Wrapping it All Up

So, I'm back in the States again! It's been a huge, life-changing journey, but I have weathered the storm.

As the exchange year was coming to an end in Germany, the heartfelt and tear-filled goodbye's began. Nearly every other day we lost another kid to the dreadful final trip to Frankfurt Airport. The Asian contingents went first, then the Latinos... finally the Americans. Peter and Nick flew back together, Kati the next day, and the other Nick just days afterward. I was one of the last left, excluding Pedro who was staying until like August. But, I had no such bad luck to be flying home so soon.

On the 21st of June I picked up my parents and brother from the airport to begin our own German Adventure. We rented a car and toured through my town and surrounding area for a few days, then went down to Munich. After experiencing what a real youth hostel was like for ONE night, we checked into (our favorite) the Best Western in downtown Munich. My family and I did all the touristy things that we could think of; going to the Hofbraeuhaus, the English Garden, walking the "Old" Town etc... The next stop on our trip was way down in the South of Germany, in Bayern (the Texas of Deutschland). The town we stayed in was called Marktoberdorf. Most of the reason we went so far south was because the people who owned the hotel we were sleeping in were somehow and very convolutely related to us (Grandpa's good friend Marty's cousin was the housekeeper). Very sweet people. There we went and saw the fairy tale castle, Neuschwanstein and its smaller sister castle as well. Throughout the whole tour my parents were drawn unconsciously to every single church we passed on the way. We drove back to my town, Neustadt to my goodbye party. All most host families were there, as well as my club president (Kurt) and my club counselor (Petra). The next day we made our own trip to Frankfurt, just this time, not so dreary or sad.

The pictures from the trip will be online soon!


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Today is the 21st of August. I've been back for seven weeks and am finally getting back into the groove a little bit. In two short weeks school will begin again and I am definitely looking forward to that. The college search is looming over my head as well as all the responsibilities of being a senior.

My exchange has changed me. This has been one of the most important things I've done in my life and I will use every single thing I have learned from it to better myself.

I want to recommend to everyone; do an exchange! It will show you how big and how small the world really is.

New Pictures

The Eurotour shots are all up on Flickr. Go and check em out.

www.flickr.com/photos/11618

So, back from Eurotour!

Hey so I am back from my great big adventure through Europe. I was in so many different places and saw multitudes of amazing things. Since I saw SO MUCH, it is going to be quite impossible for me to write about it in here. This time, I'm going to use a slightly different format. I'm going to start posting my photos from my trip, and on the photos I will write about what was going on then. Expect the first pictures to come mid-week.

My mom also reminded me to post some of my general info-es here, since I have mistakenly refrained from doing that.

So, my house phone number is: 049-06321-929091
and my address is:

Mandlebaum
Winterbergstr. 25
67434 Neustadt an der Weinstrasse

and my email of course is the same.

Lots of Stuff

Ho-kay.

Lots of stuff has been happening! That is probably why I haven't really had a chance to write about it here.

Quick little katsup.

I went with the Meissners for a little outing to Frankfurt. It poured rain the whole time but it was still pretty cool. There was this huge double decker food market there. Covered thank goodness. It really reminded me of home. Just all the bustling people, packed into the space, sellers yelling, butchers chopping, little kids running around with bags of bread. I hit up the spice shop there and got a really good Thai curry and a Tandoori rub.



Second little outing I did with the Meissners was to a city called Karlsruhe. The city is famous for its engineering university and this big ol' castle that is right in the middle of the city. All the streets branch out from it, Rome style. On top of the castle there is this big tower that we climbed up in. We also went to this big cultural center there called the ZKM. It is a huge complex with museums, theatres, outdoor art, restaurants, and everything. Very very cool place. We went to a film and moving picture exhibit there.



Next piece of big news; I changed families! My Rotary here thought it would be a good idea if I changed before tour, so they made it happen. Since my hindsight is 20/20, I'm seeing that it was really a better situation than to come back to the Meissners, then leave right away. My new family is called the Mandelbaums (The Almond Trees). The father (Lutge) is a priest (of the Protestant church which is attached to the house), his wife (Noemia) is a Brazillian born Jewish woman who is an excellent cook and a loving mother. Their sons, David and Jonathan, are 18 and 10. I am officially little Johnny's new best friend and American toy. Good thing he does boy scouts, he's is busy a lot. David is also really cool, his girlfriend (Sarah) is really sweet, and his other friends are also really fun. Should be a good time, eh?

I live in Hambach (the rich part of town) again, so a lot of other awesome people live by me again. Just now, I know how to speak Deutsch and can communicate with them. Pictures of David and his friends are on my updated Flickr page if you want to check it out (Pictures).

Alrighty.

Now to the interesting stuff.

Tomorrow I will be leaving for my European Tour. It lasts 22 days and we are going through many Western and Eastern European countries. We are going to begin in Weisbaden, the capitol of Hessen, then move on to Brussels. Our next city will be Paris followed by Lyon and Avignon. Down to the French Riviera we go to Port du Gard, Cote d' Azur, Nice, and through Monaco. Next we travel into Italy, starting with Genoa, then Siena and Rome. Then we go to Florence, Bologna and Jesolo. Once we are finished with Italy we go to Austria and to Wein. Should be pretty fancy there. Next we go to Hungary, to Budapest. Then on to Slovakia and Bratislava. Next comes the Czech Republic and Prag, then we finish it off with Karlsbad and Eastern Germany.

I'm going to be gone for a quite a while. I bid you all a fine time, and please do send me some emails.

Ciao

P.S. <-- what part of the alphabet would look like without Q and R

P.P.S. Check out my new pictures on Flickr

Fasching!

So every year in Germany, around the time of Fat Tuesday, the Deutsche Leute let loose. Between Christmas and then there is practically nothing going on and the people are ready for a big ol' party.

What we (the exchange students) did to celebrate this great event, was to of course find out way to the biggest party in Western Germany. This was in a city called Mainz, maybe you've heard of it, but probably not.

Here is our tale.

Nick and I go up to a city called Alzey on the Saturday preceding the event to meet up with Judit and Baylee (Hungary and Ohio) and spend the night there. On the train there we decide to don our magical costumes (it's Carneval) and to prepare ourselves for the upcoming amazing days. We were bears.



This picture is from the club that we went to that night (Saturday). It was crazy good. Baylee lives in Alzey and she brought all her friends along with us to the club.

The next day on Sunday there was a parade in Alzey. This was kindof a pre-party for what was to come on Rosenmontag (Red Monday).

After we had dorned our battle/bear suits Baylee took us down into the town where the parade was. It was really fast moving and cool. Loud music, dancing, people leaning out of the floats and pouring free champagne and wine. Ah, good times. The parade moved in a winding motion so we kept skipping down blocks to get back to the parade and to see more of it. To say the least, Sunday was awesome. We went to bed early, because we had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day.



We got up at about 7 to get on the train to go to Mainz. It's about 40 minutes away by the slow train. At 7 in the morning it was packed! But the coolest part was that it was packed with people already in costume (Nick and I already had our bear suits on). All the way there we sung Karneval songs.

We de-train and follow the flow into the massively decorated city. The crowd weaves and meanders its way to the parade path which is about 7 km long, winding through the city. We found Baylee's friends, my friends from Neustadt, and Andres (an exchange student from Mexico, not in our district) all totally by chance.

The parade was huge! Marching bands, floats, balloons, free shit, more floats, drum lines, cars, just everything moving down the streets in Mainz. After a while the parade was getting a bit boring for Nick and I, so we decided to be part of it. We strap on our backpacks as tight as we can, and just start running through the thick of it, chanting a long with whoever was yelling something, and giving free bear hugs on the way. It was fantastic! We ran the entire duration of the course yellin' and screaming.

After the parade was over, the street was covered in broken glass, just completely covered. Another funny thing, that every single establishment had a sign outside the door saying how much it was charging for a person to go to the bathroom. The highest that I saw was like 3 euros!!!

As the night came on, parties started appearing right in the street. Crazy, loud, dancing, screaming, cars, street cleaners spraying water at us, more music. FUN

At one party we were at, I started to feel something weird. Something wasn't right here. I just couldn't put my paw (remember I'm a bear) on it. Suddenly it hit me. Where were all the girls? Why were there so many guys at this party, and why did they have their shirts off? Why are those two guys making out? Why is the bar that we are dancing in front of called "Glitter"...

IT WAS A GAY BAR PARTY!

Sooo... we ran, in our bear suits, as fast as we could.

We found our way to the biggest dance of the city, the SWR3 Open Air party. It was amazing! Just totally indescribable.

We got outta there about at 2 o clock and took the train home to Baylee's house. On the way we went to the amazingly open gas station, and got chocolate milk. Never tasted better.

And that is how you spend Fasching in Deutschland.

New Pictures too

give em a look

my flickr page

new ones from carneval are soon to come

Wrapping Up Paris

Alright people, this is gunna be the down and dirty version of the cool stuff I saw and did in Paris after New Years Eve.

New Years Day

Today we went to the Centre Pompidu, which is the biggest modern art museum in Paris. It is a super groovy building with all the guts on the outside; walkways, elevators, and all the heating ducts. The stuff that we saw was very cool. The main exhibit was Yves Klein, the man that copywrited his own blue, who wanted to levitate, and studied Judo. There was also a moving picture exhibit being held as well as an Eastern Germany photo wing. Very cool stuff, I can't wait to go back. The building was awesome as well, very cool "being" spaces.

After that we got some really tasty food on the street. It was a split open baguette with hot plate grilled meat, onions, cheese and peppers. Slathered with a special red sauce and with thin pommes, it was the damn closest thing I've had to a Philly since I've been here.

As it was getting darker we headed up to Sacre Cur and checked it out. Watched the sun set over Paris. Beautiful view. All the tiny buildings and windows and trees and the river, lit up like on fire.

The next thing that we did was walk around the hip community on the top of the hill up there, had a crepe or two to munch on, the marched our way in the rain down to the strip. Got the always important picture with Moulin Rouge, and headed back to the Hotel.

Having concluded our sleeping actions we walked on over to Museum d'Orsay (spelled wrong) which is inside the old Parisian main train station. Since the train station is now on the wrong side of the river for any major train dealings, they had to build a new one. It was really cooly renovated into a multi-themed house of art specially designed for public art, statues, and large viewing areas. Very clean, very well put together. Your shoes squeak the whole time on the flooring, it drove me crazy lol. The huge statues and the Van Gogh's were my favorites there.

For dinner that night we went to the student quarter of Paris. We decided to go to a typical French cafe and have some Parisian comfort food. It was excellent. To start, I had a onion, cheese, and bread soup which was heavenly. Super stringy cheese and crisp and mushy at the same time bread. Mmmm. Then we all shared a plate of Schnecken (SNAILS), with a green paste which was primarily garlic and slathered with butter. After that I had a leg of lamb that practically melted in your mouth, and you're supposed to suck the marrow out of the bone that was left in. Soooo good. Finished it off with cappuccino and chocolate sorbet.

Final Day in Paris!!

This was the Louvre Day. We got there at about 8:30 (hoping to be there before the famous lines) but alas the line was about a kilometer long, stretching around the square above the museum. What the stereotypes don't tell you is the speed in which it moves. All this huge line was for, was to security check people. We were inside in a matter of minutes (20 ish).

The entire layout of the museum, the structure, the architecture, the melding of past and present, the pieces, the people. It's indescribable. It is definitely a place to go to at LEAST one time in your life. It is a real pilgrimage, it has that energy emanating from it.

Psyche & Cupid (statue), Winged Victory, the Egyptian stuff, and the French large format paintings were all my favorites. I also saw the Mona Lisa and her knowing smile.

It was a very moving experience, and I am looking forward to returning someday.

Paris is a lovely city, filled with beautiful people and places, great food, sights to see, and uncountable experiences to be had. I recommend it.

Now I officially have nothing else to say about Paris!!!!