Auf halbem Wege [halfway]

I'm over halfway done with my time abroad. WOW. I can't believe how the time has been flying. In the past month since I last checked in here, I had my family visit me, I went to a new German city (Bremen) and my girlfriend Alice came to see me. 

With the g.f. in Bremen.

I could give you a blow by blow of what I've done in the past month, but I'm going to take different approach; so let's give it a try. 

My Favorite Five Things I Saw in the Past Month

5. All of Leipzig

Hip, art-deco sort of apartment building in Leipzig.

Okay, I'm kind of cheating on this first one considering I'd been to Leipzig twice before (and for the record, I am heading there for a fourth time tomorrow). But I journeyed to my favorite German city outside of Berlin/Brandenburg with the family and got to do a bus tour of the whole city. What was hilarious was the fact that we were the only ones on the bus, and the tour guide blabbed on for over an hour in German, and my mom, dad and brother, of course, had no idea what she was saying. I told them just to nod and smile (except about the part about all the people Napoleon killed). 

4. East Side Gallery 

Start of the art memorial

My two favorite countries!

 

 Alice and I journeyed into Berlin and visited one of the big tourist attractions I had not yet seen: the East Side Gallery. It's a stretch of paintings that was erected in 1990 along where the wall existed. It's dubbed as a memorial for freedom, with artists' works from all over the globe creating a new wall of sorts. I included just a few paintings above.
 3. Bremen

Downtown Bremen

Bremen is a cool city of about half a million people in the north of Germany. I met Alice there and stayed with her friend from high school Franzi (the girl who saved my life during my first few days of navigating German public transportation). 

2. Reichstag 

Although we didn't make reservations to a tour inside (on my list of things to do), the German parliament building known as the "Reichstag" is pretty damn cool. 

1. Michael Jackson Balcony

I can't believe I missed this the first time I was in this part of Berlin! It's the Hotel Adlon where Michael Jackson dangled his baby Blanket (no, he didn't dangle a blanket; he dangled the baby which is named Blanket) back in 2002. Clearly the most important landmark in Berlin and arguably all of Europe! 

My Five Favorite Things I'm Still Loving About Germany

5. Public Transportation: While I cursed it up and down in the beginning, I've really grown to love hopping on the tram or on a train into Berlin, and I've learned to utilize the time to study or read. If either of those fail, it's great people-watching time.

4. Bakeries: I wish we had a bakery on every corner in the US like they have here in Germany. I can't get enough of the baked goods here. But considering how healthy Americans are when it comes to food consumption, maybe now's not the time. . . 

3. Weather: I wasn't jealous of the snow Montana had in April. Nor am I jealous of all the horrible rain/flooding. It's felt like summer for over a month now, and I love it. 

2. Speaking German: Some days are better than others, but in general, I still love speaking German to my roommates, classmates, bus drivers, hair dressers, Subway sandwich-makers, etc. 

1. Marzipan: if you have no idea what I'm talking about, LOOK IT UP AND RUN TO YOUR NEAREST WORLD MARKET. 

And finally. . .

Five Things I've Learned/Observed About Myself So Far

5. I sleep way too much. I've always known I can sleep, but with an easy-going semester like the one I'm undertaking, I've learned if I don't have to get up for something, I won't. I sleep like a rock and have no self-discipline about actually getting up after my alarm goes off. I've accepted that I'm not a morning person, but I'm really going to try to be better about "sleeping my life away."

4. Patience is key, and I've got it. My mother's not patient. My father's not patient. My brother REALLY isn't patient. I'm not always patient, but for the most part, I am. I don't know if Germany has helped fuel my patience or if I'm just noticing it more.

3. Go with the flow. Along similar lines as the patience bit, with all the mishaps, missed trains, missed flights, delays, and so on, I've learned that in oder to get the most out of an experience, you have to be able to say, "This isn't what I planned, but I'll make it work."

2. I'm pretty damn good at German. Okay, it really took a lot for me to write that. I never want to boast about being good at something--especially with a foreign language. It annoys me so much when someone brags about how good they are at speaking a foreign tongue. It's annoying because 1) it's usually not that true and 2) no matter how good you are, there's always so much more you can learn. But after struggling with saying some word earlier this week, I was really beating myself up about it. But within the past few days, I got several compliments on my German. The lady who cut my hair said "You're German is so good!" and a friend of a friend said "He speaks so well--I can't hear an accent." Words of praise like that make everything I've done to learn this grammatically-challenging language worth it. Let's see where I can take my German in these last two months.

1. I want both worlds. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss home. I do. Would I call it homesickness? No. I have yet to really wish that I would just be home. In fact, hitting this halfway point of my stay abroad was bitter-sweet. I started being able to see the end of my stay here, which terrifies me. I love it here so much, and it's crazy to think about it ending. I want to learn so much more. At the same time, however, I look forward to being home with friends, and with my family. I also crave food like Olive Garden and Buffalo Wild Wings on a weekly basis, but now I'm starting to think how much I will miss my Döners and Pfannkuchens here. I want Montana and Germany at the same time. . .



Let's see what the next 59 days bring.