An illustrated tour of Bremen!

Kassia and I went to Bremen last weekend to do a homestay with a wonderful couple through the Servas organization. (Like couch surfing but peace-oriented and with references.) They met us at the train station on Saturday and took us immediately into the city, where we walked around for the afternoon. It's a beeeeautiful city with a great diversity in architecture, see photos below.

We toodled around little tiny back streets and had Kaffee und Kuchen in a cafe, ate delicious fish from the market in the old city center, put together puzzles outside a quaint little toy shop, and walked along the river as the sun came out in the late afternoon. We also went into a Christmas store in an old house that's open all year long which was the most sparkly place I had ever been.





There were tributes to the story of the Town Musicians of Bremen all over the city. (You can read about it here.) Apparently Kassia and I got good luck for touching their feet.


The old city hall and churches were beautiful, particularly after the sun came out.



A while ago the city of Bremen came up with a new idea for raising money. This involved putting this little contraption in the ground in the city center. Someone puts a coin in the slot and one of any of the Town Musician animal noises (donkey, dog, cat, rooster) comes out of no where. Sometimes when no one has put in anything, the animal noise just comes out of the street on its own to attract attention. It was wonderful.



After our city adventure, Marissa and Thomas took us back to their ADORABLE little tiny house in a garden-filled section outside the city. I had to duck to get through the doors. It was so, so cute. There they fed us, we played card games, and shared music.

They have a wonderful and joyful dog named Lola, that I greatly enjoyed spending time with. It was wonderful to cuddle a dog again.


Because their house was so tiny and adorable, Kassia and I slept comfortably in their old apartment back in the city. The next day we went into the countryside and took a long walk around back roads, bogs, and fields. It was most beautiful. Lola was thrilled.







After our long walk and a piece of cake and coffee at another cafe, we were all exhausted and Kassia and I enjoyed naptime in a pile of blankets in front of the roaring woodstove. The perfect afternoon! Once we finally arose, we played more cards and Thomas made a delicious Moroccan fish/veggie dinner. Then more sleep, fresh rolls and homemade jam for breakfast, and back on the train to Hamburg.


If you haven't caught on yet, it was a wonderful weekend. We met fantastic people and finally got away from English for a weekend, which raised my spirits a bit. After a while I think we got pretty close and were able to joke and tease each other and laugh about most everything, as well as have more serious discussions about cultural differences and such things.

The next couple days were quite stressful and involved many hours working on a paper and rehearsing for theater. Once all that was through, our wonderful Smithies Cara (studying in Denmark) and Martha (vacationing from the States) came to visit. It was particularly wonderful because they're both members of my house at Smith and thus much much love was exchanged. I was tickled that they were able to join us for our gigantic Thanksgiving dinner hosted at Joe and Sue's house lastnight. I spent a few hours in the morning setting the table and getting things ready for the meal, then spent many more hours later eating and making merry.

On that note, let it be known that I am so, so very thankful for all of the wonderful people in my life, near and far. I wouldn't be here without you and am most greatful for all your support.

This afternoon we went to the Weinachtsmarkt outside city hall where we wandered around eating delicious things and drinking Glühwein, which is a traditional hot mulled wine beverage that appears during the cold holidays. It literally translates into "glow wine" because it makes you warm and happy. It also made the rainy and cold weather a little better.


After many nights of sleep deprivation, tonight is no exception, as I will be on a train to Munich in exactly 7.5 hours. Martha and Sarah and I are spending two or so days there exploring the southern German ways. I'll be back on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend!

Two things:

1.) This weekend Kassia and I are going to be exploring the beautiful city of Bremen and staying with a host family there though the Servas peace organization. Pictures to come, for sure!

2.) Pineapple-almond upside-down cake!

Bye!

Borscht and protests. (updated)

Pardon me for a moment while I breathe a sigh of relief over my hot steaming cup o' Indian curry Nudeln.

...

Good, now that that's done, let's see what exciting things I can update the world with! As you may have gathered, things have been busy on this side of the pond. This weekend I had a presentation to put together for this morning in German, an essay in French (which ended up being unnecessary when I tried to turn it in half an hour ago) and nine hours of theater in Genglish, on top of whatever else with some insomnia on the side. Now that all that is done with and I have a relatively easy rest of the week, I am feeling much better.

**I completely forgot to mention a rather large piece of news when I first wrote this. As you may have heard (or not, I don't know if the States are covering this story), there are huge protests going on at universities all over the country that are against the current state of educational affairs. This includes the new BA and MA system being introduced, suddenly having to pay student tuition (500 euro a semester), and a couple other things I'm not clear on. In Hamburg, they've taken over the Audimax, the biggest lecture hall on campus that seats about 1500 people. They've been squating there for about a week now. The whole place is covered with posters, banners, and graffiti. They sleep there, eat there, have moved in couches, and hang out all day and night merrily partying, playing music, and trying to recruit more students. The problem is that the Uni currently has no president to make an executive decision about what to do with the students and if the executive board of sorts brought in the police to remove them, there would be scandal and an even bigger uprising. I understand their anger at the new educational system as it is extremely unorganized, but as someone who pays so many tens of thousands of dollars a year for college, I find tuition part of the protest hard to listen to, even though I think I get a lot more bang for my buck than they do. I don't understand the situation entirely, but I really don't understand how not going to class and making it difficult for others to go to class by eliminating the largest lecture hall is helping their education. How this affects me the most is with rehearsals, as they've completely taken over our rehearsal area and have rendered the stage unusable. This means we've been having to work out of the small, dirty, dingy basement for the past week instead of our big, beautiful stage.**

On Saturday we had a long photoshoot for "the press" where they costumed us up and took mug shot pictures. It was new and exciting to finally see what we'll be wearing and to play some serious dress-up. I've never worn so much make-up in my whole life put together. Someone looked at me when it was done and exclaimed, "You have a plastic face!" It was great. Then we rehearsed basically all day on Sunday, which was also great. And tiring.

There were also a couple gastronomical successes that are worth reporting: the first was a completely delectable pumpkin cashew curry that Sarah and I made on Friday night. We went to a farmers' market that morning to buy a pumpkin and then realized that we didn't really know what one looks for in a pumpkin to figure out its goodness. Luckily a nice woman at one of the stands was eager to help out (and eager for our business). The result was fabulous. The other success was borscht. People of the world, let it be known that Liz Chase makes the best borscht ever. Ever.

Aaand that's about all I've got to offer for the moment. Now for 2.5 hours of choir.

Oy.

Remember the good old days when I had so much free time I didn't know what to do with myself? I can't tell if they actually existed or if they are simply lovely figments of my imagination.

...Now back to work. Tomorrow is another crazy day, but I hope to update after then.

Hannover adventuring.

Finally, an out-of-Hamburg adventure! A couple of us were trying to figure out SOMETHING we could do this weekend to fight off cabin fever, and it was decided to spend an afternoon exploring the beautiful city of Hannover. So! Five Smithies hopped on a train on Saturday morning in the bright sunshine and pulled into Hannover two hours later... in the rain (in good northern German fashion). In reading up on the city the night before, we were pleased to learn about a red line painted on the sidewalk connecting all of the "big sites" to be seen in the city. It sure made our job as tourists a lot easier.

I thought the city was beeeaaauuutiful. There were lots of winding cobblestone streets, 13th century churches, colorful Germanic architecture, flea markets along the river, etc. It felt wonderful to walk around and breathe fresh air, even if we did get cold and cranky after a while. Have a look!

(This one's my favorite of the batch.)

I thought this was a prime example of pre-bombing and post-bombing architecture. You can guess which is which.

Click on this picture to see the wonderful carved faces in the bridge. Most wonderful.

Our longest stop was in the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall). It was a spectacular building with just the right amount of ornamentation to be impressive and classy without being gaudy and snobbish.


Here in the main hall you can see four miniatures of the city during four different time periods. First we looked at Hannover today, Hannover in 1937, and Hannover in 1640-something.

Here's Hannover in 1937. (Picture's blurry, bad lighting.) Click for a larger view. When I got to the 4th diagram, I was expecting something in the middle time frame.

Hannover in 1945. Look at this up close. It literally took my breath away.

After that little shock, I got my spirits back up by taking artistic pictures of the fun staircases from below and above.

The coolest part of the building by far was the cupola, or rather, the transportation to get to the tippy top of it. If you look back at the big Rathaus picture, you'll notice that the cupola is on top of a rather large and nifty dome. As the dome in the main hall pretty well corresponds to the outer dome, it doesn't leave much space in between to get up to the top of the roof. Therefore, one must ride in Germany's ONLY DIAGONAL ELEVATOR! SO COOL! It's a small elevator with a slanted floor and glass ceiling that goes up in an arch. The shifting angle really threw me off spatially. It was great! ...And, of course, the view from the top was also great.


Check out the crazy funky glass building in this one. We didn't go in so I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it was big and shiny and had amazing angles, so who cares.

If you click on this one, you can better see the church in the middle. Like Hamburg and Berlin, Hannover also has a bombed out church serving as a memorial to the victims of the war. We went there next.

This church wasn't as large or elaborately restored with historical information like the other two I'd seen, but there was something about the emptiness and stillness inside it that struck me more than the others. Inside the entrance where the people are standing is a large bell that was given to Hannover by the city of Hiroshima.

The Altar was bare, the ivy was climbing, and the windows were simply ornamented by colorful glass plates held in place by barbed wire. Before the alter is a large stone in the ground that reads "OUR DEAD." The plaque on the wall speaks more about the horrors of the war and of its victims.



After that visit, we followed the red-painted line slowly back to the Hauptbahnhof (central station) and tried to figure out what to do next. After much indecision, we decided to go play in the Museum of the History of Energy on the other side of the town. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we made our way back again. In order to get warm, we walked around a big shopping center for a while and marveled at all the elaborate advent calendars that are suddenly for sale everywhere. I'm not talking about little sheets of cardstock with picture doors that you open every day, but advent calendar boxes with a piece of delux chocolate hidden in a drawer for each day, Playmobil advent calendars with a little playmobil figure for each day, or STAR WARS advent calendar boxes where each day reveals a new sort of action figure, to name a few. Happy Advent, kids!

Later adventures involved sitting in a coffee shop getting warm and then running to catch an earlier train home. All in all, it was a good day.

I am also delighted to report that Kassia and I will be spending the weekend of the 20th exploring Bremen, and I am even more delighted to report that late lastnight I found and purchased cheap cheap train tickets to Prague for the following weekend, where I will get to visit with my darling Hana. Take THAT, cabin fever!