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 :)