It has been pretty crazy, non-stop here on the farm. But today is actually a pretty chill day, probably because the weather is the coldest it's been since I've arrived, which naturally makes everyone pretty lazy. So what a better time to update my blog, do some homework, and perhaps watch a few episodes of Pretty Little Liars?
So, let's catch you up on the past four weeks and a half of my life in Germany. And, wow, have four week flown by!
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| Sabine, Ute, and Niklas |
May 17th: My arrival in Heide, Germany, and where I left off on my previous post. I was greeted at the train station by Ute (pronounced Oo-tuh; she is the mother), Niklas (the youngest son, aged 10), and Sabine (pronounced Zah-bee-nuh; family friend). They whisked me away to their Skoda, which I had never seen before in my life, but apparently is a very popular make of car here in Deutschland. I quickly learned that I had arrived on Vatter Tag - aka Father's Day - which is in no way celebrated like how we do back in the States. Here, all the men (regardless of whether or not they actually are a father) walk the sidewalks from one destination to another all the while drinking. So, basically, I saw 30+ drunk dudes stumbling around on the side of the road. Way to prove right part of my stereotype of Germany within the first 20 minutes of my arrival (stereotype: all Germans drink, eat sausages, and wear Lederhosen). When we got back to the house, they showed me around the farm, introduced me to their HUGE Newfoundland dog named Max, and showed me to my room. Cute, cozy little room. Bigger than I had expected. I was quickly informed that extended family would be coming over later to meet me. Nice gesture, but I was still in the midst of my sickness and just wanted to lay down, sleep, and recuperate. Whatever, I sucked it up and toughed through what turned out to be a very long night. Before the family arrived, they whisked me away on a walk through their village (I would call it a town, but they keep referring to it as a village). They showed me the Quallenbad which is a natural spring water pool. I touched the water and almost freaked! It was FREEZING. It had to be colder than Wekiva Springs, no doubt about it. I was glad, at the moment, that I hadn't taken up space in my backpack with a bathing suit. There was no way on God's green Earth that I would be getting in there. Not unless it was 100 degrees outside, and I've learned that will never happen. When we got back to the house, Jannik (pronounced Yawn-ick), the 19 year old, was home. Nice kid, really funny! He has a PS3, so we played some FIFA. Sadly, he didn't have Call of Duty, so... yeah.
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| Marisa with her Welcome to Germany sign |
Later, Ute's brother, his wife, and their two kids (Mathis and Marisa) came. Marisa was the cutest little thing, probably 10 years old, but she made me a 'Welcome to Germany' sign and brought me some flower. Of course, she was too shy to give them directly to me.
Everyone speaks at least a little English, so it's not too bad. It's not perfect, but enough to get their point across. Most of them have visited the States previously, as well.
We played some boardgames - Qwirkle, Pictionary (which was really hard for me, because I had to translate everything I was going to draw, and then when guessing, I would guess right, but they wouldn't know...), and a memory game. Interesting stuff, but definitely not games that we would consider 'fun' back home. Oh well, it helped the time pass. After everyone left, I jumped at the chance to go to bed. I think I actually slept in the clothes I was wearing - I was that tired.
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| EAT MOR CHIKIN! |
May 18th: My alarm went off at 8 AM, and when I rolled over to turn it off, I knew I wasn't getting out of the bed for quite some time. My head was aching, my throat felt as if it was on fire, and once I started coughing - I couldn't stop. Ute came in at about 1 PM, and I explained to her that I didn't feel well and asked if it would be alright if I rested for the day. She consented, although I'm not sure she truly understood that I was sick and not just sleepy. She came in again around 4 and seemed surprised that I was still in bed. Maybe when they are sick here they continue on like nothing's wrong? Oh well. I checked up on my homework (and the NBA playoffs), and watched an episode of Showtime's Homeland (good show, btw!). She came in again around 7 to ask if I wanted to play Qwirkle with them. At this point, I absolutely knew that she didn't understand that I was sick and needed to rest. But I felt bad for staying in my room for so long, so I mustered up the energy to drag myself to the living room and act as if I didn't feel like I was slowly dying. One of Ute's friends was over with her daughter, so we all played together. It was awful because I was literally coughing every 10 seconds, or after every time I spoke. When that concluded, everyone left and went to bed. Relief.
May 19th-24th: All of this kind of meshes together, so it hard for me to recall exactly what happened...
Saturday, I woke up in time for breakfast. As I'm not much of a breakfast eater, I wasn't sure what to expect. How they do breakfast (and any other meal for that matter) is they lay out the bread in a basket on the table. Everybody gets there own little cutting board, a knife, and a fork. Jam, honey, other spreads, cheeses, etc. are all on the table too. And you just pick and choose from that. What's weird, or at least to me, is that they ONLY ever use one slice of bread. Meaning they never sandwich their sandwich, for lack of a better explanation. For instance, for dinner (yes, all we eat for dinner is sandwiches!), they'll take a slice of bread, slap some spread on it, slice up a cucumber and tomato, and then chow down with no top bread. So they must think I'm either really weird, wasteful, or just a pig for always using two slices. So with that... I've compiled a list of what I've deemed 'weird' things done here:
1. At parades, they throw candy to the children. Normal, right? They also throw little bottles of alcohol to the adults!
2. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are pretty much unheard of!
3. After swimming at the swimming pool, you change into your dry clothes. But they don't go to the bathroom to do it, they just do it wherever! I thought it was a little weird when I saw several children being stripped naked and then dressed right in front of me. It wasn't until I saw grown adults doing the same that I was kind of taken aback!
4. Staying in step with number 3, they don't censor their TV. When watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall (voiced over in German) on a regular TV channel, they didn't blur out or edit any of the nudity parts. Awkward!
5. After people shower here, they put back on the same clothes. Kind of defeats the purpose, right?
6. Their hot meals are served for lunch, and for dinner you get sandwiches. How is a sandwich supposed to fill you up? Don't even get me started into how and what they eat.... that would be a whole 'nother post in itself.
7. They use forks and knives to eat everything - pizza, spaghetti (and a spoon for this one), salad, döners (kind of like a Pita Pit sandwich but not as good), hotdogs.
It's crazy. I just stick to my single fork.
That's all I can think of at the moment, but trust me, there are tons more!
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| Not my calling in life. |
Anyways, my first Saturday here, I accompanied Ferdinand - the weekend cow helper - with milking the cows. They have machines, so you don't have to literally sit there and manually milk all 100+ cows, but you still have to manually check each cow to make sure the milk is pure. Perhaps I wasn't born with the skill to yank on cow nipples, but I couldn't get a single drop of milk to flow out of them for the life of me. So I was given the duty of hooking the machines up to the cows - easy enough, but scary because you have to reach up under the cow, and if you startle them, they can kick.. and your head is in the path of destruction if that happens. After the milking was done, we had to fork out feed and hay to them. Cows have got to be the nastiest animals ever! They just poop and pee wherever, whenever. When eating... why not? When walking... why not? One cow was laying down, and the other standing somewhat over it, and it just pooped... all on the other cow's head. Like seriously? I was disturbed.
Anyways, the smell after working in the stables is very memorable, and not necessarily in a good way. Something I most definitely won't miss. (It's funny though, now, because I'm quite used to it).
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| American boat crossing the Nord-Ostee Kanal. |
I've seen the natural springs, the Schalenstein (a rock left from the Stone Ages), and a few other interesting bits of their town.
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| I ♥ DÖNER! |
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| BBQ? |
This section is for my friends who are reading, and not for my parents, because they probably will have no clue what I'm talking about. The drinking games they play here are so LAME! No Flip Cup, no Beer Pong, no Kings, no High-Low. And when I tried to explain them to them, they looked at me as if those games sounded extremely boring. (We've watched two American movies since then - Project X and Chronicle, and in both there were scenes of Beer Pong, so I know I'm not crazy!).
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| A popular beer in the Dithmarscher area of Schleswig-Holstein |
Finally, though, after everyone got drunk enough, they finally started attempting to speak English, which made things a little more fun for myself. One of their friend, Tim, was hilarious! His English not so good, but he was completely hammered, so I couldn't blame him.
In German, they say "genau" in almost every sentence. It translates to "of course" or "exactly". They use it as we'd use 'yes' most of the time. So, for instance, whenever anyone asks a question like: "is this the movie you were wanting to see?" or "you have an iPhone, right?" they would respond with "genau" instead of their words for "yes", "right", or "correct". I explained that, because whenever Germans start to speak in English, they say "of course" A LOT! For instance, Tim kept giving me German words or sayings to shout out loud. One of them was "geile Beiner" which means 'hot legs'. I don't know why, as I said, he was drunk. Anyways, anytime I said: No. He'd always say "of course, it will be so funny, of course, of course." I heard that line at least 30 times that night.
The party started to dwindle around 11PM, I'd say. Everyone started to make their way to Albersdorf for Pfingsten. The fair was closed, but as a last hurrah, everyone gathers in the big, park square (they call is 'the bush') and drinks. Initally, I didn't want to go. I was getting tired, and the thought of going into the city wasn't too appealing. Even though they had started to speak in English, I wasn't sure that it would continue. If I was to be trapped in Albersdorf, bored out of my mind, tired, and unable to understand anything... well, that wasn't something I was wanting to get myself into. However, Tim, Jonas, and another boy named Patty convinced me to go as it is a once a year thing, and I happen to be in Schleswig-Holstein during this time. Finally, I agreed. I mean, I came all the way to Europe to experience new and unforgettable things, these type of things, so I couldn't not go.
It was different than I had imagine it would be. Way bigger. There was a live band, and then about 10-12 beer vendor tents. Trust me, folks at home, you have never heard of any of the beers they sell here. Local brews, I guess. There were around 2,000 people, all drunk, standing around. Quite a sight to see. However, both my phone and my camera were dead, so you'll have to take my word for it. Drunk Germans are nothing like drunk Americans, especially the younger ones. They're not sloppy, and don't get out of control. To reduce on littering/trash, they charged you €2 for a beer, but another €2 for the cup. When you're finished with your beer, you return the cup and get your €2 back. Clever, but inconvenient...
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| The VW van they drove around Europe in! Awesome! I envy them; I want one for a road trip around the US! |
However, I did find out that in Germany there is a law regarding farmers and farmland. When a farmer dies, and does not have a will in place, all the land goes to his oldest son. This is to prevent farm land from being broken-up/divided, and to keep large farms. So, the house, the farm, the cows, everything, now belonged to Jonas and not his mother. He wasn't happy about this, and I don't blame him. A big burden and responsibility. Plus, because everything now belongs to him, he won't be able to get aid from the government for his university studies. Oh man.
We stayed on top of the tower for quite some time. The sun began to rise by the time we climbed down. That's not saying all too much as it gets dark around 10:30PM here, and light around 4AM. Confuses the heck out of me when it's bright as day outside and the clock says 9:45PM.
Jonas had left his cellphone at home, and we were pretty sure that we wouldn't be able to find the group of people, so we were kind of stuck in Albersdorf, with no way to get back to Bunsoh other than walking. Sounds bad, but the walk would only take an hour max. So we set out to walk.
We started discussing credit cards, and how Americans use them for everything. Here, they use cash for everything. Most places don't accept cards, and if they do, you have to spend a certain amount. This goes for debit cards as well, as they run everything as credit. Thank God that we got on this subject, because it made me check my pocket for my cards... they were gone! (In Dublin, when we bought a bus tour pass, they gave us the card in a clear little card holder type thing, hard to describe. Anyways, since then, I've used that to place my drivers license, UCF ID, two debit cards, and credit card in.) They were all missing. I had brought them with me just incase I needed ID or money. Jonas thought I was joking, but I guess after he saw the slight panic on my face, he realized I wasn't. We backtracked and searched, and searched, and searched. I mean, we were pretty deep into the forest, where the tower was... the forest isn't an ideal place to lose something. After about an hour looking, I incredibly found them lying on the ground next to the most random tree. Relief.
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| My spectacular photography skills are getting better; this is the place that I've called 'home' for the past month. |
We continued walking in hopes that Ute would drive up. She finally did, it was 5:30AM at this time. As soon as we got back to the house, I said goodnight to Jonas, sprinted to my room, and crashed down on my bed. But, all in all, I was pretty happy I went out that night.
The rest will be posted later.
2 days until I leave for Berlin!
Chao, Bianca.
