Vorschlag

Adam asked me to marry him in front of the Frauenkirche yesterday! Honestly a perfect way to end this trip. He did such a good job of keeping a secret for a few months now and totally blew it last night, but that's why I love him. :)

I'm super excited to go home, and be able to reminisce about everything that happened. I don't think I'll keep blogging, but who knows I may find super interesting things to write about my cat.

I'll really miss Old Town the most, especially now that one of the most important experiences (that is already a blur) of my life happened there.

Prosim

So we finally "got the hang of" German and then went to Prague where they speak Czech! Instead of only rambling English at Germans, I started yelling German at Czechs. Oh well, we're back in Dresden now. :)

Prague was pretty cool! It was super touristy, but that was actually kind of neat. A lot of people spoke all kinds of English, and I met a girl that was exactly like Jasminda from Bend it Like Beckham which made me freak out a little bit. :) I have a theory. English speakers over here speak English louder because they're not used to everyone being able to understand them. This has led to me overhearing a lot of interesting conversations.

Also, Europeans. You guys are so eco-friendly and are going to save the world, but you won't be able to enjoy it because you'll all be dead from lung cancer.

Czech beer is really good and cheaper than soda and water so I've been drinking it with lunch like a true European. In a totally RElated topic, I need to start working out immediately when I get home.

Kugel

Yesterday, I was very brave. We got on trains and buses all by ourselves. It was an important milestone in my life. :)

On a side note, America I'm ready for you! I'm ready to know exactly what I'm ordering, to be able to be polite, to have air conditioning, ice in my drinks, and free refills. Please and thank you.

Also, bathing suits are optional on the Baltic Sea. I have experienced much more nudity than I ever expected on this trip.

Prague tomorrow!

Danke!

The weather is officially cool! It's wondrous. We watched Bela Lugosi as Dracula last night on the Elbe, with a live accompaniment. It was a super interesting concept for a concert, but the movie just proved that directors have been ruining the books that they make into movies for a very long time.

I have a new strategy for interacting with Germans! I give them my ticket/money, smile, and try to say as little as possible in reply. So far, it's working beautifully.

We're going on an adventure tomorrow! We're getting on a train early in the morning to a city on the Baltic Sea called Lubeck. :)

Berlin was interesting. It's a huge city, and therefor a good bit scarier than Leipzig or Dresden. The historical parts were incredibly moving. The Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church made me cry because it was so beautiful but had been partially destroyed along with the rest of Berlin.

We saw a very modernized version of Handel's Orlando. That's probably one of the biggest understatements I have ever blogged. :) The performers were incredibly talented, and mostly female. All the male protagonists except for the musician were female, and it was not something that would have probably not been so accepted in Troy. I thought it was interesting though. We have definitely seen all the different aspects of opera on this trip, whether or not the professors planned it that way.

Well, hopefully tomorrow will go smoothly, we won't get lost in Germany, and I'll have more to blog about!

Hanchen

We've been so busy lately! We went to Leipzig last week and stayed in a hostel called the Sleepy Lion. Hostels are actually pretty cool; we got to sleep in bunk beds and such. After arriving in Leipzig, we went on a walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was another nice German lady who asked us if we were all "complete" to see if the entire group was there. A lot of Leipzig was under construction; I wonder why there's more construction there than in Dresden.

The next day we toured the Bach and Mendelssohn museums. The Bach museum was amazing! The exhibits were incredibly interactive and had all kinds of interesting technology. We were all tired by the time we made it to the Mendelssohn museum. There was his death mask and some of his hair there so.......

The next day was our "free day." We went to the Zoo Leipzig and it was really nice. The aquarium/terrarium section was especially nice. I saw a lot of creatures that I had never even heard of before!

Then we ventured to the Monument to the Battle of the Nations. We read that it was the biggest monument in Europe and thought "Hey, that would be kinda cool." It was awesome! It was unbelievably huge. We went inside the base and were baffled as usual by the German that surrounded us. I found a door that lead to a staircase and decided to see where it went. About 15 feet up the tiny spiral staircase there was a lot of graffiti. I ventured oh-so-bravely onward and it started to get really cold. Did I mention that the base of the monument was a crypt? At this point Adam and Kathleen are telling me to come back and Lorilyn is having an asthma attack. I wasn't about to stop, so I ignored them and kept going. Suddenly, there was a glass door leading to the outside of the monument. I shrilly yelled back at them to keep coming and walked out on to what I though was an awesome, high view point of the monument. As the others joined me and we babbled in really loud English about how cool this was and how high up and suddenly an American guy told us we were only half way and we had at least TWO HUNDRED steps left....... To end this really long story, I'll just say that Kathleen, Haley, and I climbed all the way up and it was one of the coolest things I have ever done. The view was breathtaking!

After we came back down, I convinced Adam that he had to go up and that it was totally worth overcoming his slight fear of heights. So back up he and I went. That was two days ago. Today, I climbed 800 stairs that were carved into a mountain in the Saxony Switzerland National Park. Shaun T, that is true Insanity.

We also met a naked man, but I will save that for a later post on the soccer games, since this post was so long. :)

Stadtfahrt

We went to two operas last week. The first was Boris Godunow, by Modest P. Mussorgski (great name for a band). It was pretty hard to understand, because it was sung in Russian with the German translation projected above the stage. It was really interesting though! It's based on an old Russian novel, but this version of the opera was super modernized. The characters were, I'm assuming, supposed to make you think of Russian mobsters. The coolest thing was that Drs. Hix and Jackson randomly knew one of the main performers! He went to school with them and was listed in the program as "The American."

The next opera we saw was Verdi's Falstaff and I loved it! It was incredibly light-hearted, especially after Boris Godunow, and the Italian was much easier to understand than Russian. The performer who played Falstaff was amazing and some of the staging was really, really neat.

The best thing about both of the operas was what happened on the train after Falstaff. All the trains were rerouted and we were a group of scared, lost Americans getting on a random train in the hopes that it would take us back to the hotel. A man on the train was speaking in English on the phone and Alan accosted him, asking if he could give us directions. Turns out that not only was he from Oklahoma and could give us directions but that he had been pretty recognizable characters in BOTH of the operas! It was amazing. I immediately ran stumbling down the moving train to awkwardly take his picture, which turned out to be a video.

Best moment so far.

Erdbeer

I've posted way too many blogs today, but I'm just excited to finally have one. :)

Adam and I decided that tonight, we were finally going to get German food. No more Turkish, no more McDonald's, and definitely no more ice cream (even though it's German). We took the train to Postplatz, all the quick German restaurants were closed. We headed to Neustadter Markt, Nordsea, like Captain D's but German, was closed. Finally, we went to the ever popular German restaurant- Subway.

Earlier today, we visited the Albertinum museum. This museum suffered a lot of damage in the 2002 flood of Dresden and only reopened two weeks ago. The building was huge! I wish I could have taken pictures, especially of the Caspar David Friedrich paintings.

Now, I'm "helping" Adam do his homework. Maybe we'll go get ice cream later.......

Walpurgisstrasse

Germans ride bikes everywhere. They're incredibly talented at multitasking while riding bikes. I've seen Germans eating ice cream, texting, taking pictures, and sleeping (not really) all on bicycles.

Ok, I have to go help Adam do laundry now!

First Blog!

I've been in Germany for a few days now, and have tried to start a blog multiple times. This proved to be way harder than expected. Now that I am in Germany, my computer thinks that I am in fact German. Because of this, I have had to start this blog by blindly clicking on promising links and begging my computer to please make the next page be in English.

So, I have a blog now! This trip to Germany is so far very tiring and amazing. The "old town" of Dresden is so beautiful that I teared up at least three times during our tour the other morning. Many parts of America are also beautiful, but nowhere in the States are there gorgeous, history-filled buildings like here in Europe. Speaking of Europe, I barely ever feel like I'm actually here. Usually, I just feel like I'm in another state where they speak kind of strangely and don't have air-conditioning. The first time I actually felt like we were in Europe was when we toured Old Town, and yesterday when we went to this cute little town called Pillnitz.

I'm about to head out to the grocery store, but before I go I'll quickly write down how different everything is here. It's not as if any one thing is completely different, it's just that EVERYTHING is a little different. The toilet flushes differently, the windows open differently, and everything is so very eco-friendly. I love the last one; it's so easy to recycle here. It's interesting though, no one has canteens or reusable water bottles like in the States. Also, they never drink tap water, although it seems fine to me. :)

Last thing: Germans LOVE ice cream! And now, I love German ice cream (eiss) as well.

Tschuss!