Dienstag, 21. Oktober 2008

reading the gospel to yourself is fine...

i meant to do a ginormous post with a gajillion pictures about the autostadt, but a number of things prevented me from doing so. First and foremost, I locked my camera in a locker in the basement of the lobby in the typical Katie fashion. Then, I decided it was as good as time as any for the first official German tension headache and had the exquisite pleasure of just trying not to throw up.

I blame the sun.

(it was, after all, extremely sunny on monday, so much so that i think i burned my eyeballs. but it rained today, so all is back to normal.)

i did take some pictures of the train station, though! it was my first official solo train ride in deutschland.

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yeah, the boy was not so pleased. but i wanted a picture of the inside of the train station and his shirt was pretty. so... I did the blank look when he looked around and tried to hide my camera.

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here's the sign. when they say 24, they mean 24. it means the doors close and the train starts and takes off right as the second hand hits 0/60. It's amazing. and with the arriving trains as well-- i always think that they're going to be a bit early or late, but they're always on time.

it's either magic or the government is in control of the time. I'm hoping it's not the latter-- after all, most everyone seems to have radio operated clocks... it would be so easy to screw around.

(like hermioine [sic])(harry potter girl)

i'm still in awe that 18 euros a month buys me a ticket to go almost anywhere i could possibly want to go-- on the train, bus, strassenbahn-- whatever. it's amazing.

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i tried to inconspicuously take a picture of inside of the train, but it's really hard when your camera is the size of your face and insists on making real-photo noises.

anywho, autostadt is where volkwagon (say it like a german-- vokeswagen) lives and manufactures 3000 cars a day. in wolfsburg. it's giant. my host family and i got the new volkswagon. it's shiny and nice. then we looked at old cars. took a tour of the auto-making land, etc.

look it up-- there's globes in the lobby and a museum filled with old cars.

today, i baked a torte (with a bajillion layers of jam and cake and then chocolate on top). if it tastes good (it is for my german class tomorrow because the class is almost finished... so glad! then i start school, finally), then i will post a recipe. because it was a german recipe and in grams and it is quite snazzy.

and now, because i'm invigorated, 10 things i love about germany in no particular order. (i've been compiling this list to look at when i have crappy, crappy days)
1. bread. there is a lot of bread and it is good. this leads me to number 2
2. cheese. there is a lot of cheese and it is also good.
3. the world is set up for biking. there are little traffic lights for bikes. my bike is purple and has a bell and a basket so i can go grocery shopping.
4. trains and buses and strassenbahns are amazing. the mass transport is so efficient here. and it's clean and comfortable and relatively not-filled-with-drunk-men
5. people speak german. this is still pretty exciting, especially when i understand them.
6. bed head. it is completely acceptable for me to wander around with bed head (and with short hair, I get a lot of really impressive bed-head. for example, today i had one normal side and the other almost spiked out. I tried to get it to lay down and couldn't, so i just went with it. and it was okay)
7. notebooks. so many good notebooks, so many good sizes. plus, i find the standard paper size (a1) much more aesthetically pleasing than the crudeness of an 8.5x11" sheet.
8. there are no sheets on the beds, so i don't have to pretend to use them. plus, my bed is amazingly comfortable and the duvet makes me all fluffy inside.
9. endless tea. i drink liters of it a day and no one makes comments about my 'habits'. also, i no longer have to pretend to understand american measurements-- it's all metric, all the time, bb.
10. euros. there are coins that have different things on the back that are worth real money. today i had one that had davinci's man on the back of it, instead of the bundesland eagle. also, euro bills are different colors and sizes and are quite shiny.

that's all for now
love
katie

1 Kommentar:

Jenn hat gesagt…

Ok - so I'm going to try and post something one more time. I love the pics and hope you keep posting them. I can't even imagine what it is like to see things so beautiful in real life!

Love,
Jen