This week has been pretty disappointing in terms of weather, today it was rainy and pretty cold. However, last week it was really hot out, so Brittny and I went to visit the public pool. It was a really nice pool but it was also super crowded. Since I brought my camera along, I snapped a few pics before we left.



all the people!



more of the pool



Brittny and I

Well I've reached the two week point before coming home! I still have some more homework to do, unfortunately. I have to write an 8 page (in German) about my volunteer work that I've done this semester. I've been going to an elderly home on Mondays and chatting with some of the residents. I also have to write a paper in English as a group project. I'm not looking forward to doing either of them but they've got to be done! I also need to start packing things up I guess. I am so excited to come home, I miss everybody. Hopefully I'll get a few more posts in before I get back :-D

This is a little late, but the pictures were just posted online. A few weeks ago we celebrated the 50 year anniversary of the American Junior Year at Heidelberg University program. It was almost a week long event with alumni, professors and the president of Heidelberg College in Tiffen, Ohio. Heidelberg College and the Heidelberg University in Germany are sister schools. Well, unfortunately I didn't really take part in much of the celebration because Vaune was here the same week and didn't have much interest in most of it, plus I wasn't even allowed to take her to everything I guess.

But we didn't skip the best part: the fireworks! Heidelberg does this every June and July, and we got to be on a riverboat on the Neckar river for it!


There happened to be a picture of Vaune and I, but we didn't know it was being taken... Oh well.



It was pretty foggy that day, and a little chilly to be summer.



We were all shocked to witness a proposal! Katie is a member of our year program and her boyfriend is German.



She was crying! I was too, a little bit. I never saw anyone get engaged before!



They start off the night of fireworks by lighting up the castle in red and making it look all smoky, in memory of the time it burned down I suppose.

Then fireworks over the water:





I guess it kind of makes up for missing the fourth of July fireworks this year! Except it was missing the hamburgers and watermelon, definitely. However, tomorrow we are having a 4th of July party anyway, weather permitting. It will be with all the kids in the AJY program, but I miss hanging out at Nana and Popas and then heading over to Jess's house to light firecrackers and sparklers. Well, there is always next year!

You can find more pictures of the 50 year anniversary celebration and an article about it at the Heidelberg College website here: http://www.heidelberg.edu/ajy/alumni/anniversary

More pictures to come!

Its semi-finals here in the land where football means soccer (that is, everywhere except the US). Germany is doing well and everyone is going insane!

Here are some pictures from Germany vs Portugal




They have big screens in the university square for public viewing... They pack in about 5000 people! And Heidelberg is just a small city, imagine the big ones!

Wednesday was Germany vs Turkey. Now, there is a large Turkish population in Germany-- Imagine the chaos! People were setting off fireworks and cheering, blowing car horns! It was amazing.

I'm pretty sure Germany plays Spain on Sunday-- I'll take pictures if I can.

Sorry I haven't been updating this journal. I've been busy with my classes of course (studying hard as always). It has been nice out lately. I hope to go swimming on Wednesday and take some pictures of the beautiful public pool they have here. Less than a month left until I come home though, boy does time fly!

To end our trip to East Germany, we went to see the Wartburg castle, overlooking the town of Eisenach. From the outside I didn´t think it was especially exciting, since there are so many castles all over the place in Germany, but the inside was very cool as well.



First a bit of the town of Eisenach, which we went to first. We went to the Bach museum, which was kind of cool. They had is skull, or at least a cast of it, which pretty much freaked me out.



Now from the top of the Wartburg...



Here is me in front of the castle:



I believe this picture is of the south tower



Now some pictures from inside



Super elaborate!





Fit for a King!

Tomorrow night is the fireworks over the castle here! I´m so excited. Vaune and I have still been hanging out and whatnot. We went to a public indoor pool yesterday which made me super tired. We might try for an outdoor one this weekend because Brittny really wants to go too, and she wasn´t around when we went Thrusday. Pretty fun! There have been a lot of alumni, German professors and off campus directors around AJY. I came just to clean and ended up talking to Dr. Blake Michael, the off campus director from my school. I think it would have been pretty cool if one of my professors had come also, but thats okay, I´ll see them in August!

Unfortunatly, I have been getting lazy about posting! In fact, I didn´t even finish posting about my East Germany trip. I guess I´m getting a little wrapped up in things over here. Don´t worry though, here are the pictures from Dresden.





Dresden is the capital of the federal state of Saxony in Germany. Its a very old and beautiful city.







We got to see some uniformed guys walk through the courtyard here, very good timing!



Me sitting in front of a fountain.





As you can see there is a very old style of architechture here!



The Frauenkirche, or Woman´s Church is a very famous church from Dresden, it was gorgeous! It was destroyed in WWII but is under constant renevations since it is such a landmark.

















Oh, thats not a plate of pasta, its ice cream!

Sorry this entry is very hastily written, I have to finish my homework for class. Its supposed to be a paper on my favorite film, book, opera or play. Class starts in almost 2 hours so I better get to work and FAST! Vaune arrived here on Saturday. She just finished up in France (spent a year there) and is due home in a couple weeks. Until then she´s hanging out with me. Its supposed to rain later today but the weather has been generally very nice and in the 80s. I have been working on my tan whenever I get the chance. Everyone here lies on the grass at the bank of the river. Its almost like a beach except you don´t swim in the Neckar and there isn´t any sand. It makes me miss Lake Erie and lazy days at the beach.

Well I do have one more post from East Germany, then I should get some nice pics of Heidelberg up in the nice weather. There are going to be fireworks over the castle on Saturday night, so I´m going to try out the fireworks setting on my camera and see if I can get some nice shots!

During our AJY trip we visited the Buchenwald Concentration camp. It is close to Weimar but is kind of up in the mountains. It is one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. I'm really glad we had the tour guide that we did because I really wouldn't have understood anything unless he was explaining it all.



I only took a few pictures at Buchenwald. All of the barracks have been torn down due to all the diseases that were inside of them. This is the gate into the camp. It also had a prison for "criminals" which was the worst place you could be. It was just a small room with a fold out piece of wood to lay on. They made the person stand in the middle of the small room, they couldn't rest against the wall or anything. They had to stand until the literally just collapsed.



This is a picture of the prison area. each of those windows that are covered up were windows to a cell. They were tiny. We went in and now they have plauges up with memorials of people who stayed in certain cells, and people leave flowers there for loved ones.

The only buildings left are turned into museums, book stores, bathrooms, and a place where you can rent out an audio tour. Also remaining is the crematorium. Our guide told us to look at the oil tank on top of the ovens. The bodies they burned did not have enough fat on them to burn well, so they had to cover them in oil.



This is a picture from inside the camp looking out at a place where they kept bears for part of a zoo. During the time that they had the camp, they built a zoo outside to entertain the SS guards and their families, or anyone else who came, I guess. They fed the bears better than the people inside the camp, and they had to watch them get fed everyday. We were reminded that the people in the SS were completely volunteer. They had to work very hard to get into the SS by being in top physical condition, not to mention they had to have blond hair and blue eyes.



I also took a picture of this on the gate. A lot of people know what Auswitsch and other consentration camp's gates say: Arbeit Macht Frei or "Work will set you free". Buchenwald's gate says Jedem das Seine which basically means "everyone gets what they deserve."

I'm glad that I got the opportunity to go to this concentration camp, even though it was difficult to see. I haven't included all the information on Buchenwald, but you can easily look it up online. This certainly wasn't one of my happier excusions, but probably one of the more important ones. Over 56,500 people died at Buchenwald.

Erfurt is considered a little Prauge of Germany because it is still all Middle Ages like. It was very pretty there, but I had the worst hookah (ulgh!). My host mom was so angry that Courney and I smoked hookah at all though. Erfurt is also the capital of Thuringen, hmm.



Basically an opening view of Erfurt and the type of buildings the place was full of.



Pictured above is the Mariendom and the Severikirche. It is pretty grand! Its also one of the first things I saw coming into Erfurt.

More general views of the city...







Okay more of the Mariendom (der Dom= Cathedral)...



Up the steps!



and inside...







People in Erfurt used to have a lot of money (this is in the olden days here), so they built these humungo beautiful church and cathedral. They also built up their buidlings to be very pretty. I guess they had to use the money for something.



Above used to be, or still is, a synagog. Pretty plain in comparison.



I just thought this was pretty; I took it from a bridge.



very fancy, eh?

So Brittny's friends Cassy and Sam are here today! They'll be staying for around 12 days or so. I helped her pick them up which turned out to be crazy because we went to the wrong mcdonalds and etc... Long story, but they are here! The weather is very nice and since we'll be taking them around I'll probably get some cool pictures to post, but not until after I finish this trip. I still have a few more posts in the works!

Jena (pronounced yay-na) is where I stayed during this whole trip. I had a host family, which was awesome! They were so so so nice. My host mom gave me tea to take home because when she asked what I drank with breakfast, I said that I drink water. Water!? How could I just drink water? So on my last day with them she gave me two bags of tea so that I didn't have to drink plain water in the morning. They also had two cats which I loved, they were very tame and they LIKED ME!! SERIOUSLY!!! and they had an african gray parrot named Kiki. Kiki was soooo cool. I miss that bird.

Here are a few pictures of Jena:





Jena is mostly a university town. But it is also considered a center for optics, thus the Optics Museum.



Above is a planetarium projector, Jena has the first modern planetarium in the world!



As you can see from the architecture, they are really into glass and a lot of windows to reflect on optics.. hehe no pun intended there!



The older architecture is reflected on the new ones!

We took a break in a nice little courtyard







I'm not sure if you will be able to tell in these pictures, half of Jena was destroyed in WWII. The old half has little white plaques on them with famous or notable people that have onced lived in that building. The newer half is mimicing the style of the old side, but it isn't exactly the same.







Jena was a nice city, but there wasn't anything really super exciting there. We didn't actually spend much time there at all, except to sleep! I have at least 4 more places to show you though, so stay tuned!

For some reason I took a ton of pictures in Weimar, so I had to devote another post to it!



There is this huge park in Weimar, which actually is Goethe's garten. This guy had one huge garten! This is a view of it over a creek and of his house. That was his little house, not where he actually lived. Its pretty nice isn't it? I'm so glad the weather was super nice so I could enjoy seeing this.



Here is what I think is the Opera House. It is in this huge open space:



In German city's whenever there is a big open space like this its called a "Markt" because at one time that is where they acutally used it as a market. We just happened to be in Weimar on May 1st, which happened to be a holiday. Among it being May Day it was Father's day too. Father's day is different in Germany than it is in the United States. In the US its a time where the family all hangs out together, gets dad a few presents, etc. But in Germany, the dads go out and celebrate. They get drunk and do whatever they want basically. There was a band playing in this Markt that day, they played some good ol' American tunes that we sang along with!

More views of buildings in the Markt





Goethe is a pretty famous guy who lived in Weimar, but we can't forget about Schiller! I took a picture of his house, which is now a museum.



Schiller was a pretty sickly guy, and he had is own bedroom up in the attic. I guess he snored so loud that he stayed up there so other people could sleep. He also would do his work up there, looking out one of those windows.



Here is me with two famous Weimar guys, Goethe and Schiller! We are standing outside of the Theater. See Goethe is on the left, looking stern and hard working, while Schiller, on the right, is a visionary, staring off into the future... haha!

Okay one more thing from Weimar



Weimar is in the Bundesland (or federal state) of Thüringen, which is famous for having this food: Wurst in a Broetchen. There were carts like this all over. I tried one, but I didn't get one myself. Sometimes people just get the wurst and eat it alone. I thought it looked pretty strange, but they tasted good!

Ok, thats it for Weimar. Next up is Jena!

The weather here in Heidelberg has been so awesome lately. I open my window to air out my room Monday and I haven't closed it yet! Flowers are blooming on the trees and bushes, and the mountains are completely green now. I believe spring has sprung!

What a busy weekend it was! I left early Thursday morning to get to Weimar, Germany. Fortunately we had great weather all weekend with just a few random showers. I also stayed with a fantastic host family! Hopefully we'll be able to stay in touch. They were awesome! I met my first German teenager (well she was 18) who likes music other than rap and crappy 80s music... thats right, my host sister Paulina loves METAL! I thought that was pretty awesome.

The first city we visited was Weimar. Weimar is an interesting city because on one side its is a cultural center of Europe. So many famous people have lived there, including Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Nietzsche and Liszt. But on the other hand, it was also where the Nazi's started out. There is also a concentration camp nearby, which we visited also. Buchenwald will get an entry of its own, however.

Ok for the sake of keeping things in chronological order, I'm going to have to post this picture:



Budgies!!! They were at the truck stop type thing we stopped at for lunch. These are both girls, you can tell by their brown noses. Billy is cuter.

And on to Weimar!

So I'm pretty sure Goethe isn't burried here, but his wife is!



I don't really think you can read what is on her headstone, unfortunately. Well Christiana Vulpius was actually Goethe's secretary at first, but he married her eventually and years after she had his child. Goethe was quite the ladies man of his time, but this was the only woman he ever married, even though she was a common person. Other aristocrats did not approve of this union! Since I did take a whole semester on Goethe, I just had to snap a picture of his wife's burial site.



And here is something very cool... Painted by Lucas Cranach in 1555, this painting still is so brightly colored and in such great condition! This is on the inside of the St. Peter and Paul church. He painted it in a room that was only like 3 meters high, but this painting is probably 5 or 6 meters high. So he had to lay on the floor to do it as a very old man. He is actually in the painting too, added in by his son. On the main center painting he's the second to the right. The blood coming out of Jesus was actually supposed to be landing on Martin Luther's head but Lucas Cranach's son painted it so the blood was going on his father's head instead! Funny huh? I guess he thought his dad was better than Martin Luther, but it was his dad and all...



This building is actually of Nazi architecture. Its really weird but a lot of buildings built by the Nazis are still up and being used for other things. Since Weimar is where the Nazis started out, they have problems with Neo Nazis coming there. It is a shame because the city is so beautiful and also has this large cultural side to it. I guess its just like Goethe and his ginkgo leaf with two sides...



As you can see by this sticker, the nazis are not welcome here by any means. (By the way it means "Nazis? No thank you!") There wasn't a lot of graffiti in Weimar, but everything I saw was anti-nazi graffiti. Every year the people of Weimar have a festival, and they wear brightly colored clothes in opposition of Neo- Nazis.

They have a castle in Weimar, but it is kind of different than the sort of castle we have in Heidelberg. Here is part of it...



Its more of like a square thing with a big courtyard in the middle. I guess it is supposed to be beautiful and grand but I thought it was kind of boring.

Here is the view I got right out of the courtyard walking back into the city...



Okay I'll have to have one more Weimar post because its almost time for me to start class! Hopefully I'll have some time to post one tonight or something. Friday of this week Brittny's friends are coming to visit, so I might just have to go on another adventure.... Who knows! We shall see!