Wednesday, September 19, 2007

At long last...and comment this time!


Hi all...
Ok, so I finally managed to not only remember my password and switch blogspot back to English, but I also (ooooh, ahhhh) FINALLY got internet. It took about a week longer than it was supposed to due my extremely helpful friend Eric. I needed my IP address and he was very proud to announce that he could find it for me - Even on Vista. Well, he did find the IP address - for the Wireless network. However, I have to use a cable and therefore I must register with my Ethernet IP address. So. Yeah. Viola, a lifeline to the world. Actually, I thought it was going to be a red-letter day and that I might FINALLY be able to find out the phone number to my phone since I signed my lease today. Or not. There was a phone number on the lease, but apparently it is not the right one. I DO, however, know my mailing address.

Steph Munson
Goldener Turm
Wahlenstrasse 16 Zi 304
93047 Regensburg, Germany

Oh, and don't try to send me playing cards, apparently this is verboten. What I would really like at this point is baking soda. Or cornstarch. Or coolwhip. Simply because they don't exist here. Weird, huh? Let's see...was noch. See, I'm slipping in some German here - because I think I can. Needless to say, my German class is maybe helping some. Actually, I have already seen my comprehension level sky-rocket, but this helps me only a little as I am surrounded outside of the classroom with people speaking Bayernisch.
This is a southern dialect and I get shouted at a lot in it. Mostly by bus drivers and people at the supermarkets. By the way, I have found a great irony in the German food industry. People shop here either every day or every few days. So, all their food has pretty short expiration dates. Thus I was shocked (and confused, because I looked through all the coolers) to discover that their "Milch" lasts for 6 months! They keep it in an "aisle" of stacked up boxes. I have already decided that the reason that all the old people in Germany are typically short (but cute) is because they didn't drink enough milk as a child. This is due to the fact that the milk tastes like....like....well, there is no equivalent in America because we have "happy cows" and we are not afraid the steroid the heck out of them. But, I digress.

It is amazing how full my days are. Every day I have class from 8:30 to 2:30/3 with a lunch break. I have an amazing teacher who enjoys going on any good tangents. We work on written skills, pronunciation and mostly on expanding our vocabularies. I seem to have a knack for remembering the most useless words upon first utterance. So, I know button, acorn, push and pull, strange and badger. Great. Anyhow, at least the food is edible at the "Mensa" - but just barely. I am now a hard-core Schnitzel fan (breaded pork...mmmm) and know to stay away from the vast array of "pudding" desserts offered. Anyhow, after class we (all 54 of us fun-loving internationalists) trek to the "Kaffee-stunde" coffee-hour and either do fun things like register as aliens or get tours of parts of the college. The former usually includes harassed-looking and usually cranky university employees and the latter consists of much milling around. However, I am now officially a German Alien. How sweet is that?

Today I went to my friends' Eric and Christine's apartment and made a birthday cake for Eric's girlfriend Claudia. Now, I did have to only use baking powder and had to cook the canned cherries to a gel (oh, no pie filling here either...) but it still tasted great - Sachentorte/Black Forest Cake. I am missing a well-equipped kitchen and larder though. I know that larder is an archaic term by our standards, but honestly, the more I try to think in German the less capable I seem to speak in English. I figure it will even out at some point and then I hope that German will take over. Soon.

Anyhow, this was my nice long and rambling post that I am sure you have all (more or less) been waiting for.
Anyhow, I'm coming down sick and need my sleep. And no, I haven't been dreaming in German, yet.

Hope everyone is well,
Steph

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steph,
Thanks for the newsy update. I too was reprimanded by a German lady for putting my feet on the seat. I didn't know what she was saying but knew she was upset. Good thing I didn't get fined or worse.
When baking, do they have the same size measuring cups, spoons as we have or do you have to use their recipes?

Looking forward to your blogs!

Love, Grandma

Anonymous said...

I take a day off from checking your blog and THEN you post something!!! You know, you write very much the way you speak. Don't be hard on Eric...he was trying to be helpful. He could have just left you to your own devices;)
Tell me about the picture you posted. Is it the view from...where??
Keep working on getting that phone number figured out.
Love, Mom

Anonymous said...

I'm sure I am the very LAST person you expected to see on your blog, but your mom forwarded the link to my mom, who forwarded it on to me. You sound so sophisticated in your blog that I just had to say hello! Not like I wouldn't expect you to be.... (sophisticated, that is) .... but, you know, last time I saw you you were still in grade school, so it is quite a change to see! Way to get out there and take life by the nose ring! How did you make the decision to go oversees? What made you want to go to Germany? What are you studying? It sounds exciting and exotic :-) As for me, I have been working for the past four years on a music school in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. It is a rollercoaster, to say the least, but I am having a lot of fun while being nauseous most of a time (much like a rollercoaster). If you haven't figured it out already, this is your old babysitter from seven million years ago --- Ange J!