Rugby practice was really fun. They put us on soccer teams of red against not-red for warm-up. Meghan and I were both wearing red, so they were concerned because "The Americans are good! We can't have them on the same team!" But we did anyway, and our German ended up scoring a lot of goals, thanks to some tricky passing and lots of assists. ;) After a while our British coach got fed up and started blasting balls from the goalie box at our goal. Since the goals were only some 20m apart, this was quite frightening, but he was eventually silenced when I stopped one of his shots dead on my foot. By this time it had begun to rain, first lightly, and then like mad, buckets of rain, sheets of rain, until finally the proximity of the lightning forced us down a ramp to an overhang with a team of soccer playing young men. (Not too bad!) Unfortunately, the rain began to run down the ramp, backing up at the drain. At once, the wall of water over came the obstacle formed by the drain and starting flooding the area under the overhang. We pretended to get ready to jump as the lake started getting larger, and the Dutch said, "Oh, have you got practice with this sort of thing from New Orleans?" I answered her regarding the break in the barrier, "Oh, I was rather thinking this was starting to look like the Netherlands!" She told me that I'd better quit or we wouldn't be sharing an office tomorrow. I think it's a sign that you're finally comfortable in Northern Germany when you can start making fun of the Dutch. The British coach decided to make for it over the lake. He put a bag over his cleats and began shuffling patiently through the water. "Ingenious!" he cried, "The British didn't rule the world for nothing!" I joined in with cries of "All hail the British Navy!" And then the soccer players showed us that they had the key to the building and it led straight out without necessitating a walk through a lake. We split, but the Brit was too far through the lake, so he kept shuffling along until he reached the other side. He held up his plastic bag in triumph! ...and poured out about a liter of water that had leaked in through a hole during his journey.

Last night we had dinner with the Italians. The best way to describe it is to say, as my friend Gina did: "You know all of the stereotypes you've ever had about Italians? They're all true!"

And they were. We ate pasta. We argued in loud voices. We cheered people all the time for nothing. Everytime anything happened, anything, the whole room would be full of shouting and large, sweeping hand gestures. When something bad happened, they all said, "Mama mia!" They were extremely friendly and we got on quite well considering they don't speak but a little English and we speak but an even littler bit of Italian.

It was awesome. I felt like saying, "The Olive Garden- when you're here, you're family!"

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Once upon a time there was a girl traveling in the delightful country of Spain. Her eye was extremely itchy, and she spent a large part of one morning rubbing it. The eye only got worse and began to swell. It swelled and swelled until one day it looked like this:

At the same time, a large lump appear on the side of the girl's face between the bottom of her ear and the top of her jawbone. It was weird. When the girl finally got some medicine for the eye (thanks to her older sister, who has mad Spanish-speaking skillz) the eye swelling went down, but the lump did not. It went down a little bit, but was still obvious to the touch. The lump, in fact, lasted until the present day, some 2 months after its arrival.


The end.

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Recently I've been thinking a lot. It's a combination, I think, of reading constantly and being really tired; it makes me spend a lot of time staring out at the rain. The fact that it's raining doesn't help.
I'm listeing to the song "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses. It says, "Don't you need some time, on your own/ Everybody needs some time on their own." And I do. I need some time to walk around in a cloud of thoughts, a look in my eye like I'm somehwere very far away, and indeed I will be. But that means my shopping trip will take FOREVER.

Ugh. can I just say... yesterday I FINALLY wore something cute, I was so proud of myself... and then these crazy bums were harrassing me and this one mechanic guy followed me home and told me that he was going to ring my room sometime so that we could hang out. He even knows which room it is because I had to ring it myself because I don't have the key right now. Even though he was like... 40. And then I realized why I never ever dress up... because I hate people and I want them to LEAVE ME ALONE!!! Especially... no offense... CRAZY BUMS!! I was most happy when those horrible bug bites covered my hands and face and all the crazy bums avoided me like I had leperosy. I'm just glad that I don't live in Southern Europe.

Mmm... I really like Northern Europe... especially when it's raining because then it just seems so much more like Northern Europe to me. I'm coming back to the states at the end of the month, I'll get ONe Day! One precious day at home before I start my new life across the country. I feel happy though that I'm not by far the only one who is doing the exact same thing. Even Pam, who is on my program is doing the same thing, only she's missing the first three days of class!

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The particular church monastery we went to was apparently founded on the advice of a wild boar, who came to the place while the french monk who built it was waiting for a sign. The appearance of boars and pigs all over the Rheinland-Pfalz and Hesse are not only commemorating this historical happening, though- some people say that they were put there to irk the Jews, who think of the pig as an unclean animal. By using the pig's head everywhere (even as the body of a drinking fountain, for example) they could force the Jews into constant contact with the unkosher animal, even forcing them, if they wanted potable water, to get it from the mouth of a boar.
Even in these enlightened times, there is still anti-semitism here, even though the graffiti on the wall encourages us to "wipe it out!" It struck me as really strange that there still would be, but then I realized that the history of anti-semitism here dates to far before the Holocaust. Anti-semitism was not created by the Holocaust, Hitler just took advantage of an already hated group to create a convenient scape goat for Germany's problems, just like he did when he incited people against the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles, (which everyone felt very keenly even without his suggestion.) So the horror of some 10 years and the deep shame of 60 years has still failed to uproot the hostility of 600 years... perhaps that is not so surprising, after all. But it is a little bit unsettling, especially with what's going on in the Middle East at the moment.

I will have to ruminate upon this later.

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"My hosts evidently saw that I was depressed in spirits, and did their best to divert me. Edith especially, I could see, was distressed for me, but according to the usual perversity of lovers, having once been so mad as to dream of receiving something more from her, there was no longer any virtue for me in a kindness that I knew was only sympathy."

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We just had a bbq after rugby practice where almost everyone there was a foreigner, but from many different countries (three from France, two from the Netherlands, two from America, two from Germany). We spoke a mix of English, German, Dutch, and French. (of course I only spoke German, French and English, as the only thing I know how to say in Dutch is "How did you come here?" and even now I forget. We talked until it was dark, that is to say we were there til 12, discussing University politics as well as world politics- mostly those of Europe, of course, and what everyone thinks of the new female German Chancellor and whether or not the Dutch have a government at all and whether or not the Dutch have come around to liking their Argentinian princess (they have), and so weiter. Everyone was sharing their stories of what happened to them when they didn't know German, and those people who still did know German (me among them) took turns in practicing important phrases. I think the best point in the evening was when one of the frenchmen's chair almost collapsed. Picking up the chair and setting it aright, he exclaimed, "Ach! Der Stuhl ist kaput!" in a terrible french accent. And now for a joke:

Q: What do the Dutch do after they win the World Cup?

A: They turn off the X-box!

;)

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Yesterday I went with some family friends to Hamburg. We had a lovely time and went on a double-decker bus tour of the city. The audio guide was ridiculous, as many of those things are, and niether matched the buildings we were going by nor told us anything particularly insightful. I did, however, learn a lot about the history of the city with respect to its involvement in the Hanseatic league and its large scale distruction during the WWII. It was also burnt almost completely to the ground in 1862, and suffered two years of the black death back in the days when the black death was around.
The Hanseatic League was a league of kingdoms and independent cities that banded together to form a free-trade league way back in the day. This association brough unprecedented wealth to the city and it grew in size and reputation. The harbor in Hamburg is GIGANTIC, with the craned necks of the container-movers dotting the landscape as far as the eye can see. It was much to my surprise, then, when I remembered that Hamburg isn't even located on the sea! It is instead located on the river Elbe and the river Alster. The river Elbe is so wide and deep that it provides the container ships a shipping lane that goes right into the heart of Germany. The placement of this harbor was also a convenient way to cut out the Dutch and Belgium merchants, whose harbors at Amsterdam, Bruges, and Antwerp were the only other gateways into the Northern European market. Fittingly, this caused quite a quarrel to develop between the Hamburgers and the Dutch (the Dutch being a major world power at the time, especially as merchants) and they had many conflicts and disagreements, until finally the Dutch granted Hamburg recognition as an independently governed state and Hamburg forgave the Dutch a large debt in return. Right near the harbor is the warehouse district, which is actually quite beautiful as it is built on a series of canals so that goods could be brought directly to the harbor. This system of canals and its location at the confluence of two rivers makes Hamburg the city with the most bridges in the world. It is sometimes called the Venice of Northern Europe. I like it because all of the warehouses are red brick and most of the bridges are made of iron- it reflects exactly the time this part of the city was built (the 1800s, during the industrial revolution) and the mindset of the people who live here (totally northern European, business centered, practical, austere in some respects)
When Germany came together as a state, Hamburg was able to keep its status as an independently governing city, but soon this became a problem, as Hamburg had kept its membership with the Hanseatic League and was thus a duty-free port that neither collected tariffs nor passed them on to their confederation leaders. After some tension, a compromise was reached, and the city of Hamburg became a taxable part of the German Empire while the port remained a free and duty-free port, allowing it to still compete quite well with the Dutch ports. This is when the warehouse district was rebuilt after the fire in 1862 in the style that we see it today. People wanted to put as much as they could on the port itself, since it was a duty-free zone, so many buildings rest on thousands of pine and oak pillars instead of solid rock.

From its entry into the Hanseatic League until WWI could be called a golden era in Hamburg's history (which was a long time) After WWI (still called The Great War on the audio guide), Hamburg fell into a deep depression because part of the Treaty of Versailles stated that the great port city, the Gateway to the World as it was called by then, had to give up its entire merchant fleet as part of its "disarmament" and retribution to the winning French. Sometimes you hear about things in the Treaty of Versailles and you have no trouble reasoning out why Germany started World War II. In WWII it lost 40% of its inhabitants.

Anyway, we made our way around the city, saw the train station (called one of the most beautiful in the world) and the gigantic statue of Bismarck, unifier of the German states, which looks like something out of a science fiction novel the way it towers over the city. We went to a place called the Tower Bar, which sits at the top of a hotel by the port and looks out over the city. Only from here can you truly see the extent of the harbor, it is amazing. The Wagners bought me an expensive drink, I chose one called "the Orangina" with Orangina, something like peach snapps, orange juice, triple-sec, and gin. Anne said that I had to be careful not to fly away. How was I to know it would be so strong! Drinking with your parents friends has to be the most delicate operations in the world, so I tried to take it slowly, but I hadn't eaten for many hours and the drink was big and strong.

Properly soused, we weaved down the stairwell and took pictures of Kaiser Bismarck as we searched for a place to sit and watch the football match. My two companions, being french, were against whomever was playing Germany, which tonight was the Portuguese. We had very little hope of finding in this large German city a place that would be very receptive to such leanings. I was for Germany, of course, but in the spirit of companionship, I agreed to cheer for Portugal if we could find a safe place. They joked that we could simply go to a Portuguese restaurant and we pretended to look about for one of this description. I haven't ever even seen a Portuguese restaurant in all my life, so we were pretty much joking, but the joke went on all evening.

We decided to go down a street we'd seen on the bus tour which seemed to have restaurants, but we took a bit a wrong turn and went down a hill and into a neighborhood, running right into a restaurant... called the Bienvenuto. In short, a Portuguese restaurant. A look around confirm that in fact we had stumbled into an entire block of Portuguese restaurants, so filled with fans of Portugal that they spilled out of the building and we couldn't find a seat. We were positively dazed by the number of Portguese restaurants surrounding us, but we tried to find a place to eat and there was nothing to be done, they were all full. We finally settled into a Spanish restaurant a block away because Anne asked and she speaks Spanish and looks Portuguese, and she always gets what she wants. We had delicious tapas and JJ had squid and I had the most gigantic breaded friend pork chop I've ever seen. Portugal lost, of course, as does everyone I ever cheer for, so I ended up backhandedly getting Germany to win. ;) We walked home and the whole night was filled with the sounds of horns blaring and people shouting and running about, celebrating Germany's win. To this JJ said, "aw, how sad, they are going to their small final, so sad for them" and pointed to his socks that looked like the French flag, which looked totally ridiculous with his brown loafers, which I imagine was the point.

In the main square was a lake that a man had made at somepoint for unknown reasons by damming the Alster, in the lake people sailed sailboats and peddled peddleboats. There were swans and a huge fountain up to 100ft high which looked just like the "spectacular fountain" that Phillip A and Kaitlyn and I modeled for our Modelling class. I think I'll find a picture and sent it to them. I tried to take one but we were driving by much too quickly.

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