Frühlingsfest and Estrogen

For the past few weeks there was a big festival called Frühlingsfest in Munich. There are lots of tents and rides and food stands set up in the same area where Oktoberfest is held every year, and it is basically a mini Oktoberfest for 3 weeks. For this festival, everyone who owns them wears dirndls and lederhosen- the traditional Bavarian garb. If you aren't familiar with those words, I can assure you you will recognize what they are once you google them.  Anyway, I didn't own a dirndl. So I had two choices: wear civilian clothing and be shunned as a tourist...OR...purchase my very own dirndl and look Bavarian and awesome. So obviously I chose the Bavarian-awesome route and bought a dirndl! I literally bought the first one that I tried on, and I never ever wanted to take it off. I am convinced that dirndls are the best possible article of clothing that a woman can wear to flatter her figure, because they truly look good on everyone. Genius. Much like at Oktoberfest, people go into the beer tents, try and find and empty spot at one of the tables, squeeze their way up onto the benches, grab a Maß of beer and join in on the singing and dancing. You meet all kinds of people at these festivals as they attract a lot of international visitors.  For example, this bachelor party of British guys all dressed in skeleton costumes:

I'm guessing my brother's bachelor party next weekend in the Poconos is going to look a bit different. Something happens to people when they enter these beer tents... everyone becomes so happy and friendly and willing to meet new people. It's such an awesome environment, and it makes me SO excited for Oktoberfest. Only 132 days away, but who is counting? Answer: me.  As well as all of Bavaria, all of Germany, most bordering countries, and millions of others. I have a feeling this year's Oktoberfest is going to trump most holidays I have experienced.  

In other news, Mimi's last au pair, Katie, moved back into our house yesterday! She was working for an incredibly rich yet incredibly awful family in Salzburg, and she just couldn't take it anymore. So Stef and Matthias welcomed her back into our house until she goes back to Canada in August, and she'll work for one of our neighbors.  They have an adorable little boy, Tristan, who goes to school with Mimi. Tristan and Mimi are about to have a lot of play dates, that is for sure. On Friday, Oma and Opa took Mimi and I to a great beer garden with a big playground for kids that is just a short bike ride away from our house. I foresee lots of trips there in the near future with Katie, Tristan, Mimi, and myself :). I don't think Matthias is prepared for how much estrogen is going to be in our house for the next few months. Katie and I spent all day today just chatting and playing with Mimi... and I think Matthias was already overwhelmed by the intense amount of pure G.I.R.L. in the house, and it has only been one day! I think he'll start enjoying being at work a little bit more now.

On a random note, I think I am going to Zürich next Tuesday to see the 2012 World Press Photo Exhibition that is at a venue there for the month of May. I saw the 2011 exhibition with Jenni and Vance in Amsterdam last summer, and it was an awesome and shocking exhibition that everyone should try to see at some point. It displays the best photos taken for the press in that year with small captions describing the context of each photograph. It's a traveling exhibition that is in just a few different places around the world at any given time, and it's really awesome. I'll try to remember to write about it after I go! 

Tschüs!

I Love Berlin

Shortly before Easter weekend I realized that I would have both Friday AND Monday off, and Stef suggested that I take that time to go see Berlin. I had ALWAYS wanted to go to Berlin. I learned about the history of Berlin in almost every German class that I took in middle school and high school, and I absolutely had to go see it. It might be one of the most interesting places I have ever been.

Getting to Berlin is not particularly cheap by plane or train, but there is a great website called Mitfahrgelegenheit which is a ride-share website that is very commonly used and trusted throughout Germany.  After making a profile, you type in your starting location, your final destination, the date of travel, and your preferred time of departure.  It then lists all of the drivers registered on this website who have the same travel plans as you as well as space in their car. I decided to give this a go as it was roughly 15 euros cheaper and 4 hours faster than taking regional trains. And when you're trying to travel on an au pair's salary, both time and money are sacred. The only strange thing about this (for me, at least), is that the driver chooses the location to meet- generally very public and very close to an U-bahn station.  I showed up at the meeting spot, which was the parking lot of an Aldi supermarket, to find that every resident of Munich as well as their sisters, brothers, and children decided to go grocery shopping at the precise time that I was supposed to meet my driver and the other passengers. It was absolute chaos in this parking lot and I had no idea how I was supposed to differentiate between Alexander's silver station wagon and the 97 other silver station wagons. Luckily I spotted another man with luggage, and after taking roughly 3 minutes to rehearse the question in my head, I worked up the courage to ask, "Are you also going to Berlin?"  I really need to get over my fear of speaking German to strangers sober. He said yes, and shortly afterwards we found our driver. 

We made it to Berlin in less than 6 hours, and I'm fairly certain we were averaging a minimum of 150 mph on the Autobahn. It was terrifying and awesome. He dropped us off at the Ostbahnhof (East train station) in Berlin, at which point we needed to pay him.  Online he wrote that it would cost 25 euros per passenger. In typical Sammy fashion, I only brought 50 euro bills with me, not considering the fact that he probably would not have exact change. He only had a 20 to give back to me, so I had to quickly accept the (easily avoidable) loss of 5 entire euros, and told him to keep the 30. I will never forget to bring exact change ever again. For anything. 5 euros is a fortune in the eyes of an au pair. 

From Ostbahnhof I bought a public transport ticket and got on the S-bahn headed towards my hostel. I stayed in a hostel in former East Berlin, and when I walked out of the train station out into the open, the first impression that I got of this area of East Berlin was amazing. It was right down the road from the famous Karl-Marx Allee, which is a big boulevard built by the Soviet Union-controlled GDR. I felt like I had been sent back to the 50s or 60s, because very little new real estate has been built since the fall of the Berlin Wall and much of the area is still very underdeveloped and just seems very empty. This was the first thing that I saw when I walked out of the train station-

Moskau Cafe

There was no question I was in East Berlin. The walk to my hostel was quiet and uneventful, but the hostel was beautiful. It was more like a hotel, and since it is in a part of the city that doesn't have any kind of nightlife or tourist attractions, it was very cheap. I settled into my 8-bed dorm-style room, which I was the only person staying in that night, and then decided to venture out to a spoken word poetry performance that I had read about online.  It was at a small cafe in north Berlin, and it was one of the best live performances I've ever seen in any medium.  I can't remember the name of the poet now, but he was from New York and he was incredible. 

On Friday morning I went to the German parliament building and took the elevator up to the glass dome built by Norman Foster after Reunification.  Afterwards I took a free walking tour of the city and saw all of the major attractions- the Brandenburg gate, Holocaust memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, sections of the Wall, location of Hitler's suicide, Museum Island, etc. I met an awesome Spanish girl, Naiara, on the tour who was also traveling by herself, and we became friends with the tour guide as well, so I had some friends to hang out with while I was there! After the tour, Naiara and I went to see the East Side Gallery, which is a huge section of the Berlin wall that was painted by actual international artists after reunification and relocated to serve as a public gallery along the river in East Berlin. There are a lot of celebratory images as well as many images of repression and confusion. It was awesome. Here is an example of one painting:

I like this painting because the night before I left for Berlin, Stef told me that there were a lot of items that weren't available to buy in East Berlin, and bananas were one of them. If she hadn't told me that, I definitely would not have understood the significance of this painting.

After seeing the East Side Gallery, Naiara and I went to a grocery store, and I bought 6 euros worth of groceries that lasted me 2 and a half days! We met up with our tour guide friends that night and experienced some of the bar nightlife in Berlin. It was great aside from the thick haze of smoke inside every bar we went to. I definitely took for granted that smoking is not allowed in bars or restaurants in Munich. On Saturday it rained, snowed, and hailed, so I decided that Saturday would be my museum day. I went to see the Pergamon museum first, which houses the Pergamon temple, the Ishtar Gate from Babylon, and an awesome Islamic art collection. It is a world famous museum and was one of my favorite museums ever. Afterwards I went to the Alte Nationalgalerie which houses primarily 19th century paintings.  There were some really famous Caspar David Friedrich paintings that I wasn't expecting to see there, so that was really awesome for me. After that I went to the Neues Museum, which I found mostly interesting because of the history of the building and the renovations done to it only recently after much of it was damaged during WWII.  There is also an impressive collection of egyptian sarcophagi and papyrus scrolls, as well as the famous bust of Nefertiti.

Sunday I went to the Jewish Museum, which left more of an impression on me than any other museum I've been to. Everything from the architecture to the photographs and prints to the layout of the exhibitions and all of the information within them was incredible. It's a museum everyone should go to. Afterwards I met up with an awesome Australian guy that I met in my hostel and we went to the Mauerpark flea market- one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. This was an enormous flea market set up in a park right next to a big hill, and at the top of the hill were giant swings overlooking the flea market activities below. There was live music, people playing soccer, hippies strolling, students bargaining... it was a perfect end to a fantastic weekend. Monday I ventured back home on regional trains for a total of 42 euros... it took about 9 and a half hours. It was a beautiful train ride though, and luckily I had downloaded both Superbad and a Ricky Gervais standup show onto my iPhone before I left, so it was a pretty good day despite 5 transfers. 

I think my next trip will be Zürich, Switzerland sometime in May. 

Also- MIMI USES THE TOILET AT KINDERGARTEN NOW!!! I haven't had to change or wash pee-peed-pants in over 3 weeks! She's the best. I'm also getting really good at pretending I am a crane, because we play "construction site" every day. 

Thanks for reading!

When in Rome

I just got back from spending 4 days in Rome, and I had the most AMAZING time there.  I have never before seen so many famous buildings/paintings/sculptures/obelisks/columns in such a short period of time- I'm pretty sure it is only possible in Rome.  I arrived on Saturday evening and was a bit discouraged by the fact that I understand literally zero Italian.  I meant to look up some basic phrases before I left, but that never ended up happening. The only word I know is "grazie," and those of you who have heard the "grazie" story from my summer trip to Europe will appreciate the hilarity of that word.  

I flew with Ryan Air from Memmingen to Ciampino, took a bus to Anagnina metro station, then took the metro to the Termini station in Rome.  Luckily my hostel was really close to Termini, the main train station, so it was really easy to get to different parts of the city. The metro system in Rome pales in comparison with the U-bahn and S-bahn system in Munich, but they have a pretty extensive bus system as well.  One HUGE difference I noticed immediately between Munich and Rome is the number of beggers and poor people in general. You very rarely see anyone who looks anything less than affluent walking around the city of Munich. In Rome, there are gypsies everywhere as well as men selling gimmicky touristy items illegally- they crowd the piazzas and streets nearest the major tourist attractions. On the bus ride from Ciampino airport to the Anagnina metro stop, we passed a huge gypsy camp with little kids running around in nothing but rags as their parents sat outside of shacks and trailers in the blazing sun. The warm temperature was another difference, but a welcome one :)

I found my hostel without any trouble and was excited to see that there were two guys in my room when I got there.  I assumed I would spend most of my time in Rome by myself, which I was totally fine with, but these guys ended up being awesome, so we did a lot of sightseeing together. They are both in the British Army and currently live in Germany near Cologne, and they were in Rome to run in the Rome Marathon on Sunday.  I won't bore you with details of all of the things that we saw, you just HAVE to go to Rome if you haven't been there already, and if you're not sure what to do or see, just ask me, because I'm obsessed with Rome.  Shocking, I know.  I survived my first pantheon sighting (barely), and I also barely survived my encounter with Bernini's Apollo and Daphne sculpture in the Borghese Gallery, which is one of my favorite sculptures.  I did a short presentation on this sculpture my junior year in college, so to see it in real life was incredible. This picture does not do it justice, but here it is:

Obviously seeing both the inside and outside of the Colosseum was incredible, as well as the entire Roman Forum. There aren't really words to describe how vast the collections in the Vatican Museums are, and St. Peter's is even more gargantuan than you would expect. One of my favorite things that I did not expect to do was climb up to the dome of St. Peter's where you can look down into the transept.  You can then climb up much further and walk around the top of the dome and look out onto the city. The view from the dome onto St. Peter's square is awesome.  Another awesome view was looking down onto the Italian and Austrian alps from the plane window. 

The one British guy that I met, who is definitely someone I will keep in touch with, has some of the best stories I've ever heard.  He is 23 as well. He was once dared to get the name of his favorite soccer team in Liverpool, Everton, tattooed across his forehead. The scar is from getting that tattoo removed. He also once drove a moped from the street into a hotel he was staying at and directly into the indoor pool.  Apparently there is also a youtube video involving fireworks and him that has a million views.  He was quite a character, but a really nice guy.

When I got home, Mimi and Stef had just gotten back from Mallorca. We shared stories and Mimi opened some birthday presents (a toy parking garage and a big toy cement truck, obviously). She turned 4 on Tuesday! I always miss Mimi and Stef and Matthias when I'm away- it really feels like my second home here.  Here is Mimi playing with her parking garage...

Today in my language course we had a big international breakfast, and we represented 20 different countries all in one room. It was pretty neat. Everyone brought a breakfast food that is specific to his/her home country, and everything was delicious.

Grazie for reading.

Scrunchies still exist.

It's been a while since I've written. Nothing too eventful has happened, and I've been super busy! I just have too many friends. Just kidding. BUT... everything is still going great and I do have a few thoughts/observations/exciting things to share!  I love the number format, so that's what I'm going with today.

1) I'M GOING TO ROME ON SATURDAY!!! My host mom is the best and booked me a roundtrip ticket to Rome a couple of weeks ago because she and Mimi will be gone as well. So if you get news next week that I am no longer alive, I can assure you it's because I had a heart attack upon seeing the Pantheon and/or the Sistine Chapel in real life. At least you're prepared.

2) I started my language course last week! I'm in level C1, which is the highest level. I was really nervous at first because I thought I would be the most inept person in my class, but it is actually the perfect level for me. This course prepares people for the DaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache/German as a foreign language) test, which is a standard, internationally recognized test for German language competency. If you pass the DaF exam with a high enough score, you can then apply to study at German universities.  So passing the DaF exam will be my next big challenge. I spend most of my days reading children's books and cutting fruits and vegetables into bite-sized pieces...needless to say I've been starved for intellectual stimulation lately. It's a VERY good thing that this class started.

3) Staying on the subject of my language course, I need to mention something alarming. 3 girls wore scrunchies to class today.  THREE. And all three of them are from Russia. I can only conclude that this was not a coincidence, and that every female living in Russia not only owns but also regularly wears scrunchies. If these girls were over the age of 35 I wouldn't really be concerned. However, they are all my age or younger.

4) Some people here exercise in the most ridiculous outfits. I wish I had photographic evidence of some, but by the time I can get my iPhone out to take a picture, the moment is gone.
Examples:
- Woman, mid-30s, out for a light jog with her knee-length North Face jacket on
- Boy, teenager, out for an intense jog wearing loose-fitting jeans
- Woman on my volleyball team, early 30s, practiced in a long-sleeved, fitted Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt.

5) Old people. I have never seen so many old people as I have since I moved to Munich. I've realized that this is because many old people here actually leave the house, take the train, ride their bikes, go skiing, go for daily walks, etc. Generally speaking, old people at home tend to stick to cars and the great indoors.  And I am referring to OLD old people, as in people well into their late 70s and 80s.  Opa, Mimi's grandfather, is 76 years old (possibly older?) and goes skiing regularly every winter. And he is a phenomenal skier. It's really amazing to watch.

That's all I can think of right now. I have a practice exam and a presentation to finish for my class tomorrow morning at 8:30am... and I haven't started either of them. Not much has changed since college! I just can't stop thinking about Rome... and scrunchies.

Carnival and Architectural Heaven

One thing I did not realize about Germany until this weekend was how big of a deal celebrating Carnival is here compared to in the United States. In the U.S., aside from in New Orleans, it's not really a country-wide tradition to allow absolutely all hell to break loose for 6 straight days. In every major city, and even some minor German cities, people of all ages dress in full-body costumes and party in the streets from dawn til dusk... til dawn again. For those of you who aren't familiar with what Karneval is, it is the period before lent during which people are supposed to indulge in food and drink, and it's mainly a Catholic tradition. The most popular and wild place to celebrate "Karneval" in Germany is in Cologne, which is about 6 hours northwest of Munich, so I decided I had to go. I drove up with two friends on Friday night to Düsseldorf, which is about 30 minutes north of Cologne, and we stayed with my one friend's college roommate who now lives there.  I've realized that staying with people you know is a much better option than staying in hostels- they know the area, they will probably feed you, AND you can stay there for free. I wish I knew people everywhere... I'm working on that.

Saturday was really our only day to celebrate Carnival in Cologne, because my two friends had to go back to Munich on Sunday.  I saw every kind of costume you could imagine- Karneval is like Halloween x100.  People are much more creative with their costumes here than in the U.S. One of my favorite moments was seeing a man dressed in a full-body kangaroo costume hopping around against the backdrop of the beautiful, gargantuan Cologne Cathedral.  Since it was quite rainy and cold, there weren't as many people roaming the streets as usual, but instead all of the costumed folk congregated in bars.  We didn't feel like paying cover fees, so we resorted to dancing outside a beer tent that was blasting music.  Here are just two of my favorite pictures from the day:

After spending Saturday in Cologne, I decided not to go home with my friends on Sunday, and instead I went on my own little adventure. I wanted to go to Aachen, because I knew Charlemagne's cathedral was there somewhere, and I also wanted to see a few Franconian/Bavarian towns with some pretty palaces and fortresses. I packed up my backpack and went to the train station to see what my options were.  Aachen is only an hour from Cologne, so I headed there first. I got out at the main train station, got a city map, and went on a mission to find Charlemagne's cathedral. When I found it, I wanted to start dancing and jumping and singing, because seeing architecture in real life that I've learned about in my art history courses makes me the happiest person in the world. 

This building is of particular interest because the interior of Gore Hall at Delaware was modeled (loosely) after Charlemagne's central plan portion of the cathedral. I spent about 45 minutes there, and then roamed around the city a bit more before catching a train south. I was traveling on the "Schönes Wochenende Ticket," which allows up to 5 people to travel anywhere in Germany on a Saturday or Sunday between the time you purchase the ticket and 3am the next morning for only 40 euros. It's an amazing deal. The deal would have been more amazing if other people were traveling with me, but it was amazing nonetheless. I was train-hopping for about 6 hours before reaching Aschaffenburg, which, according to the brochures I collected on the train, seemed like a wonderful city. I got there at about 1am and decided to suck it up and stay at a hotel for way more money than I wanted to pay. But I made up for it by smuggling out about 20 euros worth of food from the breakfast buffet.  Aschaffenburg was almost completely destroyed during World War II, but everything has since been beautifully reconstructed and it was a wonderful city to spend the morning in. There is a very large reconstructed Renaissance palace called Schloss Johannisburg right along the river Main, and there is also a very quaint old city with lots of cute shops, houses, and churches.

After leaving Aschaffenburg I got on a train headed for Würzburg, which I had heard was a beautiful town with a fortress on a hill.  As a general rule of thumb, any town with a fortress on a hill is probably worth visiting.  Unfortunately my iPhone died right before I got to Würzburg, so the only pictures I can offer are the ones you can find on google image and wikipedia.

I won't say much about Würzburg, other than it is one of my favorite places I have ever been. This is mainly because of the Residenz, which was the palace of the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg. This is one of my favorite buildings I have ever seen in real life, and I could have easily spent 4 hours in it. Unfortunately, not all of the rooms are open for public viewing, but the rooms that we were able to see on the tour were incredible.  It's definitely my favorite palace. I even bought a book about it at the gift shop afterwards! Above the grand staircase is the largest continuous fresco in the world by the Italian artist Tiepolo. It is completely uninterrupted by structural supports- it's just one giant vault. It was incredible. What makes it more incredible is that this ceiling withstood WWII bombings because of it's masterful construction, whereas both outer wings of the palace were almost completely destroyed by fire.

All in all I had an amazing spontaneous weekend, and I'm really excited to go on more adventures throughout Bavaria and elsewhere!

Trains and Potty Training

I have officially been in Germany for exactly 1 month! I can't believe an entire month has already gone by. But you know what they say- "Time flies when you're an au pair in Stockdorf." At least that's what I heard. This is a post about two completely unrelated topics: train security and Mimi's ongoing struggle with toilets. I had my first unpleasant experience with both about two weeks ago.

The week that Stef and Mimi were in France, Stef gave me her monthly transportation card so that I wouldn't have to worry about stamping my stripe ticket every time I got on the train. The first Monday that Stef and Mimi were back and my schedule was back to normal, I met my friend in the city for coffee.  I totally forgot that I had given Stef her monthly pass back, so I didn't remember to stamp my stripe ticket going to or from the city. When I was on my way home about 2 stops away from my town, two train security women got on. I immediately realized that I hadn't stamped my ticket, which is automatically a 40 euro fine. I was really mad at myself, but I didn't try to play the dumb American card to see if I could get away with it, because nothing angers them more. The few train security people that I have encountered seem like generally miserable humans, so I decided to be very compliant and take the 40 euro fine without questioning it.  And I also realize that train security is really important and it's one of the reasons why it is so safe to take the trains in Munich and throughout all of Germany. I told my host family the story when they got home, and they were awesome enough to give me 40 euros to pay for the ticket, despite my feeble attempts to refuse their money. I'm kind of glad this happened, because I will NEVER forget to stamp my tickets ever again. I don't think there is anything that stops my heart faster than hearing a security person somewhere in the distance say, "Fahrschein, bitte." Tickets, please.

Equally unnerving is the thought that goes through my mind every single day as I ride the bike to pick Mimi up from Kindergarten: Did she pee in her pants again? The reason I have to ask myself this question is because Mimi absolutely 100% refuses to use the toilets at her Kindergarten. She is completely fine going to the bathroom by herself at home, at the store, outside in a bush, but under no circumstances will she use the toilets at school. In the last two weeks she has peed in her pants at school 8 times. It is a huge mystery as to why she refuses to go to the bathroom at school, considering she will pee EVERYWHERE else.  I don't really know how the teachers at her school deal with this every single day, since they are usually the ones who have to change her into dry pants. I guess it's all part of the potty training process. 

As I'm writing this, Mimi is taking a nap. Naps are also a dangerous time. There is about a 50% chance that when I wake her up, she will have peed her pants. But on the bright side, there is also a 50% chance that she will have dry pants! I'm hoping for the latter.

Foreign Birthdays!

As many of you may know, this past Friday was my birthday, so naturally I had to make it a whole weekend event.  It all started on Thursday night when I went to the weekly Toytown "meetups for 20 year olds," because I made a few friends at last week's meetup and planned to meet them again on Thursday.  We went to a bar in Sendlinger Tor, which is a very young, hip area of Munich where there are lots of bars and lots of young people. It is also a very gay-friendly area of Munich, so there's always the fun guessing game of "gay or straight" that everyone plays in their head.  I have found that it is always best to tell as many people as possible that it's your birthday, because then you are guaranteed at least an equal number of free drinks. It's a strategy that everyone should adopt. After spending some time in Sendlinger Tor, a few friends wanted to go to a club. I'm not too keen on going to clubs, but since it was my birthday I thought I should stay out.

Here I am going to interject a little tidbit about the public transportation system in Munich. It is incredibly convenient and amazing. HOWEVER, the S-bahn train schedule, which is what I have to follow to get to the suburb where I live, is not ideal for the "I don't have a real job and therefore would like to stay out until whenever I want and then have trains available for me to take at 10 to 20 minute intervals" type people. I may or may not be one of them. On weeknights, there are trains that go to and from the central train stations in Munich every 20 minutes until about midnight, then there is a train that comes at 1:25am. On weekends, there is one more train that leaves from the central station at 2:25. Most adults reading this will think that these options are more than adequate. Most of my friends reading this will understand that my spontaneity requires that I have more options! I digress. The next train after 1:25/2:25 leaves from the central train station at 5:30am. Yes, this means on several occasions I have actually stayed out until 5:30 am. And no, it is (almost) never worth it! I'll learn eventually. Thank goodness I don't work until 2pm every day. Also you may be wondering what Stef and Matthias, my host parents, think about this.  Before I went out the other night, Matthias said, "Party as much as you can while you're young, because before you know it, everything changes!" So clearly I decided to take those words to heart.

Back to my birthday. So after getting on the 5:30am train, falling asleep and ending up 30 minutes past my stop, and getting back on a train in the other direction, I got back home around 7am. Round 2 was Friday night when I met up with a bunch of my friends who I have met here so far. We went to a great Irish pub called Kennedy's and listened to a live band who legitimately thought they were the actual reincarnation of U2. Nothing against U2, but sometimes I wonder if people here are aware that there is music out there that was created after 1995. After staying out until the crack of dawn, yet again, I woke up on Saturday and headed to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) to catch a train to Salzburg.  Round 3 of my birthday was spent with one of my best friends from school! She was studying abroad in Europe for the winter and came to meet me in Salzburg. We went to my favorite bar from when I studied abroad there, and stayed in a very cute little apartment room that was rented out by a very nice old lady who called me "Frau Mozart" because Mozart and I share a birthday. We also share a very rare incredible talent for musical composition, but I didn't tell her that.  After what I can only describe as a crazy, amazing evening, we went back to Munich. We spent rounds 4 and 5 of my birthday at the Hofbräuhaus, which is one of the most famous beer halls in the world. I won't go into details with the hilarity that ensued on either of these nights because it would take up another 5 paragraphs, but I will say that you all must experience the Hofbräuhaus at some point in your lives.

It was an incredible, crazy, absurd, wonderful birthday weekend here in Munich.  I'll leave you with a few funny anecdotes that I didn't know how to fit smoothly into the story, so I'll leave them as bullet points:

- I was sitting across from a man in his late 50s or early 60s on the train on the way to the airport with my friend, he seemed like a quiet, stern guy, then his phone rang blasting the Macarena as his ring tone. We LOST it.

- My friend and I were grabbing a bite to eat at Burger King before catching a train back to Munich, and all of a sudden a totally clueless woman tripped over someone's very large, obvious, not-hard-to-see-at-all luggage, and essentially swan dove onto the floor, sliding a full 3 or 4 feet. Again, we LOST it.

- Because of this weekend, I am now left with only 4 euros in my wallet, so I cannot do anything that involves spending money until payday! Hopefully that's soon... I need to start budgeting better/at all.


There are many more stories, but these are just a few that come to mind :)

Friends!... and language barriers

Although I love the little town that I live in- 2 minute walk to the grocery store, 10 minute bike ride to the kindergarten, 20 minutes to the volleyball courts- there isn't much to do around here during the day without Mimi to keep me occupied. So this past week I've ventured into the city four times, and I plan to go again tonight to meet some friends. Yes! I made friends! Which is actually an interesting topic...

Meeting people organically here is VERY difficult as an au pair, particularly in between semesters (like now) when you can't go to a language course to make new friends. And even then, there is usually an impossible language barrier between the girls in the language courses, because many of them can barely speak German or English. And although all the women on my volleyball team are really friendly and welcoming, they are all in their 30s and 40s with children. SO, luckily, there are a few easy ways to make friends online, especially for English speakers in Munich. At first I was hesitant to go this route, but seeing as my birthday is next Friday and I'll want people to go out with, I figured making friends ASAP was the best choice. On Saturday afternoon I joined a new group on facebook called "au pairs in Munich 2012," and I met up with a bunch of the girls in that group on Saturday night at the Hofbräuhaus. So that was 8 new friends automatically! I now understand why people choose to do online dating. We had a fantastic and hilarious time, and I was happy that it felt a little bit like going out with friends at home/school.

There is another AWESOME online network of English speakers in Munich called Toytown. Within this website there are hundreds of different discussion topics, a calendar of events for Toytown participants, and just lots of really helpful things for English speakers living in Munich.  There is a group on Toytown that meets on Thursdays at various bars around Munich called "meet-ups for indecisive 20-somethings..." and seeing as I would definitely qualify as an "indecisive 20-something," I will be attending this "meet-up" tonight with a few other au pairs.

Although I love meeting other English speaking people here, I am really excited to make friends with some native German speakers.  I still get very nervous to speak German, and having German speaking friends would help me a lot! And it would just be cool in general to be friends with natives.  I walked around the grocery store for 5 entire minutes yesterday looking for bread because I was too afraid to ask someone where it was and make a grammatical error. Silly. One of the women on my volleyball team picked me up to take me to practice last night, and I realized that conversation does not happen unless if someone else initiates it with me. I sat there and nervously formulated simple questions in my head, such as "how many kids do you have?" or "How long have you been playing volleyball?" And I recited them over and over to myself until I had the guts to say it out loud, and by the time I was ready to say it, she would ask ME a question. And then I would be totally frazzled and take forever to respond! Blah. Oh well. It's funny, because, as you know, I'm not really a quiet person at home and making conversation is always super easy for me.  So I just smile and laugh a lot here. I'll improve with time!

Daily Life...and Other Observations

So I just finished my first week as an au pair for Mimi, and I cannot believe I am actually getting paid for this.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I attend a language class in Starnberg, which is a tourist destination about 10 minutes from Stockdorf (where I live) with a GORGEOUS lake behind which you can see the Bavarian Alps.  Please open a new tab right now and google-image Starnberger See if you haven't already seen my facebook pictures. It's really breathtaking on clear, sunny days.  This class is from 8:30 til 10:30am, but the semester is almost over and I will likely be in a class that goes from 10:30 til 12:30 next semester. After language class I have a few hours to relax, then I go to pick up Mimi at Kindergarten at 2pm.  Stef, the mother, gets home between 5 and 6pm normally, aside from Thursdays, when she doesn't get home until 9pm. OH and she doesn't work on Tuesdays.  THOSE ARE MY ONLY HOURS. Of course, not every week will be identical, but that is a standard week. And Mimi is so adorable it doesn't even feel like work. She has the wildest imagination and could entertain herself for hours.  She repeats these phrases all the time and it's so cute coming from her high pitched German voice:

"Oh dear!" "Yyyup!" "Look it!" and "Much better!"

There are plenty more but these are just the most common.  She’s obsessed with trucks/construction/cars, but she also has a really cute girly voice and loves playing with dolls.  I think she does this to defy gender stereotypes, but I haven’t asked her.  Now let's discuss food. I haven't actually eaten a meal outside of their house yet, so I'll write more about eating out in a few weeks when I've actually done so.  But in the meantime, I'll tell you about what we have in the kitchen.

Contents in fridge: Like 6 different kinds of cheese, 1 pack of cold cuts, 2 or 3 German sausages, weird spreads that I cannot identify and therefore do not eat, a random variety of vegetables, 4 cans of jam, can of mustard
(If you haven't already deduced this, it is a pretty bare fridge. I have no idea if that is typical, or if it’s just because the parents work a lot and don’t eat most of their meals at home)
Contents on counter next to fridge: Various types of bread
Contents in freezer:  Frozen meat, Frozen spinach
Contents in pantry:  They don't have a pantry! Doesn't exist!
Contents in sweets drawer: Delicious German cookies that I strategically eat one of every day from a different container so that it appears as if none were taken…. Even though they said I could help myself to anything, I think they might find it odd if an entire row of cookies was gone just a few days after my arrival.
So to give you an idea of what my daily eating schedule looks like since I got here...
Breakfast: Bread with jam
Lunch: Sandwich with cheese, lettuce, mustard
Dinner: Sandwich with cheese, lettuce, mustard
Snacks: Cookie, cheese, bread
I can't wait to go grocery shopping this week! 


On an unrelated note, I also added volleyball to my weekly schedule. I joined a team that practices on Wednesday nights from 8-10pm and goes to tournaments on some Saturdays. Also unrelated, I want to quickly return to the business of picking up Mimi from Kindergarten, because I laugh out loud when I think about it.  On Wednesday and Thursday, Opa (Mimi's grandfather) picked me up and drove me to Mimi's Kindergarten to pick her up. Painless. Today, however, I decided it was time for me to find my way by myself and pick her up by bike. 
http://www.berensundreus.de/bilder/kinderanhaenger/chariot-im-einsatz-2.jpg
I bike 15 minutes to her Kindergarten with a Kinderanhänger (link above) attached to the back of my bike, which has a 6 foot high yellow flag on it to alert anything and everything that I have a child in tow.  It. is. so. funny. I have to ride down very busy main roads with this thing- it's serious. As I was writing all of this down on paper earlier, I was sitting on a chair in the bathroom while Mimi took a bath, and she was singing the phrase "DRAGON INSIDE A BOX WITH A WALLY DANCE" over and over and over while swimming in a circle with a pig bath toy. It was so funny I could barely write. I have off all next week because Stef has a medical conference in France. I decided to stay home and explore, so hopefully I'll have plenty of adventures to write about!

Flight and Arrival

I'm in Munich!! After an incredibly long commute, I am finally here! I flew from the Philadelphia int'l airport, to Newark int'l airport, to Munich.  I had a 5 hour layover in Newark, which may seem silly to you, because it is.  Thankfully I have my nook so I decided to purchase one of Chelsea Handler's books while I still had free wifi in the Philadelphia airport, and that kept me occupied on both flights as well as during the layover.  I'm sure my uncontrollable loling didn't disturb neighboring passengers...?  

You would think with a 5 hour layover that I should have had ample time to figure out what gate my next flight was leaving from since it wasn't printed on my original boarding pass... not so.  The gate for my flight was not listed on any of the departure screens. SO, at 7:30 (which is when people were supposed to start boarding the plane), I went to a customer service desk to see what the deal was. Turns out my flight was leaving from terminal B, not terminal C (which is where I was), and I needed to take the airtran to the correct terminal.  It also turns out that once I got to terminal B, I needed to go through security AGAIN, and then board the plane.  Hyperventilating, I jogged to the airtran, got to security, begged the priority security line guy to let me through, succeeded, and got to my gate around 8:05, only to realize that there were still about 1,000 people waiting at the gate to board. Mind you, I was sweating through my shirt at this point, so I looked really dumb.  It was pretty funny.

I can't sleep on planes, so I read my nook and watched Crazy, Stupid, Love, which I recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it. Once I got to Munich, Mimi and her Mom, Stefanie, were waiting for me with a rose! It was really sweet. We got in their car and drove to Stockdorf, which is just 15 minutes southwest of center city Munich.  Mimi is the cutest thing in the whole world, and I instantly clicked with her.  She has several different identities- dog, kitty, tiger, snail.  Most of the time she is a Rettungshund (dog who saves people) named Schnuffi.  It's hilarious. Mimi/Schnuffi was helping me unpack but would only remove things from my bag with her teeth. Obviously. Then she found the frisbee that I packed and made me toss it onto my bed so that she could retrieve it with her teeth and bring it back to me like a real dog.  She speaks the cutest mix of German and English, and her German is about the same level as mine. It's perfect.  Stefanie is very talkative and speaks almost perfect English, so conversing with her is really easy.  Her husband, Matthias, speaks very little English, so I'll have to speak German with him.  Stefanie's parents live around the corner and we went to see them last night after taking Mimi to open gym "gymnastics."  We spoke German the whole time, and although I was kind of afraid to speak, I understood almost everything they were saying! It was pretty exciting, considering my first opportunity to speak German on the plane went miserably.  The stewardess asked me what I wanted to drink, and after reciting the word "Orangensaft" (orange juice) over and over in my head, what came out of my mouth sounded something more like "Oranzentaft." You do not need to speak German to recognize that those are two very different sounding words. Also, Orangensaft is one of the first things you learn to say when learning German in school. I laughed a little bit afterwards. I was just nervous.

My room here is perfect.  It has everything I need as well as a HUGE bookcase along the wall with every kind of book imaginable, including about 30 travel books and at least 15 art history books. I'm obsessed. There is also a full length mirror on the back of the door, which any girl can appreciate.  The bathroom is huge and it's right next to my room. All four of us share it, which I don't think will be much of an issue since we all have different schedules.  

I am so excited to start exploring and finding my way around here, and I can't wait to go into Munich soon!