Deutchland! Deutchland!

Ok, so before I jump right into it... I just wanted to show you this first... this is a shop... a shop that sells two things... Wine and Shoes... I'm not sure what else europe can pair with wine, i mean first ice cream, now shoes? Crazy Europeans...


So, yes, the DE beat Turkey in the Semi-finals... you really couldn't ask for a bigger rivalry considering the large Turkish population actually within Germany. To get a seat in any location you needed to come about 2 hours early... while there 2 hours early, Tomoko and I were too busy trying to meet up w/ other people to actually grab seats. The street we were on is lined with little bars and restaurants, and they all put up little TVs on the outside for people to watch, and the entire street was completely packed... It was like being at a concert, except w/ out the stage. The game itself was a nail biting experience as the DE didn't play so hot for the first half leaving the game tied 1 up at half time. (please note my number 7 was the first to score for DE and actually scored twice). Much to our dismay, lightening decided to strike the satellite broadcast tower in Switzerland... and knocked out the game... to the whole entire world. This near caused rioting within the streets. But in the end, DE pulled it off and we won the game 3-2. The entire city was out on the streets, I've only ever seen anything like it when the Steelers won the super bowl... and its just semi-finals... I can't wait to see what happens on Sunday with the championship...

"To be or not to be, that is the question..." -- Hamlet

While I was trying to avoid using the most cliché of quotes for the title, nothing else quite fit... And if you're going to Denmark, how can you not quote Hamlet? But this here is the furtherest extent of any Hamlet reference, as once in Kobenhavn (Copenhagen) there really wasn't any acknowledgment of the story... nor was there any real reference to Vikings except in souvenir shops and a handful of restaurants. And now without further ado, let us begin with our opening scene…

On the train to Denmark

It is official, one of the few points in time where I irrationally lose my temper, and not in the traditional passive aggressive manners is when I am on a train and have to change seats… Now this isn’t necessarily b/c I’m irrational, its more that no one ever approaches these things in a calm manner… no one is ever like, oh, I’m sorry I have this seat reserved. No people, will stand there and stare at you, and you’ll ask if the seat is reserved b/c of course everything is written in Danish… not even German, so you don’t really know, and the one other person you’ve met is another girl traveling alone, and she’s looking to you for the German translation of things… and the closest you can guess is that anything that has the word that resembles “reservation” must be reserved. Needless to say, it was a Danish couple who didn’t speak English and then when finally pulling out their ticket only for me to see they had every seat reserved, except the one I was in, so there was no reason for them to be yelling at me in the first place, makes me disgruntled. The little old German lady behind them however, did have my seat, but was fairly sweet about it. Meanwhile, the gentleman beside us who understood everything going only, finally chimed in after us amusing everyone and did some translating.

The girl I met’s name was Macarina from Chile, and we became fast friends for our 5 hour trip to Denmark (or a single serving friend if you will). About half way through the trip, the train… the whole train… drove onto a boat and we ferried across the Baltic… which is black… a giant black ocean… and the top of Germany and all of Denmark just looks flat and green against the black ocean with giant white pinwheels lining the coasts of both countries (apparently they are big into wind energy)

Friday Night

Fresh off the train in Kobenhavn, the first thing you run into is the Tivoli Amusement Park in the center of town. After wandering around aimlessly on the streets you quickly find an ATM, then eventually head back to the train station to find a city map (the only reason you left the train station to begin with was that you were following signs to the tourist information only to find it was now an empty office)

Immediately upon getting to the hostel, I befriended Jane, the Aussie, who had just finished up teaching in London and was now backpacking and we opted to do dinner together on Stroget… the longest pedestrian thoroughfare in the world… holy shoppers heaven… 3, yes I said 3, women’s H&Ms all with different clothes and sales

Jane was pretty awesome and caught me up on some basic danish history and monarch gossip. The danish monarchy is the oldest in europe, and it has its ties to more or less every royal family (as they all tend to). However, in recent years, they have been extending outside of royalty to continue on with the line. The crown prince is married to an Aussie that he met in a bar during the Australian Olympics. His brother is married to a French woman, and previously a woman from Hong Kong... all more or less common people.

The mystery of great crack solved!

This section is really just for Dana, Amanda and Nikki... so, apparently "Great Crack" means something along the lines of "awesome" or "really cool"... a film maker from Ireland made a movie kind of about it... called "The Crack"... ok, so the mystery isn't quite solved, just kind of explained... great crack... heehee

Saturday Day

Rather than write everything let me just say go to the pictures to see everything I saw, and I’ll just go through some key points…

Denmark is the home of Hans Christian Anderson who wrote such memorable fables such as the little mermaid… the real one where she not only lost her voice when she became human it also felt as though she walked on swords, and the only way to stay human was to kill the prince, which she opted not to do, and instead died and turned into sea foam. At the far end of town there is a statue dedicated to the little mermaid, which is the first thing I went and saw. I also saw a well preserved fort (Kastellet) (with a windmill), a marble church with the 3^rd largest dome in Europe (which I was thrown out of for a wedding), One of 3 palaces, the botanical gardens, Stroget again, and back to the hostel for some regrouping.

Street Performers

Now there were all sorts of street performers out… which I love… I love everything from watching artists paint, to listening to live music, to watching magicians… and Stroget has them all. Of particular note were the Native American performers and well… the Danish monks… blonde Danish monks. But the most memorable of all was a comedic magician, who wasn’t particularly good… talked too much, drew things out a lot… kind of like odd family guy sketches… but well, he decided to single me out to be his “sexy lady assistant”… Being me, I was half mortified to have to stand in front of a less than smiling audience, and probably change a few hundred shades of red. And he kept telling me I’d have to do a “sexy” walk around, which he proceeded to demonstrate… there really aren’t the right words to describe this, but I don’t think he realized that when challenged and told to do something, despite mortification, I’ll follow through, and strut and prance… in fact, those of you that know me best probably realize that I’m very good at this kind of “acting”… and then he gave me fire… which I had to hold, in the air for about 10 minutes, and every time I brought my arm down, he’d have me bring it up again, and told me stand sexy by sticking my chest out (I’m just gonna point out, “sexy” is hard to do when you’re in an oversized sweatshirt—the sweatshirt is another story all together that isn’t nearly as entertaining)… So at the end he asked for a kiss on the cheek… and like all cheeky Europeans, he turned his head and got me on the lips… *note—how many shades of red do you really think I can change??--- and then proceeded to profess his love for me… Jane happened to be walking by at the time, she’s going to send pictures once she gets back home.

Saturday Night

Saturday night was spent at Tivoli… not riding rides… Let me tell you… Kopenhavn is super ridiculously expensive… meals… anywhere, including the hostel cost about $20, even breakfast, wanting to see things cost, even w/ student discounts… and for Tivoli, they charge for a ticket AND you have to then pay for ride tickets too! Now Tivoli has all the best rides of say Bush Gardens strategically organized to take up a minimal amount of space… with room for multiple stages shows and beer gardens… The lack of rides wasn’t all that bad however, as I got to spend 2 hours listening to big band jazz music… which was pretty awesome… most songs were Sinatra songs, or others I know all the words to, and apparently it’s a big deal for jazz/big band dancers, as the entire dance floor was full of professional level dancers, just there having fun… (all this has done is reemphasized my desire to learn jazz/swing dancing next year if anyone else is interested in joining me)… the jazz show was followed up but a pretty awesome light show…

Sunday

Sunday was a marathon day of palace touring... if there was a palace, I toured it... the only problem being that there's a lot of waiting in this process. First, nothing opens until 10... and then you find out that you can only take an actual tour... so you have to wait around for an english tour to even go in the main palace (Christ....), while at the same time trying to time things right to catch the changing of the guard (which i did catch), and making sure you make it to your train on time (which i did, w/ time to spare b/c the train schedule changed)... Oh, and it was raining... a lot, and so I learned my umbrella is rusting and in fact has a couple of holes in it... which in turn kind of defeat the purpose of having an umbrella... But it was all pretty cool... I love wandering palaces and getting dosed with history... I even got to see piles of rocks (i'm not being sarcastic here, a side effect of wanting to be an archaeologist for most of my life is that I tend to find nothing better than life than the opportunity to check out a giant pile of old rocks). It seems that the main castle had been rebuilt several times due to wars, fires, and the general need to spruce things up over the last 900 years.

The ride home was more ore less uneventful, though after lots of seat changing, I ended up sitting w/ a danish family who had two very young very loud but cute kids, who kept trying to talk to me... seeing as i'm pretty good with non verbal entertainment of children, and in order to get them to well... we'll just say quiet down a bit, i taught them how to play penny soccer... I think we played for about an hour... I was thanked later by other people on the train.

Now as for pictures... there's a video of clips of video I took during the trip, along with the regular slide show of pics...

SCORE!

Greetings to everyone on this most glorious of Friday mornings! Why glorious, you ask? Well b/c last night Germany totally kicked Portugal's ass in the quarter finals... and well... Portugal was the favored team to win the tournament.
We opted to watch the game in the Portuguese district, at a little Portuguese bar, this made it even more exciting. The only thing I can do to relate what this stuff is like, is say, think about Pittsburgh winning the Super Bowl... (for those of you who haven't experienced that atmosphere, I don't know how else to describe it)... Its definitely the most fun that I have had at a game yet... (ooo, and on a side note I tried rabbit for the first time... very good).
I now officially have some favorite players on the team... My favorite player just because he's a good player and I enjoy the fact that the first game I saw he got red carded, then had to sit out the next game, only to come back this game to score the first goal and assist in another one, and he's number 7, is Bastian Schweinsteiger (yes, that links to his player profile).Overall... good times... and look, I finally have pictures of my people... of course half of them are sad about Portugal losing... but oh well... and yes, I listed their real names and not just country (I had to cheat to do this... there's a list of people and their country at the mailboxes... I find I can remember names better when I read it

BBQ's, Beaches, Markets, and of course, More Football!

A brief rundown of the events of the past few days:

My weekend began and ended in rather the same fashion… me having issues w/ the train system Normally, the trains run rather smoothly and there’s a fork at one point and you either stay on the train your on or head over to the other side of the platform to grab the opposite train… now for whatever reason, the trains weren’t lined up time wise… so I just jumped on my transfer only to figure out I was somewhere way, way, way off from where I needed to be.

Saturday/BBQ and Beach

So the original plan for Saturday was to head out to Lubeck for the day, since it isn’t all that far away. But as I was leaving on Friday Imen (Tunisian, guest event coordinator) was like “oh, we’re having a BBQ tomorrow, you should come.” At first I went to say no, but then Cuba (yes if I don’t know names I am referring to countries) jumps in and tells me all about how I need to go. And so, I did, and I had a great time, meeting large handfuls of new people, trying to rationalize American politics and learning about how the Pittsburgh Penguins are actually known in Germany. I’ve also found my first drinking buddy, Johanas (aka German I, English translation= John)… who, of course, is sadly leaving the institute next weekend.

The BBQ ended up rather early... actually it was rather a weird ending, I was talking w/ Johanas on the deck, and we went inside and everyone was gone. So I ended up heading back to the apartment, but instead of going straight there, I opted to turn right off the train station and wander around Othmarschen. Its an incredibly beautiful neighborhood (also one of the richest in Hamburg). After about a mile you hit the waterfront, which is lined with trees and bike paths. Unfortunately the view of the Elbe river isn't all that exciting since its mostly docks and rigs, but the area around it is nice, and there is a little beach, where people hang out and swim, but only w/ wet suits, as it is freezing. In the middle of all this is a giant rock; of course the explanation for this rock is only in German, so I ended up having to ask for a translation. Turns out the rock was found in the Elbe when they were dredging, but its actually from Sweden and has been her for like 900 years. When you look at the pictures below, you too will question how a rock that size gets down to Germany from Sweden.

Sunday/Market

Sunday I did something rather unheard of from me… I rolled out of bed at the ass crack of dawn (6am)… when I didn’t actually need to… The reason for this is that on Sunday mornings down at the docks in St. Pauli, there is a fish market. Yes, the fish market has more than fish, or clearly a) I wouldn’t have gone due to my dislike of fish, and b)even if I did like fish, I don’t see me wandering down there at 7am for it. The decision to get out of bed was truly one of my better ones.

As you wander down the street from the banhof (train station) your first instinct is to hope you know where you are going… and then you start to see one or two people hauling around mounds of fresh produce… then there are flocks of them. As you get closer you start to smell the distinct odor of market fish, and well, market in general (This isn’t something I can really describe, I can just tell you every market in the world as similar base sent, that’s then accented by whatever it specializes) As you finally round the corner as far as you can see from side to side are tents ands stalls full of fresh produce and fish. There were candy stalls set up that reminded me of Fasching in Munich. Lots of hat stalls and offensive t-shirt stands… but they were in German so I wasn’t really sure what exactly they said. In one section (this was easily a mile strip of stalls) there were live animals… the first thing I saw were the bunnies, then chickens and doves… these were the fattest chickens I have ever seen, and then there were hares… I don’t think we ever give any consideration to hares… they’re huge. They were selling tons of flowers and trees… lots of bonsai that you could see college students running around with. And then in the center of it all was a giant warehouse… In this warehouse was live bands, waffles, and beer. The bands only played classic rock and 80’s music… in English. Needless to say, by 9:30 I had my waffles and beer in hand and had been completely sucked into the atmosphere. As I was leaving I bought like a 10 lb. basket of fruit for 10 euro… awesome… until I had to carry it home… not so awesome.

My entire morning was not spent just at the market, but rather, at some point in the middle of marketing I took an adventurous detour. Perhaps I should start over. Upon leaving my apartment all that was going threw my head was, “don’t forget to pick up cash”… due to a series of distractions, I ended up at the market with all of 15 euro. So, once I realized I needed more cash I started walking…

St. Pauli is an infamous neighborhood… the pleasant family oriented fish market of today, at one point years ago was the docking post of sailors and the gateway into Hamburg’s red light district… the largest red light district in all of Europe. Now a days, it still has all of its red light charm with the addition of being the central hub of European punk rock, parties, bars and discos. Its where the Beatles made their début… Wandering the street on a Sunday morning, you see “drinking parks” littered with Saturday night’s leftovers, including a few passed out bodies here and there. The overwhelming amounts of graffiti that mark Hamburg turns into some incredible wall art, and there are more bars on every block than I have ever seen in my life. But no ATMs… that is until you get to Reeperbahn. There are a lot of famously scandalous roads in the world, and well, I tend to find them… but nothing compares to the Reeperbahn. Even at around 8-9 in the morning on a Sunday, Reeperbahn has the ability to make even me blush and feel awkward. It’s a huge street, with nothing but strip joints, casinos, and sex shops, along with all of the largest night clubs and party centers. There is no wonder why its actually called the Miles of Sin. And lucky for me there were some ATMs around, so I got my cash and headed back down to the market.

Monday/Football

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL… Woot Woot!... I mean, Olay, olay, olay, olay…. So Monday night was the big match between Austria and Germany. As per usual, I rolled back over to the MPI to watch the game, and at half-time me and Johanas were like, lets blow this joint (not a lot of people were there… too big of a game) and headed to the nearest bar… an aussie bar of all places, that handed out free shots when Germany scored a goal, and of course again when we won the game. It was good times, and I’m looking forward to the quarterfinals on Thursday as we’re playing Portugal, which is probably the best team in the league right now, but any which way it should be pretty exciting.

I learned an important lesson on the way home that night… I learned that just because you know the time for the last train you need to grab, and you make it there on time, this doesn’t actually mean you’ll make it all the way home… especially if you need to make a connection, and it turns out the connection stopped running about 10 minutes before hand. But that’s why there’s cabs… And so it ends as it began…

Sorry, Technical Difficulties on that last post...

For whatever reason, I can't go back and edit that last post to add in the rest of this stuff, so its now here:

The video of the spinning things:



And then the pictures include the view from the apartment, along with a picture of my Ikea glass... Ikea all that swedish stuff... except this one glass, which is apparently made in Russia.

Settling In, Part II

The City

So far, I can say that I really like Hamburg. Where I live and where I work is nice, and friendly and clean. The middle areas I see as I ride the city train everyday… well maybe not so nice pretty and clean… but at the same time they graffiti words like, “IKEA” on the wall… clearly that person got a “build it yourself” bookshelf with a screw missing.

One of the first things I noticed in getting here is that its always daylight. I fell asleep on my first day here, and woke up at 9:30pm and it was still all sorts of sunny outside. It doesn’t start getting dusk until about 10:30, but even at 11 you can still see light on the horizon… And then when I wake up at 5am its already blazingly sunny. Due to having one night where I just couldn't sleep, I learned sunrise is around 4:30am. This is completely opposite of Cambodia where it was dark by 6, and really just promotes staying out and about and doing things the whole day. The weather here is shifty. It was super hot when I first got here, then about 3 days later, the temperature plummeted, and its only just started to get a bit warmer.

The people here are all very nice. Apparently I blend in a bit more than I thought though, as people are always asking me for directions (I think, I can't always understand them). This actually happened my first day on the way to work, when I was completely lost and wandering around aimlessly.

The Neighborhood

I live in an area called Gross- Flottbeck, which just has huge houses, and little village areas. It is quaint to say the least, but also super expensive. There are tons of little restaurants and things like that, but they tend to be out of my price range. There are also a bunch of mom and pop stores that line my street. Lucky for my wallet, I'm never home when these things are open. When asked, I usually say that I live in Othmarshen, since that's the train station, which is only a 5 minute walk from my place. The tracks are actually the dividing line between the two areas, turn left, you head towards my place, turn right you go to Othmarschen.

The Apartment

I live at Beselerstraße 15a, 22607 Groß-Flottbek, Hamburg... you know, in case you want to send me things while I'm here.

Größere Kartenansicht

That there is the mapped route between where I live (A) and where I work (B)

The apartment is perfect. While not the mansion I had last summer, it definitely works for me. As with all places that I live, its is located on the the third floor of my building (for those that don't know this is my 4th residence in 4 years where i've lived on the 3rd floor, which is usually as high as you can go). It has a bed that folds into a box on the wall, a small telly that only shows things in German (I've been watching cartoons in German, since its the easiest to follow, but MTV has family guy, american dad, and south park that i can follow along w/ as well-- in the video, the background is south park's lord of the rings episode). And then across the street there is this house that has things on the roof that spin... you better believe that when I'm tired, I sit and watch these things go for hours (see video). The pictures below are of my view, and the video is just a quick look at the place.

What do you get when...

... an American, Brazilian, Peruvian, Hungarian, Japanese, Italian, Spaniard, and Turk walk into a German cafeteria?

Robin's lunch hour

Oh, and instead of trying to learn some German before I came over, I should have tried to learn American politics.