I'm Baaaaaaaaack!

My Goodness that was a long time! I was about to start getting the 'shakies' from lack of online time.

My Powerbook is happily purring yet again, after its complete and utter shut down of death. What I believe happened was that the hard drive just plain wore out and quit on me. So in turn I lost most of everything I had, except the music on my iPod. It took so long to get it repaired for 2 reasons a) they really don't have Apple computers in Germany, it's completely saturated with Microsoft products, i.e. nowhere to repair them and b) I had to give the go ahead to spend close to 350 American to replace one stinkin' hard drive. This was after I decided against opening up the laptop myself with Moritz's bike equipment.


As a quick recap of what I've been doing the past 3 weeks and a bit; I've been to many festivals, 'professional' go-karting, a concert, and to the famous Loreley Rock.

The two big festivals that I've been to were Wurstmarcht Winefest and the Andecher Bierfest. Wurstmarcht was a few weeks ago, and Andecher was this Saturday. Wurstmarcht is proclaimed as the largest wine festival in the World, and I believe them. This festival was held in the city of Bad Durkheim, and it was PACKED. People everywhere. I went with a few friends from school and my host sister, Freddy. We rode rides, had some really excellent food (wursts and little poof pastries), and experienced the festivities. Andecher, the festival on Saturday, was much smaller, but was not lacking in any way. This festival was held in the town of Hasloch, which is about 10 minutes out of Neustadt. Instead of the big and crazy rides, this festival was more music oriented with many stages of all types. German rap, reggae, hard rock, acoustic stuff. I went to Andecher with a few of my Rotary friends from the surrounding towns. Peter, Mateo, Pierre, Nick, Gil, and Pedro were all there. All in all, it was quite a fun night.

Now, to the Go-Karting! So in Neustadt, I am the only exchange student with Rotary, and 1 of 2 foreigners in the entire town. The other guy, Dany, is from Oxaca and is in Germany with a program called Youth for Understanding (YFU). He's also staying for a year. He speaks very little English and even less Deutsch. It is fun to stumble along in my awful Spanish, but I can see already that our common language will be German. Oh, did I mention he lives across the street? He and I also go to our Deutschkurs together. One day, his host-mom came over at like 8:30 and was like, well are you ready? Apparently they had been planning this for a while, leaving out the detail of informing me. Kein problem. We all drove to the Go-Karting place which was about 15 minutes out of Neustadt.

I had thought that it was just going to be Dany and I racing, but was I so wrong. Nicola suited up with us and hopped in a car. Man those Germans really can drive. There is a reason that they all love Schumacher. We were all whipping around corners and doing 4 wheel slides. To say the least it was an extremely entertaining experience, and many thanks were exchanged.

I believe it was two weekends ago when I went to the open air concert in Mannheim. Every month they have these free concerts just out in the Rhine. The band(s) play on a barge near the shore and a huge crowd of people gather on the water's edge. It all starts at like 11 o clock at night too, for the light shows to really show off. September's was supposed to be "muy bueno". Freddy, her best friends, and I took the S-Bahn to Mannheim, and then a few busses to the river. The venue was light up dazzlingly and posters we advertising the bands that were to play. The openers were a band called Silbermond (Silver Moon), who were a local band, and the headliner Ramon. Apparently Ramon is HUGE in Europe, so everybody was excited. We squeezed ourself into the already gigantic crowd, pushing towards the front. There were about 8,000 people there, in about the size of half a football field. It was a BIT cozy. Haha. The show was mindblowing. The light effects were great, and the speakers (on the barge) carried over the water really well. I'm pretty sure Ramon is going to hit America in a few months and that they will sell a lot of records there, because they sing in English. ABBA style. We all caught one of the last trains back South to Neustadt, crammed with people coming back from the concert.

My final excursion in this post is my trip to the Loreley Rock with Rotary. I must be brief because the pictures really tell the story (they will be up soon, I have a photo editor now). At a youth hostel that we stayed two nights at in St. Goarhausen (the town there), we had a Rotary Orientation for just 1860. We were informed of all the happenings of the year, trips, meetings, and presentations. Many German ROTEX were there too. ROTEX are kids who have been on a Rotary exchange and are back now. Very cool people. Also one of the big things that we did at the Loreley was a big hike for good views of the river and a photoshoot. It was really enriching to go to this orientation because it introduced us to even more contacts in Germany, such as the Rotex, and also it brought our district, 1860, closer than ever.

Never fear, posts will come MUCH more frequently now. As well as pictures from the Flickr site.