dia academicus

well, everyone went to Heidelburg today, which looking back on it I totally regret not going. Hopefully some time in the future I can go back...

But, I must say it was nice in Bonn. Last night there was a huge party held by the Agricultural School. I went with Janina and her friends, all Germans, which was really cool. It was interesting to hang out with all girls...doing what they seemingly normally do. And it was also nice because they spoke German with me, and like...fast, slangy German that I want to learn so it was great. The party was also huge. Apparently, it's supposed to be one of the best "Fachschaftparty"s (big events held by the different schools) and it had lasers and all this craziness...one of the better dancing venues I've been to since being in Europe I'd say. I ended up having to walk about an hour back home though because I missed the last night bus. Wearing new flip flops was probably not the best choice.

The day after tomorrow my adventure to Crete begins. I'll probably not be able to post while I'm there, but I will come back with full details on the drama and the craziness that is Crete. Although I feel like we're hyping it up a lot, I think it will still be fun, enjoyable and possibly a little crazy.

This week has been alright. School as usual, everything really as usual. I've been thinking a lot about what I'll miss from being here when I go home (and thus try to savor every moment of those things) and also what I miss most about Wisconsin. Here's a little list:

Will Miss:
New friends
German
Relaxing/not having much schoolwork
Not having to tip very much
Well-dressed European men
Bonn's beauty
Technological simplicity
Public transportation
Eis/Süßigkeiten
Clubbing/Partying
Kölsch


Do Miss:
Old friends/family
Productivity/meaning in my life
Being able to easily converse with anyone
Target
Mexican Food (esp. Margaritas. And Taco Bell.)
Perkins
Madison's beauty
My bed
New music
Cute little dive bars
Spotted Cow
Wi-fi/3G/Smartphone

christi himmelfahrt

Uni Hauptgebäude

Pronounced 'christi himmel fart' is a Christian holiday celebrating the ascension of Jesus into heaven. It exists in the US, but is celebrated here as a national holiday, meaning that there are no shops open, nothing is happening, etc. as described in my last blog posts. So, I am forced to think about all the things that I should be doing today for school und so weiter, but I probably will just remain unproductive and go walk along the Rhein.

Needless to say, I successfully checked myself out of the hospital last week with few problems. They gave me some antibiotics (which I have now completed) and some sketchy pain medicine that my dad the pharmacist recommended that I not take as it is toxic to humans. So that was full on interesting. Unfortunately, my experiences with the German healthcare system have not yet fully come to a close. Because I was accepted into Nursing School for next fall, I have to have all these crazy blood tests and TB tests done, which are getting to be a little pricy. It's not covered by the "Kasse" (which is like the socialist pool of money that pays for healthcare here) because I'm not actually sick. But I'm pretty sure these things are still cheaper here when compared to the US without health insurance.

Köln Zoo

This week has been good though, otherwise. I had an eventful outing to the Köln Zoo, which was ENORMOUS. It had so many really great exhibits and an aquarium. I love aquariums. :) It's been cold here so I guess that was the one downside of the day...and everyday really. I think it must be barely getting out of the 60's these days.

Post Zoo Chinese Food

I went to all my two days of classes (okay, well, one was cancelled, so I only had 2 classes period) and they've been alright. They were pretty understanding about my absences as I was in the hospital. I am having a really, really hard time caring about my Landeskunde class (Geography) because the teacher (Douzentin) is biased, boring, and verbose. Not a great combination, especially for 3 hours right after lunch. I fell asleep twice in that time period and have no regrets because honestly the time was better spent snoozing. We were "focusing" on the German educational system, which really just meant her tangents and repeated stories all kind of had something to do with education. I think the educational system here is more overtly elitist than ours at home, but that's just my opinion I guess. They split up kids when they're like 10 according to their scholastic aptitude. It's a little young in my American opinion to be deciding whether or not to go to college. In the US, sure, we have elitist school systems (think AP classes, remedial reading, etc) but here it's just so much more pronounced. You can tell which kids go to Gymnasium (the kids who will eventually have the chance to go to a University) and the Realschule or Hauptschule. They are having huge problems with immigration now as well, because apparently all the kids who can't speak German get sent to the Hauptschule and it becomes somewhat of a ghetto environment. I'm not really sure where I stand on it, to be honest, because the school system stems from a extremely long tradition/historical value and it has its advantages. It just seems so pretentious...

Biergarten on the Rhein

If you want more information about it or a better explanation than I could ever give, here's a link.

Anyway, I really enjoy my other class. It's just straight up vocabulary, which is immensely helpful. At the end of every day here, I try to name all the vocabulary words that I've accumulated throughout the day. These days it's been mostly Umgangsprache that I've been learning from my friends, which is like slang, which is the most helpful (lets be honest) in everyday conversation. For instance, instead of saying "Mädchen" like we learned in school, here people call girls "Mädels." Never would've guessed. Yesterday I learned "schüchtern" (shy), "an/abtörnen" (to turn someone on/off) and "mist" (crap!). I definitely learned more but those are the three that will probably be added to my workable vocabulary for the day. (yes, this is how my mind works now...sort through words, decide which to stow away, use them).
I've been hanging out with Germans more recently, which I'm totally loving. I still hang out with my Amis but I ate lunch with all Germans two days in a row, grabbed a beer with Janina and some other friends on the Rhein, and last night I went to Köln with Marco and some of his friends. It's nice because I can practice German and they can practice English and I gain a whole new perspective on things much of the time. Last night I had a really interesting conversation about how people from Berlin are really snotty (think: German equivalent of Paris) which I never really heard about. Makes enough sense, I guess, when you think about it. I'm also really excited because Marc asked me to help rep the US at the equivalent of their Study Abroad Fair next week, so I've been assembling some pretty awesome pictures of Madison for that.

Beer on the Rhein

Well, that's about it for my tales from Germany this week. As usual, hope all's well back home!

bonn: krankenhaus-zeit!

Be careful what you wish for indeed...

I wanted to find out more about European healthcare...but not like this! I came to the Emergency Room on Sunday night here, only to be admitted with some sort of laryngeal edema. Let's start off at the beginning:
Some ERs aren't open on Sunday nights. Is that not one of the craziest things you've ever heard?! How can an Emergency Room be closed?? Well, me, crying from terrible pain and looking like complete shit, and my German friend, Julian, tried three different hospitals before I ended up here. It was a pretty normal experience at that point. The doctors took my blood pressure (which was INSANELY high, thank you crazy pain in my throat) and temperature...but it was ALL IN GERMAN. So, at that point, I realized this was going to be an adventure. I thought, mistakenly apparently, that German health professionals were all good at English, too, and would probably be able to speak with me in English. SO NOT THE CASE. I have spoken mostly German since I've been here, and trying to explain what's ailing me in another language is a whole nother bag of cats, let me tell you. Anyway, I waited in the waiting room for about a half an hour before they called me into see an ENT. Yep, an ENT was randomly on call in the hospital at 2am on a Sunday night. (so that was cool). The ENT told me then after examining my throat that I had severe edema in my throat and that I would have to be admitted for 2-3 days. Two to three days in a foreign hospital? I've never even been admitted at a hospital at home! So, reluctantly, I was escorted up to my new room in the HNO Klinik (Hals, Nase, Ohren = Throat, Nose, Ears) where I was shown to my bed and told to go to sleep. Ha. After a few more IVs of pain meds maybe.

The next morning came eventually, and I slept most of the first day. My friend Amy (the lifesaver) brought me some necessities, including my computer. I had to buy internet for 20 Euro for 10 hours though, so that was kind of a bummer. Anyway. I felt so horrible that whole day that I just kind of curled up into a ball and wished for death. It was made worse only by the fact that everything was in German. Instead of just saying, "OH GOD THIS HURTS, please do something about it!" I had to say "Das tut mir weh! Bitte hilf mir!" which didn't come so automatically at first. Speaking in a different language for me requires some sort of thought for me, which doesn't come automatically when the main concern is that you can't breathe/feel like your neck is going to be severed in two. But, I learned very important vocabulary words like, "my IV needle is pinching me!" (Diese Nadel knarft mich!) "I feel like I'm going to throw up!" (Ich habe übelkeit!) I need pain medicine! (Ich brauche etwas für schmerzen!) And the nurse said I spoke "echtes perfektes deutsch" (really perfect german) so that was nice.

Yesterday wasn't quite as bad, a few more people came to see me, so that was nice to see them all. But most of the day was spent napping and watching the Fox and the Hound. That just made me miss home a lot because it reminds me of Sarah and how far away I am from my family. It's been really hard to be away from home through this, but maybe it's made me a stronger person in general. It's been tough to see the woman I share my room with have her family and friends come and visit, but you know, it's not so bad. I've talked to my parents, kept them in the loop, and hope that they're not too worried about me. It's my mom's birthday today! So HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Today has been loads better than the last few. I got my voice back! I ate a bunch for lunch (more than half of what they gave me!! big news!) and I even went for a walk. This hospital is situated on a really scenic hill in Bonn, so you can see the Siebengebirge (7 hills surrounding Bonn) and pretty much the whole city except the Rhein. It was really nice because the trees were super green and it smelled like fresh rain. Also, it was the first outside experience I had in 2.5 whole days so it was refreshing as all get out. Man, I almost wish I had one more day here so I could go on another walk! (Almost). Today was also amazing because so many people came to visit me today! I had a pretty constant stream of visitors from 10:45am until 5pm. I felt really loved and especially great because I could actually talk with them. It was really nice, but I'm SO RELIEVED and happy that I get to go home tomorrow.

Well, wish me luck with getting out of here, trying to explain that I'm well enough to go home in German is going to be yet another hill to climb...

Tschüss!

Mayday Mayday!

I feel like it's been a while since my last post...
My life is still just as amazing as it was before. I found out a couple days ago that I got into the University of Wisconsin School of Nursing, which is FANTASTIC news. It's great, really, but at the same time bittersweet because now I know that I need to be getting back to reality at the beginning of September (and leaving Germany). Guess I don't want to think about that quite yet. Last week was a pretty normal week for school, I have a really large project dealing with the immigration to Wisconsin in the middle 1800's and how it shaped their identities/Wisconsin's identity. It's pretty intimidating to me, but I'm teamed up with another girl who has been here since September so she's able to shed a little light on the situation. This weekend was amazing, as usual. I always have 4 day weekends, but this weekend was a 5 day weekend (!) and I had the whole weekend to genieß Bonn. (Denglish: we use "genieß" here a lot, it's a German verb meaning to enjoy. As in: Hey everyone, let's go genieß the weather!)
Friday was Flunkyball, which I just went to to check it out. It was nothing too great, especially because it started to downpour at the end of the game. We tried to go to a houseparty, but when all 40 of us showed up they decided to charge everyone 10 Euro each so we decided rightfully against it. I went home and just caught up on TV, which was nice. I'm now enjoying the use of my dad's DVR from our house, so I can watch whatever I want to, whenever I want to! Sad only because it's not really helping me learn German.

Hanna from Finland und I in Cologne

Saturday we were aiming to go to Düsseldorf, but it didn't happen because we were trying to figure some plans out for Crete. Oh, wait, did I forget to mention the most exciting part of my weekend? Yes, yes I did. Well, my friends and I all booked tickets to fly to Crete, Greece for Pfingsten (Pentecost) break. We'll be there for SEVEN days, genießing the sun, beaches and greek food. And the best part? The 11 of us will be spending the week in our OWN PRIVATE VILLA with a terrace and a swimming pool. The cherry on top? We'll be spending less than 200 Euro each for the whole week, accommodations and round trip flight. Yep. That's real life! Originally it was just 6 people from UW, Hanna from Finland, but now the group has expanded to include 3 Germans (one of which is my Bonn Buddy, another of which is my sprachtandem partner) and another Badger! words cannot describe...

Marc (sprachtandem partner) und I in Cologne

Saturday night a bunch of us went to Cologne to see the Avengers in English in 3D. It was pretty good, partially because we all played a drinking game in the theatre. (Every time the characters were in costume on screen together? Drink! Every time one superhero punched another? Drink! and so on) It did amount to one awful headache though, (moral of the story: don't drink and watch 3D). After the movie we went out to a really great nightclub in Cologne, complete with much better music than one typically finds here in Bonn.

Nazi Rally

Sunday was pretty chill, recuperated before the May Day festivities. In Germany, May Day is a huge holiday apparently, akin to our Labor Day. Everything is closed and everyone is supposed to "Tanz in den Mai" or "Dance in May." Basically that just amounts to partying a lot and dancing through the night. There are also Maypoles all over and a really cute tradition involving giving a relatively large birch tree to someone you have a crush on in the middle of the night decorated with streamers and hearts. It was really cute waking up this morning to such a festive forest all over the city! I didn't get home too late or anything, but it was a really fun night! I think my expectations weren't that high because other people seemed to think the night was lame. I'm not really sure what they were expecting though, it was a Monday night! I also saw the Nazi rally today (there were more Polizei than Nazis, and waaaay more anti-Nazi protesters than Nazis). The parade came right past my friends balcony so I got some pretty good pictures.

Example of May Trees

A part of me still can't believe those people still exist here. It's Germany for goodness sake! You'd think that someone sometime would've learned a lesson. It was cool to be around Germans for it though and hear them calling them apes and whatnot. I don't think they can believe it either...


Hope everything is well for everyone overseas! I miss you all! And to all my Bonners, I'm looking forward to our own little Mifflin Street Block party this weekend... :)