Wait. What?

This update is for the week of 2/15 through 2/18

So Monday was an easy going day. I wasn’t feeling too great, so I decided to stay in most of the day. That also meant that I didn’t go to Stammtisch. There isn’t a whole lot to write about that Monday. As I was lying in bed, I thought about how I would remember that day and what I would write about it in this blog. It was then that I decided to adopt the goal of making every day noteworthy. I decided to live my life in Germany so that every day was some sort of an adventure and that every day I could have something new or exciting to write about in the blog, if nothing else. I owed myself, my friends, my family, and Rotary that. So if you expect my blog to get less verbose as I spend more time in Germany, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Every day will have some sort of adventure to document.

On Tuesday, I still wasn’t feeling too hot, but I decided to head to the Wohnheim around dinner to see what my friends were up to. I ended up having spaghetti and ravioli with everyone. It was good to hang out and talk with them, and making food always brings a certain sense of accomplishment. The good thing about these slower days is that is gives me some free time to read and study my German. Also, I get to communicate with people from home then too, so slower days aren’t as dull as the blog might indicate.

Wednesday proved to be another one of those slower days. I spent the day walking around Schwäbisch Hall and studying my German. Relaxing isn’t so bad, either, you know? I think it’s good for me to have a few days to lounge around and enjoy the slightly slower life compared to my warp speed existence at USC. I’ll give you a guess what I had for dinner. Anyone? Yep, that’s right. A good ol’ döner. Yummmm.

Thursday was definitely more fascinating and action packed than the earlier days of the week. After class, a group of us went shopping around Schwäbisch Hall. It was my first time doing so, and it proved to be yet another educational experience. I stepped inside an H&M for the first time in my life. If you don’t know what that is, don’t be alarmed. H&M is a clothing store of sorts for the sheik. I ended up actually buying a scarf there because I needed one to keep my neck warm. I felt so out of the loop without a scarf before, anyway. I think I might have been in the 1% of Schwäbisch Hall’s population that didn’t own a scarf. So it was productive and adventurous. After H&M, we headed to Müller’s, which is kind of like a bigger, three-story Walgreens. Müll means garbage in German, so the store name implies a catch-all type of store (not trashy, though…just the fact that you can find a little bit of everything there). The last store we hit was a sporting goods store, and it was interesting to see all that they had in there. I might have to get a German soccer jersey that I saw in there. But it was good to check out the shopping scene around the town for an hour or so.

A group of us decided to cook another American meal for dinner: fried chicken and fries. Well, it turns out turkey is cheaper than chicken, so we went with that instead. We spent two hours cutting potatoes into slices and turkey meat into tenders, rolling the turkey in eggs and then flour, and frying the meat and potatoes in boiling oil. It was definitely a long process, but it was rewarding. And tasty. It was also a learning experience because it was the first time any of us had try such an endeavor. We successfully made enough food (two bags of potatoes and 3 kilograms of turkey) for about 9 hungry boys.

After cooking this food, we headed to the Schwäbisch Hall Kino (theater) for a movie. The Goethe Institut pays us back the 4 Euros it costs to for the ticket, so the movie turns out to be free for us. We knew the general direction of the theater, but it took us about 20 minutes to actually find it. We arrived just in time for the 8:30 showing of “Stille Hochzeit,” which means “Quiet Wedding.” The movie didn’t have subtitles because we were in a German movie theater, but the four of us that went got the gist. It was about a small town in eastern Europe during the rise of Communism. The whole story was pretty strange, but the basic idea was that the Russians invaded and took over the town right during the middle of the wedding, forbidding any loud noises, partying, or public congregations. The family and the whole town just moved the wedding inside that night, covering all of the windows and allowing no noise at all. They did everything from cover the cups with cloth and not using silverware to prevent clinking to “playing telephone” to relay messages. It was actually kind of comical at some parts, but overall it was indeed very strange. At the end, they decide to have the band play and dismiss the quiet to have a full-blown party. However, not 30 minutes after doing this, the Russians drive a tank into the house, shoot a few people, and take the rest of the men away in a truck. And that’s how the movie ends. The best part of the whole production was probably my friend’s reaction (that he blurted out in the middle of the theater) once the credits started rolling: “Wait. What?!” The ending was just so abrupt and the movie as a whole was just so weird that we couldn’t wrap our American minds around it. Of course, we understood the concept and lesson of the movie, but it seemed more like a waste of money than a poignant piece of cinematography. At least we went to see it and it was free, right? We just went home and called it a night after that. We knew that our last weekend together was coming up, and we definitely would need our rest to make it through that.