka the full Biergarten experience. As the guidebook says, It's as "jolly, as festive, and as loud as it gets." Yes, yes, and yes. Jolly, yummy food, giant beers, live music (with tubas and everything!) and a great great great atmosphere. It was so touristy but so much fun. We sat next to some Italians and some Brits had a good time.

Ooh! I learned some of a German drinking song! It's written in my lil' book and I'll try to write it down accurately:
"Heil prosit, heil prosit
der germutlichkeit
heil prosit, heil prosit
der gemuuutlichkeit

oins, zwei, drei - gsuffa!"

Ok, I'm pretty sure that NONE of that was right - I forgot that I'm reading the German writing of a doctor! Of course I can't read it! Haha, but you get the point and we sang that a bunch of times throughout our night.

That was Munich! An amazing time! Hopefully I'll get up more pictures soon, y'all!

Salzburg and Munich, 2008!

So that was Dachau! And my first night in Munich!
On Wednesday Lisa and I made it out to a whole other country... Austria.

The hills were SO alive because we went to Salzburg.
We solved a problem like Maria.
We tea-ed, a drink with jam and bread.
And we eidelweissed.

So great.

Well, first off, I have to blame my host, Chaka Khan, for getting me RIDICULOUSLY even further addicted to caffeine in the few short days I had at her house. It's just that DANG that espresso machine was so shiny and sleek and so of course I had to use it a bunch of times. A BUNCH of times. I now definitely cannot sleep past 8:00 and must have espresso immediatement. oh well.

Lisa and I made it to Salzburg for a lunch at the Heart of Joy Cafe - a vegetarian/vegan bagel/breakfast place.

This is the part where I tell you what I ate!
A seitan bagel with lettuce, tomato, adn mustard. A mango yogurt drink. Deliciousness!
I thought seitan was mushroom? Nope, turns out it's fake meat. So when she brings me this awesome-looking bagel with friggin' ham on it i'm like you gotta be KIDDING me! and I don't know how to say ANYthing in German! So I just pointed and said "meat? seitan?" to which she replied, yup it's fake meat. Ahh, thanks for the clarification. I have a long way to go learning about veganism, apparently

Then Lisa and I decided to do our very own Sound of Music Tour. I'd done some research earlier and the two tours offered in Salzburg are 35 euros, 4 hours each, and on TripAdvisor.com, they didn't get the greatest reviews. So LIsa and I went cheap-o and made our own! Meaning we ran around the city pointing at things and saying "I think this is where they marched across the square! This is defnitely it! No wait, THIS is it! Let's sing!"

Seriously we frolicked and the one song that was in my head teh whole time was "I have confidence." Freaking sweet.

We walked up to the abbey - you know, where "when G-d closes the door, somewhere he opens a window." And we saw the Alps which are beautiful and they're so stunning they lookkinda fake.

We also saw Mozart-y stuff! I mean, the guy did live there. We saw his birth place, his residence, a museum, a giant statue, Mozartplatz... I got in on a French tour of Mozart-ia and I understood what the guide was saying! I couldn't believe it. That was great.

Salzburg is beautiful! The flowers were GORGEOUS. I felt like I was channeling Julie Andrews for REAL and now, of course, I have to see SOM as soon as possible.

Back to Munich for the night - Chaka took us to Chinese food and we had a nighttime tour of Munich via her Jeep. Very cool

Dachau and Munich, 2008

(Thank you to Lisa for providing me with these pictures)

Dachau.
What can I say about Dachau? It was opened in 1933, one of the first camps opened. 1933 was an important year, why? Burning of the Reichstag (German parliament) = Hitler was able to say to the Kaiser "yo, give me all the power and make me Supreme Chancellor." The Nazi Party rose to power with only 37% of the vote. not. even. a. majority. Hitler becomes Supreme Chancellor and opens up Dachau and a few other camps as work camps. These are for political prisoners... death camps like Auschwitz aren't in full swing yet. The most important thing at the time was to get the political dissidents out of the way and working for the war machine.

Lisa and I went to Dachau straight from the train station. For any of you planning on going, I highly recommend the audio guide! So informative and it's cheap and just SO worth it.
It was really really cold in Dachau. Really really cold. And one of the things I remember from the first books I read on the Holocaust (you know, like Night and some others) is always talking about the cold. So to have a freezing cold day in Dachau just as a visitor... it was chilling in more than one way, you know?

We saw a short film the museum puts on.
We walked through barracks. We learned about medical experiments. We learned that Dachau was a work camp for men and a brothel was created at the far end of the camp to bring in women from another camp for the workers who 'earned' a visit to the women. We learned about roll call. We saw the gas chambers. We saw the showers.
It was stunning. I walked around in silence. I couldn't help but feel dark and heavy the whole time, despite the blue skies.
Lisa, thanks for going with me. It was good to be able to hold your hand while walking around!

After approx 3 hours in Dachau we were ready to head back to Munich.

I'm just going to put it out there that Lisa and I had an awesome time with our host in Munich. She's smart and funny, has GREAT taste in music, is probably the most generous person I've ever met, owner of an awesome espresso machine, and is a vegetarian! Oh MAN. I will dub her Chaka. For Chaka Khan for absolutely no reason at all. (this picture shows the stairs to Chaka's apartment. there were a LOT of stairs. a LOT).

So Chaka picked up Lisa and I from a coffeeshop and drove us to her amazing apartment that she has decorated herself. It's beautiful and SO how I would love to have an apartment for myself, should I ever be able to live successfully (affordably) without roommates. Chaka whipped us up a dinner of spicy mushroom pasta and introduced me to prosecco. We listened to Brandi Carlisle, we built a fire, we had grappa (whoa, how do you spell that?). We sat around talking about evvvverything eating delicious noodles and getting to know each other. Great first night in Munich!

Lisa's visit!

Hello, everyone!
I got back yesterday from my Germany Tour '08. It was AMAZING and I can't wait to share it all with you. But before I do that, I'm going to tell you about Lisa's visit to Avignon which rocked.

Unfortunately, Lisa had a difficult time getting here to the 'non. Lots of stuff with plane complications and trains and cell phones and all of that but, in end, Lisa made it here safe and sound and only approximately 18 hours behind schedule. Woohoo!

Lisa arrived on Saturday afternoon. First thing we did? PASTRY. What was the first one she had in my town? A sancristain. Those ones are freaking out of this world. Then we giddily headed back home to settle down to lunch and exhaustion.

Lisa's a little surprised that 1) I dont' really eat cheese and 2) I don't have a bottle of wine sitting at my house all the time. Ahh! For a hot sec there I was vegan and so cheese is just something I don't buy anymore and I don't buy wine except for when I'm going to someone else's house. I like to drink soymilk. So I'm not really French? Nope. But we got Boursin and some Cotes du Rhone to have a Frenchified lunch.

We walked around town and went to the palace and it was beautiful. Went to the MakeOutCenter of the City because that's what French people here do. The amours walk to the otp of the Jardins de Papes and go and make babies. Makes for an interesting walk for families and little kids. We saw the city, waved to the Pont d'Avignon, and headed to Robyn's for the amazing soiree she had organized.

A night of chaos ensued with Lisa, me, Robyn, Nicole, Emily, and Amy. Robyn made an AWESOME dinner with an aperitif, a main meal, dessert, wine, AND cheese and it was awesome. Hours and hours of talking and eating and laughing and everything. I am SO GLAD that my friends here have met my sisters and that my sisters have met my friends. The joining of the two worlds, you might say. And I think it has gone splendidly!

On Sunday Lisa and I did a list of things that are awesome to do on Sundays here because they are FREE! WOOHOO. We went on the Pont d'Avignon and sang the eponymous song, freaked out some tourists. We went to l'Ile de la Bartelesse and checked out the city and the palace, and, yeah, we took the little tourist train around the town.

Then Lisa and I went to her birthday dinner at a nice (unfortunately, tourist-y) restaurant right by Place Pie.

This is the part where I tell you what we ate!
Lisa had duck with a honey glaze, pureed carrots, and red wine. I had chicken in a tomato sauce, mixed salad, and french fries (random to have french fries on my classy plate, but whatevs)

Then we met up with my peeps at Lalogene and Amy convinced us to do... karaoke! It was at karaoke where I finally got up the courage to pledge my undying love to the DJ. We started out with a rocky relationship but something akin to amour has grown between us... he has the voice of a freakin' French ANGEL and he can slow down time with his rendition of "The Show Must go On." We have an agreement - we speak with our eyes when I request "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" and we bring the house down with whatever song we do harmonies on. Ahhhh, Mr. DJ, I do not know your name, but I know that we are connected.

On Monday Lisa and I had a lazy day. We went to the Palace because we had free tickets (something for free in France!? You gotta be kidding me!) and so we wandered around and went "ooh la la" at all of the old stuff. K, then we passed out for a supah long nap. Woke up for dinner and Melting Potes! Oh man, Melting Potes is getting better and better. I have to remember that going to it means that 1) I speak french 2) I see my friends 3) I meet new people.

Ok, Lisa and I were leaving for Munich on Tuesday morning with a flight at 7:00 from Marseille. Ladies and gentlemen, this is IMPOSSIBLE to do unless you are very very close to Marseille. And I am not. So Lisa and I arranged with my friend, Emilie (hear that!? I have a French friend named Emilie!) who comes to Melting Potes now with her friends. Woohoo! more opportunities to speak French and hang out with cool French girls. Then Emilie took Lisa and I to her awesome apartment in marseille (arriving at 2:00 am) to get up at 4:30am to get to the airport! How amazingly nice is this girl? She chauffeured us, had her stay at her apartment, AND took us to the airport. Incredible!

Then Lisa and I set off for a whirlwind tour of Germany. The memory card that has my pictures of Dachau and Salzburg is acting whacky and might be broken. This is making me SO SAD. As in, I might not have any pictures from those two places and ahhhhhh that stinks so much.

Am going to work on the posts of everything else from the past week. It's been PACKED and it has been AMAZING and I am all smiles right now.

yay

A Tea Party!

Last night I went to a tea party thrown for some of the assistants by Les Amis de Violette. Who are Les Amis de Violette? They're a group of Avignonnais who meet every week with Micaela to learn English from her. They range in age from 40 to 80, and they range in skill level, too. They threw us (Darija, me, Robyn, Marius, Ciaran, Renee) a tea party because we have all been to their English lass, invited by Micaela, to introduce ourselves and talk about our respective countries (United States: Darija, me, Robyn; Taiwan: Marius; Ireland: Ciaran; Jamaica: Renee) and to hear our different accents as we all speak English. When I went we ended up talking about French and American politics (!!!) which was pretty difficult for me because... um... I'm not the greatest, at the moment, at keeping up with current events. Ew, I hate admitting that. I also ended up singing a cappella for them because, when they asked me "what do you REALLY want to do in your life?" and I responded with "I'd like to be a singer/songwriter" they were all like "ooh la la! sing! sing!" and so I did.

ANYway, they threw us this tea party chez Micaela and it was great because it was like Auberge Espagnole again but with old people. We all sat around speaking in English and French, practicing, stumbling over our words and tenses, piecing together sentences, etc. Micaela invited me to sing a few songs for them, since I'd already done it and they wanted to hear the songs in English again. This time I wrote out the lyrics for them beforehand so they could 'etudier' and follow along. I sang "For You" (they wanted to hear stuff I'd written myself) and the one phrase they didn't understand and kept asking about was "I am standing on my lover's leap." I had fun explaining my attempts at poetry for them.

I also sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane" because I wanted to sing a song about departures and I took one look at Darija (my roommate) and I got hella choked up and... well, crud. 2/3 of the people I know here are leaving and I haven't taken too much time yet to think about that and I started last night when I sang the song and... I'm going to miss everyone.

Then, of course, there was food and we all stuffed ourselves on olive tampanade (whoa, how do you spell that?), chocolates, cakes, cookies (little navettes which are all provencale-y and stuff), Taiwanese tea thanks to Marius, champagne, wine, quiche, and other goodness. Awesome. Gotta remember to taste everything native to Provence before I go home.

It was so nice to have this tea party because: Les Amis de Violette are really nice, it gave me a chance to see the other assistants again before they leave (AHHHHH), and I love being around the good ol' melange of languages. I am so impressed by these Amis because they're all learning English at an older age and I think that's brave and fabulous. Makes me braver, en fait, knowing that there are people, young and old, going out and practicing, making mistakes, stumbling over things, to communicate. And it also reminded me that I'm not actually awful at French and I'm grateful for that reminder.
pictured: Robyn, Renee, Ciaran, Marius, Darija, me

Woohoo! I'm off to start the day and holycrow LISA WILL BE HERE TOMORROW.

Some positives

Tonight Avignon was really beautiful. The smell of freshly fallen rain combined with the beauty of the darkened city with street lamps lighting the palace walls... reminded me of my first nights here. It sort of helped me fall in love with this city again and that was a nice feeling.

Today, one teacher in my school told me that I've improved a lot since I first got here. This was earth-shattering news to me and VERY welcome, indeed. She supported this fact by saying that the kids used not to like English but now they all bounce for joy whenever we have it which is a great thing. Their enthusiasm increases my enthusiasm which increases their enthusiasm and it's... a great cycle. So I feel really great about that.

In other news, it's April 1st. That means I have exactly three weeks and one week left here on this side of the ocean. Weirrrrrrd.